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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:30 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:40:30 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12659-0.txt b/12659-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..41fbe77 --- /dev/null +++ b/12659-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8786 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12659 *** + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +By + +FANNIE HURST + + +_Author of_ + +"GASLIGHT SONATAS" + +"HUMORESQUE" + +ETC. + + +1922 + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + +BACK PAY + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +THE SMUDGE + +GUILTY + +ROULETTE + + + + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + + +By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agra +to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, +so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths +and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly +complete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, +all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home." + +A mausoleum to the hearth. And as true to form as any that ever mourned +the dynastic bones of an Augustus or a Hadrian. + +An Indiana-limestone and Vermont-marble tomb to Hestia. + +All ye who enter here, at sixty dollars a week and up, leave behind the +lingo of the fireside chair, parsley bed, servant problem, cretonne shoe +bags, hose nozzle, striped awnings, attic trunks, bird houses, ice-cream +salt, spare-room matting, bungalow aprons, mayonnaise receipt, fruit +jars, spring painting, summer covers, fall cleaning, winter apples. + +The mosaic tablet of the family hotel is nailed to the room side of each +door and its commandments read something like this: + + One ring: Bell Boy. + + Two rings: Chambermaid. + + Three rings: Valet. + + Under no conditions are guests permitted to use electric irons in + rooms. + + Cooking in rooms not permitted. + + No dogs allowed. + + Management not responsible for loss or theft of jewels. Same can be + deposited for safe-keeping in the safe at office. + + * * * * * + + Note: + + Our famous two-dollar Table d'Hôte dinner is served in the Red + Dining Room from six-thirty to eight. Music. + +It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel Bon +Ton boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along the +forefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping. + +The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw to +all that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hôte +séances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and the +tarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Ton +hotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight. + +Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place where +the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's. +Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were +twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty's +profile. + +Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer because +she had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had no +place there. + +Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of +five rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with her +granddaughters. + +Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lack +of length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the new +filet-lace patterns. + +Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton in +seasonal epidemics. + +The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one. + +In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted in +the lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't. + +The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from little +strands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour. + +Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crêpe-de-Chine +nightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles. + +Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herself +and three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes that +were scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running up +sand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here and +there with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satin +rosebuds. + +It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern, +but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latz +liked watching her. + +There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to the +heart interest. + +Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shy +of likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman's +inevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly, +to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked them +passive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them between +his own, but that had never been. + +Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. That +very morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment, +strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansive +tree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly and +very badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them. + +Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swift +lance. + +He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and the +dry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads. + +Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but just +as correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short. +Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked. + +Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger. + +On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby, +Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself down +on a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread, +taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, but +he sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers up +into a little chapel. + +"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smile +encompassing the question. + +"If I was any better I couldn't stand it," relishing her smile and his +reply. + +The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _à la_ Bon Ton, +mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _sauté_, choice of or both _poulette +emincé_ and spring lamb _grignon_, and on through to fresh strawberry +ice cream in fluted paper boxes, _petits fours_, and _demi-tasse_. +Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational +plush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinner +standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slid +surreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. +Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen +hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a +hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in +bare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, +patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement and +eager to excel in return badinage. + +Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed. + +The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off men. +Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like a +squaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and an +aftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emerged +from the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law. + +"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing his +own kind of cognizance of the scented trail. + +"_Fleur de printemps_," said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis. +"Eight-ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought +the cunning perfection of a sniff. + +"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max Gronauer +when he first started in the produce business in Jersey City and the +only perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not always fresh +killed at that. _Cold storage de printemps_!" + +"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband," said Mrs. Samstag, +tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace handkerchief, itself +guilty of a not inexpensive attar. + +"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort. + +"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs. +Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for a +grandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almost +eight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scented +sigh. + +He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wanting +to seem appropriate. + +"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble." + +"Share," she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of her +eyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma, +Mr. Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My one +consolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto in +life, 'Keep a bold front.'" + +For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleeding +quality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!" + +"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!" + +There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefully +trimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and what +threatened to be a slight depth of flesh across the shoulders had been +carefully massaged of this tendency, fifteen minutes each night and +morning, by her daughter. + +In fact, through the black transparency of her waist Mr. Latz thought +her plumply adorable. + +It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whatever +inroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were little +dark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal, and two unrelenting sacs +that threatened to become pouchy. + +Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, +in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look +of one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found daily +in fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting X-ray appointments. + +What ailed Mrs. Samstag was hardly organic. She was the victim of +periodic and raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side of +her head and down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling and +blazing of nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit up +the one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the wee +hours in her chain of hot applications. + +For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with little +jabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes began +to look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up two +fingers with a little pressing movement to her temple. + +"You're a great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even +Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety of +expression. + +"I try to be," she said, his tone inviting out in her a mood of sweet +forbearance. + +"And a great sufferer, too," he said, noting the pressing fingers. + +She colored under this delightful impeachment. + +"I wouldn't wish one of my neuralgia spells to my worst enemy, Mr. +Latz." + +"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine--I wouldn't stop until +I had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two about +those fellows over there. Some of them are wonders." + +Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if by +little pulleys of emotion. + +"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--widow who wants to do +right by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war." + +"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair that +was as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, then +clutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly, "I +just wish I could help." + +"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift brown look from the lace making and +then at it again. + +He laughed, but from nervousness. + +"My little mother was an ailer, too." + +"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it's +ridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such a +sufferer." + +"Same with her and her joints." + +"Why, except for this old neuralgia, I can outdo Alma when it comes +to dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, or +shopping." + +"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw." + +"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of my +friends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice; +then, hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived. +A regular little mother to me in my spells." + +"Nice girl, Alma." + +"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that up +to then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even know +what a headache was. That long drive. That windy hilltop with two men to +keep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how I +care when I care. But, of course, as the saying is, 'time heals.' But +that's how I got my first attack. 'Intenseness' is what the doctors +called it. I'm terribly intense." + +"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not much +use hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, isn't +it?" + +If he had known it, there was something about his intensity of +expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little Gothic arches +of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved +face, and as he sat on the edge of his chair it seemed that inevitably +the tight sausagelike knees must push their way through mere fabric. + +Ordinarily he presented the slightly bay-windowed, bay-rummed, spatted, +and somewhat jowled well-being of the Wall Street bachelor who is a +musical-comedy first-nighter, can dig the meat out of the lobster claw +whole, takes his beefsteak rare and with two or three condiments, and +wears his elk's tooth dangling from his waistcoat pocket and mounted on +a band of platinum and tiny diamonds. + +Mothers of debutantes were by no means unamiably disposed toward him, +but the debutantes themselves slithered away like slim-flanked minnows. + +It was rumored that one summer at the Royal Palisades Hotel in Atlantic +City he had become engaged to a slim-flanked one from Akron, Ohio. But +on the evening of the first day she had seen him in a bathing suit the +rebellious young girl and a bitterly disappointed and remonstrating +mother had departed on the Buck Eye for "points west." + +There was almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must have +presented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expression +now as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffed +knees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense and creased with +anxiety. + +"That's about the way of it, isn't it?" he said again into the growing +silence. + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag's fingers were rigid at their task of lace making, +the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in her +ears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closing +her ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded. + +"I--When a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll never +be happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once an +affectionate nature, always an affectionate nature." + +"You mean," he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch that +was left of chair--"you mean--me--?" + +The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out on +his scalp. + +"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but you +cannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life." + +At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs. +Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not +intended. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, more abruptly than he might have, without +the act of that knee to immediately justify. + +She spread the lace out on her lap. + +Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawny +soup was cold to-night," or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson +pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than ever +in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in +flashes over his body. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could +repeat their incredible feat. + +With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang. + +"Mr. Latz--" + +"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture. + +"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placed +her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with +his kisses. + +"God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would make +it so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, this +getting it said. Carrie, will you?" + +"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--" + +"Loo--" + +"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you read +about." + +"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up to +five years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had was +alive, I never had eyes for a woman or--" + +"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--" + +"Loo." + +"Loo." + +"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that just +walked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback, +Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when she +was helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that little +stooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it up +to her. Y'understand?" + +"Yes--Loo." + +"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years before +she died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me back +eighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than that +it cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped my +little old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat. + +"I had some friends lived in the Grenoble Apartments when you did--the +Adelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels and +she never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to sit +on it. + +"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting, +without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman in +the world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem." + +Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light. + +"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, but +ask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!" + +"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngster +in years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--" + +"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger." + +"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's +death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl +with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think about +it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I +couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any +more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matches +that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was +too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible to +my own age." + +"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that +gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer +to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?" + +"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your +doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent." + +"I'm--that way." + +"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this +hotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But at +heart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, +you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?" + +"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--" + +"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud +of." + +"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I +haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'" + +"I knew it!" + +"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the +house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my +husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off +the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For +what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the +time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold +snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But +with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--" + +"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to +telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the +little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat +enough herself to keep a bird alive." + +"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr. +Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and +naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People +think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and +a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my +seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a +hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just +the same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the +start." + +"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it." + +"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd a +jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you +know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with +conscientiousness." + +"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you just +said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford for +yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Street +alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousand +last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say +yes?" + +"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean on +her so." + +"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her +mother's light." + +"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family." + +"That don't scare me." + +"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and +through. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too +much to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself. +She's precious to me, Louis." + +"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would +want you to feel different?" + +"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children, +she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spend +the night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it, +but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takes +care of me." + +"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a room +for her." + +"Loo!" + +"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascal +Friedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better business +head you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Dayton +the other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a big +new clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out of +their eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical Supply +Company doubled their excess-profit tax last year." + +A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs. +Samstag into a rigid pallor. + +"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their daughters +off. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's best you +know it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I have to +have my little girl with me!" + +He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist. + +"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to me +further what a grand little woman you are!" + +"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis." + +"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing." + +"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is +reserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the +kind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book or +her sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now." + +"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay young +chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they +start than my little mother did when she finished." + +"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit +of it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More +like the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me, +Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my +baby." + +"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be a +fine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to please +her as a father. Carrie, will you have me?" + +"Oh, Louis--Loo!" + +"Carrie, my dear!" + +And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their +betrothal. + + * * * * * + +None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high +on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening +turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room. + +The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery, +ornamental portières on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant +French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames. + +But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a +green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed +photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. +A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some +circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn +up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn +from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow. + +From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at +her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheek +was a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in the +palm of her hand. + +"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on +the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late." + +There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little +dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness +that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the +pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young +Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly +the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his +heart. + +And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind of +timid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, "Mamma, you stayed +down so late," the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere in +her voice. + +"Why--Mr. Latz--and--I--sat and talked." + +An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right +temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain. + +"You're all right, mamma?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greenness +relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold. + +"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," said +her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand bag +where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and +furtively as if for the shape of its contents. + +"Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her +voice. + +"Come to bed, mamma. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electric +pad." + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in the +invariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by the +ribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock. + +"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her." + +The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's groping +along the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner. + +"Mamma--you haven't--?" + +"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma is +very happy about." + +"Mamma, you've broken your promise again." + +"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?" + +"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--" + +"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamed +Heyman." + +"Mamma, I don't understand." + +"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. But +everything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leaf +that everything is going to be happiness in this family." + +"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that." + +"Alma, look at me." + +"Mamma, you--you frighten me." + +"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?" + +"Why, yes, mamma. Very much." + +"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?" + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying around +loose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himself +up from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire." + +"Mamma?" + +"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close. +He asked me to-night." + +"What?" + +"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have." + +"Seen what?" + +"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as +grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and +he--asked me to-night." + +There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared +there by a hand. + +"Asked you what?" + +"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I +buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, +steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face." + +"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?" + +"Alma?" + +There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and +Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face +stiff with the clench of her mouth. + +"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!" + +A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that +she slanted backward, holding her throat. + +"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own child +against me!" + +"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody." + +"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when +a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my +thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted +him." + +"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like +that!" + +Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little +scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and +stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she +stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash. + +"Alma!" + +It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her +coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice. + +"You can't marry Louis Latz." + +"Can't I? Watch me." + +"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!" + +"Do what?" + +"That!" + +Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an +agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold. + +"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my +own child!" + +"Oh--mamma--!" + +"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and +Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what +happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want +happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter will +see to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me out +something--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help +myself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor's +orders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out something +terrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his +prescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself." + +She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery +with them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her own +face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother +into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there. + +"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. I +blame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I know +your fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize. +Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you're +cured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, +you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!" + +"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enough +to travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel. +Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through this +last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the +neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--" + +"Mamma, don't talk like that!" + +"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this big +hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--" + +"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves a +sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--" + +"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they +will never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one to +humiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way +he did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help me +God if I ever give in to--it again." + +"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often, +only to break your promise." + +"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't been +tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--" + +"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frightening +part. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That's +what's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it these +last months. Just from--desire." + +Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands. + +"O God! My own child against me!" + +"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet and +good you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together and +win! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you've +been nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of you +and--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment of +our own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take up +stenography or social ser--" + +"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. A +young man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't let +him come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, I +know--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what I +am, and mine, too!" + +Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks. + +"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well." + +"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up +when he--" + +"Mamma, how can you?" + +"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--" + +"No!" + +"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for +mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The +minute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, +fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me +would hold me back? See, Alma?" + +"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--" + +"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. +Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak +woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you +away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!" + +"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you." + +"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get +rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it +himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'" + +"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!" + +"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a little +while that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a good +man! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night he +wants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!" + +"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so little +as I do--now." + +"You've said that before--and before." + +"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a new +life. I know it. I'm cured!" + +"Mamma, if I thought you meant it." + +"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case of +neuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad. +I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right." + +"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'd +rather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live to +learn such a--thing about me." + +"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hope +you're cured now, but--" + +"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! You +don't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until I +kill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to Louis +Latz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don't +tell--don't tell!" + +"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you. +Never." + +"Say it again." + +"Never." + +"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. But +it's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured." + +There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke of +her tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling she +could no longer control racing through her like a chill. + +"Oh--how--I hope so!" + +"I know so." + +"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year." + +"No! No!" + +"A few months." + +"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma's +cured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep my +promises to you! Cured, Alma, cured." + +And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to +herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to +her mother that night was the long one of felicitation. + +And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of woman +to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad +under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, +these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night. + +"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that +marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from +his mother." + +"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again." + +"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideas +of a good man." + +"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever." + +"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn +now, Alma, to be care free like other girls." + +"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me." + +"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'" + +"I'll never leave you!" + +"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won't +stand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm not +alone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chance +to--pop--" + +"Shh--sh--h--h!" + +"Don't tremble so, darling. Mamma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer last +night when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for the +Convalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white, +because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag." + +"Oh, mamma!" + +"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyes +off you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the same +thing about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have to +hold him off any more." + +"I'll never leave you. Never!" + +Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in the +dark with the secret of her blushes. + +Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raging +head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with +cruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises that +can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator +depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A +train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak +which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By +three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and +her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay +of he cheek. + +Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest, +floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was very +drowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back as +she said: + +"Mamma, you all right?" + +Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathing +resumed its light cadence. + +Then at four o'clock the kind of nervousness that Mrs. Samstag had +learned to fear began to roll over her in waves, locking her throat and +curling her toes and fingers and her tongue up dry against the roof of +her mouth. + +She must concentrate now--must steer her mind away from the craving! + +Now then: West End Avenue. Louis liked the apartments there. Luxurious. +Quiet. Residential. Circassian walnut or mahogany dining room? Alma +should decide. A baby-grand piano. Later to be Alma's engagement gift +from "mamma and--papa." No, "mamma and Louis." Better so. + +How her neck and her shoulder blade and now her elbow were flaming with +the pain. She cried a little, quite silently, and tried a poor, futile +scheme for easing her head in the crotch of her elbow. + +Now then: She must knit Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater stitch +would do. Married in a traveling suit. One of those smart dark-blue +twills like Mrs. Gronauer, junior's. Topcoat--sable. Louis' hair +thinning. Tonic. O God! let me sleep! Please, God! The wheeze rising in +her closed throat. That little threatening desire that must not shape +itself! It darted with the hither and thither of a bee bumbling against +a garden wall. No! No! Ugh! the vast chills of nervousness. The flaming, +the craving chills of desire! + +Just this last giving-in. This one. To be rested and fresh for him +to-morrow. Then never again. The little beaded hand bag. O God! help me! +That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousand +thousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated. +They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in her +head; the crackle of lightning down that arm-- + +"Let me see--Circassian walnut--baby grand--" The pores demanding, +crying--shrieking-- + +It was then that Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink nightdress a +crone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began by +infinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed, +unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning born of +travail. + +It was actually a matter of fifteen minutes, that breathless swing +toward the floor, the mattress rising after her with scarcely a whisper +and her two bare feet landing patly into the pale-blue room slippers, +there beside the bed. + +Then her bag, the beaded one on the end of the divan. The slow, taut +feeling for it and the floor that creaked twice, starting the sweat out +over her. + +It was finally after more tortuous saving of floor creaks and the +interminable opening and closing of a door that Carrie Samstag, the +beaded bag in her hand, found herself face to face with herself in the +mirror of the bathroom medicine chest. + +She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and little +glass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, +pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm +perch, as it were. + +There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm. +Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! little +graves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one more +little grave-- + +And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma. +No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin. +Here, this little clean and white area. + +"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No! +No! + +Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gaping +and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her +back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the +conflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in her +ears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain. + +Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hair +spread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. The +remaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could never +find the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of her +sweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faint +perfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out. +Out and in. Toward morning she slept. Actually, sweetly, and deeply, as +if she could never have done with deep draughts of it. + +She awoke to the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into their +apartment for about eight minutes of each forenoon. + +Alma was at the pretty chore of lifting the trays from a hamper of +roses. She placed a shower of them on her mother's coverlet with a kiss, +a deeper and dearer one, somehow, this morning. + +There was a card, and Mrs. Samstag read it and laughed: + + Good morning, Carrie. + Louis. + +They seemed to her, poor dear, these roses, to be pink with the glory of +the coming of the dawn. + + * * * * * + +On the spur of the moment and because the same precipitate decision that +determined Louis Latz's successes in Wall Street determined him here, +they were married the following Thursday in Lakewood, New Jersey, +without even allowing Carrie time for the blue-twill traveling suit. She +wore her brown-velvet, instead, looking quite modish, a sable wrap, gift +of the groom, lending genuine magnificence. + +Alma was there, of course, in a beautiful fox scarf, also gift of the +groom, and locked in a pale kind of tensity that made her seem more +than ever like a little white flower to Leo Friedlander, the sole other +attendant, and who during the ceremony yearned at her with his gaze. But +her eyes were squeezed tight against his, as if to forbid herself the +consciousness that life seemed suddenly so richly sweet to her--oh, so +richly sweet! + + * * * * * + +There was a time during the first months of the married life of Louis +and Carrie Latz when it seemed to Alma, who in the sanctity of her +lovely little ivory bedroom all appointed in rose enamel toilet trifles, +could be prayerful with the peace of it, that the old Carrie, who could +come pale and terrible out of her drugged nights, belonged to some +grimacing and chimeric past. A dead past that had buried its dead and +its hatchet. + +There had been a month at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart of +Virginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right to +the privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips, +and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packing +her off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or a +drive over piny roads, he could still smile and pinch her cheek. + +"You're stingy to me with my wife, Alma," he said to her upon one of +these provocations. "I don't believe she's got a daughter at all, but a +little policeman instead." + +And Alma smiled back, out of the agony of her constant consciousness +that she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so that +her fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit down +her sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, but +still politely held in check, bewilderment. + +Once, these first weeks of their marriage, because she saw the dreaded +signal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the little +quivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence for +a day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from the +hotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of her +mother's darkened room and was adamant. + +"It won't hurt if I tiptoe in and sit with her," he pleaded. + +"No, Louis. No one knows how to get her through these spells like I do. +The least excitement will only prolong her pain." + +He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to his +resentment that was bantam and just a little fighty. + +That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep and +watching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a stricken +dog in them. + +"Alma," she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over. +One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?" + +Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. A +lamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, but +at rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep: + +"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma. +Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma." + +And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. The +happily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of the +well-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special body +that was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery with +mother-of-pearl caparisons. The fourteen-room apartment on West End +Avenue with four baths, drawing-room of pink-brocaded walls, and +Carrie's Roman bathroom that was precisely as large as her old hotel +sitting room, with two full-length wall mirrors, a dressing table +canopied in white lace over white satin, and the marble bath itself, two +steps down and with rubber curtains that swished after. + +There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things with +what must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, would +fall asleep almost directly after dinner, her head back against her +husband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up with +matching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings. +Shopping for a strip of pantry linoleum that was just the desired slate +color. Calculating with electricians over the plugs for floor lamps. +Herself edging pantry shelves in cotton lace. + +Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray, +back against his shoulder, and with his newspapers, Wall Street journals +and the comic weeklies which he liked to read, would sit an entire +evening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, his pipe smoke +carefully directed away from her face. + +Weeks and weeks of this, and already Louis Latz's trousers were a little +out of crease, and Mrs. Latz, after eight o'clock and under cover of a +very fluffy and very expensive negligée, would unhook her stays. + +Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after the +second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night +musical-comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to +remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as +many as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband's +shoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with him +in the great white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed. + +And Alma. Almost she tiptoed through these months. Not that her +scorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis' mind ever +diminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see the +displeasure mount in his face. + +If she entered in on a tête-à -tête, as she did once, when by chance she +had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a +room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that +night to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed. + +Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip and +week-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious. + +"Want to join us, Alma?" + +"Oh--yes--thank you, Louis." + +"But I thought you and Leo were--" + +"No, no. I'd rather go with you and mamma, Louis." + +Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation, +politely uttered, had said so plainly, "Are we two never to be alone, +your mother and I?" + +Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all the +delayed fervor of first youth. + +There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of her +mother that made Alma want to cry. + +He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but at +the wonder that she was his. + +"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie," he told her +once in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little mother +there couldn't ever be another--and now you!" + +At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up, +her eyes dewy. + +"And I felt that way about one good husband," she said, "and now I see +there could be two." + +Alma tiptoed out. + +The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his two +evenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan car +which Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauve +drawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in their +friends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving the +young people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight. +Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back, +and the curving voice of innuendo. + +"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!" + +"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feign +that she did not understand. + +"Loo, don't tease," said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes as +if to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass. + +But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on the +edge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine, +pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke cold +drubbings with Turkish towels. + +And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelings +for nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to the +patent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like a +polished floor. + +In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man, +too." He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturing +business--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his advent +from high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almost +doubled its volume of business. + +The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even to +himself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitality +to match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her may +have heightened his sense of prowess. + +His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid loveliness. "White +honeysuckle," he called her, and the names of all the beautiful white +flowers he knew. And then one night, to the rattle of poker chips from +the remote dining room, he jerked her to him without preamble, kissing +her mouth down tightly against her teeth. + +"My sweetheart! My little white carnation sweetheart! I won't be held +off any longer. I'm going to carry you away for my little moonflower +wife." + +She sprang back prettier than he had ever seen her in the dishevelment +from where his embrace had dragged at her hair. + +"You mustn't," she cried, but there was enough of the conquering male in +him to read easily into this a mere plating over her desire. + +"You can't hold me at arm's length any longer. You've maddened me for +months. I love you. You love me. You do. You do," and crushed her to +him, but this time his pain and his surprise genuine as she sprang back, +quivering. + +"No, I tell you. No! No! No!" and sat down trembling. + +"Why, Alma!" And he sat down, too, rather palely, at the remote end of +the divan. + +"You--I--mustn't!" she said, frantic to keep her lips from twisting, her +little lacy fribble of a handkerchief a mere string from winding. + +"Mustn't what?" + +"Mustn't," was all she could repeat and not weep her words. + +"Won't--I--do?" + +"It's--mamma." + +"What?" + +"Her." + +"Her what, my little white buttonhole carnation?" + +"You see--I--She's all alone." + +"You adorable, she's got a brand-new husky husband." + +"No--you don't--understand." + +Then, on a thunderclap of inspiration, hitting his knee: + +"I have it. Mamma-baby! That's it. My girlie is a cry-baby, mamma-baby!" +And made to slide along the divan toward her, but up flew her two small +hands, like fans. + +"No," she said, with the little bang back in her voice which steadied +him again. "I mustn't! You see, we're so close. Sometimes it's more as +if I were the mother and she my little girl." + +"Alma, that's beautiful, but it's silly, too. But tell me first of all, +mamma-baby, that you do care. Tell me that first, dearest, and then we +can talk." + +The kerchief was all screwed up now, so tightly that it could stiffly +unwind of itself. + +"She's not well, Leo. That terrible neuralgia--that's why she needs me +so." + +"Nonsense! She hasn't had a spell for weeks. That's Louis' great brag, +that he's curing her. Oh, Alma, Alma, that's not a reason; that's an +excuse!" + +"Leo--you don't understand." + +"I'm afraid I--don't," he said, looking at her with a sudden intensity +that startled her with a quick suspicion of his suspicions, but then he +smiled. + +"Alma!" he said, "Alma!" + +Misery made her dumb. + +"Why, don't you know, dear, that your mother is better able to take care +of herself than you are? She's bigger and stronger. You--you're a little +white flower, that I want to wear on my heart." + +"Leo--give me time. Let me think." + +"A thousand thinks, Alma, but I love you. I love you and want so +terribly for you to love me back." + +"I--do." + +"Then tell me with kisses." + +Again she pressed him to arm's length. + +"Please, Leo! Not yet. Let me think. Just one day. To-morrow." + +"No, no! Now!" + +"To-morrow." + +"When?" + +"Evening." + +"No, morning." + +"All right, Leo--to-morrow morning--" + +"I'll sit up all night and count every second in every minute and every +minute in every hour." + +She put up her soft little fingers to his lips. + +"Dear boy," she said. + +And then they kissed, and after a little swoon to his nearness she +struggled like a caught bird and a guilty one. + +"Please go, Leo," she said. "Leave me alone--" + +"Little mamma-baby sweetheart," he said. "I'll build you a nest right +next to hers. Good night, little white flower. I'll be waiting, and +remember, counting every second of every minute and every minute of +every hour." + +For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pink +divan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer for +the prayers that she sent up. + + * * * * * + +At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, and +with such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet, +Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire horses, sprang out of +sleep. + +It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white-tiled +Roman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneath +her eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-length +mirrors--snickering. + +There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right forearm. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes in the weeks that followed a sense of the miracle of what was +happening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear. + +Louis did not know. + +That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes. +Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent, +were taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one who +had worked such wonders on his mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs, +reassuringly foremost in his mind. + +But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four-hour +sieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned, with a +male's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and, +with no great understanding of pain, to condone. + +And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there was +something pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal for +his well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace his +shoes and even shine them--would have, in fact, except for his fierce +catching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching as +he kissed her. + +Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and, +kissing them piece by piece, put them back again, and he found her so, +and they cried together, he of happiness. + +In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to grow +but slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him rather +fiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almost +rudely, but, at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from the +darkened room, backed out shamefacedly, and apologized next day in the +conciliatory language of a tiny wrist watch. + +But a break came, as she knew and feared it must. + +One evening during one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie had +not appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal was +almost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her mother's place +opposite her stepfather. + +He had reached the stage when that little unconscious usurpation in +itself could annoy him. + +"How's your mother?" he asked, dourly for him. + +"She's asleep." + +"Funny. This is the third attack this month, and each time it lasts +longer. Confound that neuralgia!" + +"She's easier now." + +He pushed back his plate. + +"Then I'll go in and sit with her while she sleeps." + +She, who was so fastidiously dainty of manner, half rose, spilling her +soup. + +"No," she said, "you mustn't! Not now!" And sat down again hurriedly, +wanting not to appear perturbed. + +A curious thing happened then to Louis. His lower lip came pursing +out like a little shelf and a hitherto unsuspected look of pigginess +fattened over his rather plump face. + +"You quit butting into me and my wife's affairs, you, or get the hell +out of here," he said, without raising his voice or his manner. + +She placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart. + +"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!" + +"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you! +There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between me +and her or--get out." + +"I--She's sick." + +"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knows +why, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind. +Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're married +to keep us apart. Shame!" + +"I--She--" + +"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you out +long ago. Haven't you got any pride?" + +"I have. I have," she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up there +and swooned her humiliation. + +"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are! +Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is it +you want?" + +"Louis--I don't--" + +"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don't +come to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever is +eating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that ever +lived. Shame! Shame!" + +"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony, +"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous trying +to pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That's +all, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why, +Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn't +she dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been the +best friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis." + +He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon going +into the room. + +"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped open +his newspaper for a lonely evening. + +The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the +dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish +and more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets. + +The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back +in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more +and more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs. + +Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeur +of collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage. + +"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's hearing, of course. "Who's +running this shebang, anyway?" + +Again, after Alma had guarded her well for days, scarcely leaving her +side, Carrie laughed sardonically up into her daughter's face, her eyes +as glassy and without swimming fluid as a doll's. + +"I get it! But wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma's +horror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hour +the sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on her face. + +One night in what had become the horrible sanctity of that +bedchamber--But let this sum it up. When Alma was nineteen years old a +little colony of gray hairs was creeping in on each temple. + +And then one day, after a long period of quiet, when Carrie had lavished +her really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, +spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery, +somehow to express her grateful adoration of her, paying her husband the +secret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, +Alma, returning from a trip taken reluctantly and at her mother's +bidding down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modish +black-lace hat and the sable coat missing from the closet. + +It was early afternoon, sunlit and pleasantly cold. + +The first rush of panic and the impulse to dash after stayed, she forced +herself down into a chair, striving with the utmost difficulty for +coherence of procedure. + +Where in the half hour of her absence had her mother gone? Matinée? +Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen, +neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With a +hand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Car +and chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more than +one occasion, had lately been obliged to remind her mother that she +was becoming careless of the old pointedly rosy hands. Manicurist? She +telephoned the Bon Ton Beauty Parlors. No. Where? O God! Where? Which +way to begin? That was what troubled her most. To start right so as not +to lose a precious second. + +Suddenly, and for no particular reason, Alma began a hurried search +through her mother's dresser drawers of lovely personal appointments. +Turning over whole mounds of fresh white gloves, delving into nests of +sheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while she +stood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed about +her throat. + +"Please, God, where?" + +A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from the +sheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of the +gold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read. + +It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equipped +narcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medically +administer to the pathological cravings of addicts. + +Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and, +with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run. + +At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat and +the black-lace hat, coming toward her. + +Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought better +of it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able to +slow down to a casual walk. + +Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of her +attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy, +stares followed her. + +Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say a +brief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill of +lading. He hesitated, laughed, and went on. + +Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with a sense of being +followed, because constantly as she walked she jerked a step, to look +back, and then again, over her shoulder. + +A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of a +woman without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's basted +waistcoats, evidently for home work in some tenement. She looked and +muttered her un-understanding at whatever Carrie had to say, and +shambled on. + +Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or any +particular recognition. + +"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? I mean Alma." + +"Mamma, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had this +appointment? Come, dear." + +"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis! I was fooling. +I went up to him in the clinic" (snicker) "and I said to him, 'Give you +five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' That's all I said to him, +or any of them. He's in a white carnation, Louis. You can find him by +the--it on his coat lapel. He's coming! Quick--" + +"Mamma, there's no one following. Wait, I'll call a taxi!" + +"No, you don't! He tried to put me in a taxi, too. No, you don't!" + +"Then the Subway, dearest. You'll sit quietly beside Alma in the Subway, +won't you, Carrie? Alma's so tired." + +Suddenly Carrie began to whimper. + +"My baby! Don't let her see me. My baby! What am I good for? I've ruined +her life. My precious sweetheart's life. I hit her once--Louis--in the +mouth. It bled. God won't forgive me for that." + +"Yes, He will, dear, if you come." + +"It bled. Alma, tell him in the white carnation that mamma lost +her doctor's certificate. That's all I said to him. Saw him in the +clinic--new clinic--'give you five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' +He had a white carnation--right lapel. Stingy. Quick!--following!" + +"Sweetheart, please, there's no one coming." + +"Don't tell! Oh, Alma darling--mamma's ruined your life! Her sweetheart +baby's life." + +"No, darling, you haven't. She loves you if you'll come home with her, +dear, to bed, before Louis gets home and--" + +"No. No. He mustn't see. Never this bad--was I, darling? Oh! Oh!" + +"No, mamma--never--this bad. That's why we must hurry." + +"Best man that ever lived. Best baby. Ruin. Ruin." + +"Mamma, you--you're making Alma tremble so that she can scarcely walk if +you drag her so. There's no one following, dear. I won't let anyone harm +you. Please, sweetheart--a taxicab." + +"No. I tell you he's following. He tried to put me into a taxicab. +Followed me. Said he knew me." + +"Then, mamma, listen. Do you hear? Alma wants you to listen. If you +don't--she'll faint. People are looking. Now I want you to turn square +around and look. No, look again. You see now, there's no one following. +Now I want you to cross the street over there to the Subway. Just with +Alma who loves you. There's nobody following. Just with Alma who loves +you." + +And then Carrie, whose lace hat was quite on the back of her head, +relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic of +trucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, her daughter could wind +their way. + +"My baby! My poor Louis!" she kept saying. "The worst I've ever been. +Oh--Alma--Louis--waiting--before we get there--Louis!" + +It was in the tightest tangle of the crossing and apparently on this +conjuring of her husband that Carrie jerked suddenly free of Alma's +frailer hold. + +"No--no--not home--now. Him. Alma!" And darted back against the breast +of the down side of the traffic. + +There was scarcely more than the quick rotation of her arm around with +the spoke of a truck wheel, so quickly she went down. + +It was almost a miracle, her kind of death, because out of all that jam +of tonnage she carried only one bruise, a faint one, near the brow. + +And the wonder was that Louis Latz, in his grief, was so proud. + +"To think," he kept saying over and over again and unabashed at the way +his face twisted--"to think they should have happened to me. Two such +women in one lifetime as my little mother--and her. Fat little old Louis +to have had those two. Why, just the memory of my Carrie--is almost +enough. To think old me should have a memory like that--it is almost +enough--isn't it, Alma?" + +She kissed his hand. + +That very same, that dreadful night, almost without her knowing it, +her throat-tearing sobs broke loose, her face to the waistcoat of Leo +Friedlander. + +He held her close--very, very close. "Why, sweetheart," he said, "I +could cut out my heart to help you! Why, sweetheart! Shh-h-h! Remember +what Louis says. Just the beautiful memory--of--her--is--wonderful--" + +"Just--the b-beautiful--memory--you'll always have it, too--of her--my +mamma--won't you, Leo? Won't you?" + +"Always," he said when the tight grip in his throat had eased enough. + +"Say--it again--Leo." + +"Always." + +She could not know how dear she became to him then, because not ten +minutes before, from the very lapel against which her cheek lay pressed, +he had unpinned a white carnation. + + + + +BACK PAY + + +I set out to write a love story, and for the purpose sharpened a +bright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end. + +Something sweet. Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all the +bitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, if +need be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud, +and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects where +they wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the world +told newly. No wear out to it. Editors know. It's as staple as eggs +or printed lawn or ipecac. The good old-fashioned love story with the +above-mentioned miss, kiss, and, if need be for the sake of timeliness, +the bit of khaki, pressed. + +Just my luck that, with one of these modish tales at the tip of my pink +pencil, Hester Bevins should come pounding and clamoring at the door of +my mental reservation, quite drowning out the rather high, the lipsy, +and, if I do say it myself, distinctly musical patter of Arline. That +was to have been her name. Arline Kildane. Sweet, don't you think, and +with just a bit of wild Irish rose in it? + +But Hester Bevins would not let herself be gainsaid, sobbing a little, +elbowing her way through the group of mental unborns, and leaving me to +blow my pitch pipe for a minor key. + +Not that Hester's isn't one of the oldest stories in the world, too. No +matter how newly told, she is as old as sin, and sin is but a few weeks +younger than love--and how often the two are interchangeable! + +If it be a fact that the true lady is, in theory, either a virgin or +a lawful wife, then Hester Bevins stands immediately convicted on two +charges. + +She was neither. The most that can be said for her is that she was +honestly what she was. + +"If the wages of sin is death," she said to a roadhouse party of +roysterers one dawn, "then I've quite a bit of back pay coming to me." +And joined in the shout that rose off the table. + +I can sketch her in for you rather simply because of the hackneyed +lines of her very, very old story. Whose pasts so quickly mold and +disintegrate as those of women of Hester's stripe? Their yesterdays are +entirely soluble in the easy waters of their to-days. + +For the first seventeen years of her life she lived in what we might +call Any American Town of, say, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. +Her particular one was in Ohio. Demopolis, I think. One of those +change-engine-and-take-on-water stops with a stucco art-nouveau station, +a roof drooping all round it, as if it needed to be shaved off like +edges of a pie, and the name of the town writ in conch shells on a +green slant of terrace. You know--the kind that first establishes a +ten-o'clock curfew for its young, its dance halls and motion-picture +theaters, and then sends in a hurry call for a social-service expert +from one of the large Eastern cities to come and diagnose its malignant +vice undergrowth. + +Hester Bevins, of a mother who died bearing her and one of those +disappearing fathers who can speed away after the accident without even +stopping to pick up the child or leave a license number, was reared--no, +grew up, is better--in the home of an aunt. A blond aunt with many gold +teeth and many pink and blue wrappers. + +Whatever Hester knew of the kind of home that fostered her, it left +apparently no welt across her sensibilities. It was a rather poor house, +an unpainted frame in a poor street, but there was never a lack of +gayety or, for that matter, any pinching lack of funds. It was an actual +fact that, at thirteen, cotton or lisle stockings brought out a +little irritated rash on Hester's slim young legs, and she wore silk. +Abominations, it is true, at three pair for a dollar, that sprang runs +and would not hold a darn, but, just the same, they were silk. There was +an air of easy _camaraderie_ and easy money about that house. It was +not unusual for her to come home from school at high noon and find a +front-room group of one, two, three, or four guests, almost invariably +men. Frequently these guests handed her out as much as half a dollar +for candy money, and not another child in school reckoned in more than +pennies. + +Once a guest, for reasons of odd change, I suppose, handed her out +thirteen cents. Outraged, at the meanness of the sum, and with an early +and deep-dyed superstition of thirteen, she dashed the coins out of his +hand and to the four corners of the room, escaping in the guffaw of +laughter that went up. + +Often her childish sleep in a small top room with slanting sides would +be broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never by +word, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any of +its sordid significance. + +Literally, Hester Bevins was left to feather her own nest. There were +no demands made upon her. Once, in the little atrocious front parlor of +horsehair and chromo, one of the guests, the town baggage-master, to +be exact, made to embrace her, receiving from the left rear a sounding +smack across cheek and ear from the aunt. + +"Cut that! Hester, go out and play! Whatever she's got to learn from +life, she can't say she learned it in my house." + +There were even two years of high school, and at sixteen, when she went, +at her own volition, to clerk in Finley's two-story department store on +High Street, she was still innocent, although she and Gerald Fishback +were openly sweethearts. + +Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but if +ever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald was +in his image. A wide streak of the Scandinavian ran through his make-up, +although he had been born in Middletown, and from there had come +recently to the Finley Dry Goods Company as an accountant. + +He was so the viking in his bigness that once, on a picnic, he had +carried two girls, screaming their fun, across twenty feet of stream. +Hester was one of them. + +It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then +seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler +rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little +gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway +stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore +a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent +silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with points +to them. + +They were in the very heart of Wallach's Grove, under a natural +cathedral of trees, the noises of the revelers and the small explosions +of soda-water and beer bottles almost remote enough for perfect quiet. +He was stretched his full and splendid length at the picknickers' +immemorial business of plucking and sucking grass blades, and she seated +very trimly, her little blue-serge skirt crawling up ever so slightly to +reveal the silken ankle, on a rock beside him. + +"Tickle-tickle!" she cried, with some of that irrepressible animal +spirit of hers, and leaning to brush his ear with a twig. + +He caught at her hand. + +"Hester," he said, "marry me." + +She felt a foaming through her until her finger tips sang. + +"Well, I like that!" was what she said, though, and flung up a pointed +profile that was like that same gazelle's smelling the moon. + +He was very darkly red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about the +waist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling her +fingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But she did not. + +"You're too poor," she said. + +He sat back without speaking for a long minute. + +"Money isn't everything," he said, finally, and with something gone from +his voice. + +"I know," she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen to +want it more than anything else in the world." + +"Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, I +want it, too, more than anything else in the world." + +"There's no future in bookkeeping." + +"I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man. +Hester? Dear?" + +"A week?" + +"Why, of course not, dear--a month!" + +"Faugh!" she said, still looking off. + +He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again. + +"Hester," he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, the +most maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world! +You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--your +environment and your dangerousness, if you don't settle down--quick, +with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you. +That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you. +I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you the +bigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?" + +She would not let her hand relax to his. + +"I hate this town," she said. + +"There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there." + +"Faugh!" + +"Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis." + +"No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even little +metropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spenders +and mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, and +machine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!" + +"And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester. +You're beautiful." + +"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've +got a pink-crêpe-de-Chine soul. Pink crêpe de Chine--you hear?" + +He sat back on his heels. + +"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that +salesman from New York?" + +"Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High +Street, evenings!" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?" + +"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?" + +"Well, of all the nerve!" + +But it was. + + * * * * * + +The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped +soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the +story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or +whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer. + +Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic, +manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel +of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island, +vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but +of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations. + +You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was an +apartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated on +the windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type from +the pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine, +mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, to +the pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with a +small mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded with +paper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom with +a sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales, +and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles, +sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negro +maid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a private +telephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb that +turned on automatically to the opening of the door. + +There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponent +of that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker," a roll of money in +his pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in for +light checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across his +waistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in a +large corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent and +expensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters; +wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public, +white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-year +scale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and three +children, and, like all men of his code, his ethics were strictly double +decked. He would not permit his nineteen-year-old daughter Marion so +much as a shopping tour to the city without the chaperonage of her +mother or a friend, forbade in his wife, a comely enough woman with a +white unmarcelled coiffure and upper arms a bit baggy with withering +flesh, even the slightest of shirtwaist V's unless filled in with +net, and kept up, at an expense of no less than fifteen thousand a +year--thirty the war year that tractors jumped into the war-industry +class--the very high-priced, -tempered, -handed, and -stepping Hester of +wild-gazelle charm. + +Not that Hester stepped much. There were a long underslung roadster +and a great tan limousine with yellow-silk curtains at the call of her +private telephone. + +The Wheeler family used, not without complaint, a large open car of very +early vintage, which in winter was shut in with flapping curtains with +isinglass peepers, and leaked cold air badly. + +On more than one occasion they passed on the road--these cars. The +long tan limousine with the shock absorbers, foot warmers, two brown +Pomeranian dogs, little case of enamel-top bottles, fresh flowers, and +outside this little jewel-case interior, smartly exposed, so that the +blast hit him from all sides, a chauffeur in uniform that harmonized +nicely with the tans and yellows. And then the grotesque caravan of the +Azoic motor age, with its flapping curtains and ununiformed youth in +visored cap at the wheel. + +There is undoubtedly an unsavory aspect to this story. For purpose of +fiction, it is neither fragrant nor easily digested. But it is not so +unsavory as the social scheme which made it possible for those two cars +to pass thus on the road, and, at the same time, Charles G. Wheeler to +remain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations, +and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on the +left side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plate +at the end of a front pew. + +No one but God and Mrs. Wheeler knew what was in her heart. It is +possible that she did not know what the world knew, but hardly. That she +endured it is not admirable, but then there were the three children, +and, besides, she lived in a world that let it go at that. And so she +continued to hold up her head in her rather poor, mute way, rode beside +her husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement of +their son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little in +private, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul. + +But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but it +was Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told. + +As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. There +was no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, as +the corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. The +white-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers of +her masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray, +and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, was +unfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and, +of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out more +than ever. + +As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more than +once without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before her +face like an overtone; it was an invisible caul. The wells of her eyes +were muddy with it. + +But withal, she commanded something of a manner, even from Wheeler. He +had no key to the apartment. He never entered her room without knocking. +There were certain of his friends she would not tolerate, from one or +another aversion, to be party to their not infrequent carousals. Men +did not always rise from their chairs when she entered a room, but she +suffered few liberties from them. She was absolutely indomitable in her +demands. + +"Lord!" ventured Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, +lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in +orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, +pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these +Yvette bills pretty steep? + + "One midnight-blue-and-silver gown . . . . . . . . . $485.00 + One blue-and-silver head bandeau . . . . . . . . . . 50.00 + One serge-and-satin trotteur gown . . . . . . . . . 275.00 + One ciel-blue tea gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280.00 + +"Is that the cheapest you can drink tea? Whew!" + +She put down her coffee cup, which she usually held with one little +finger poised elegantly outward as if for flight. + +"You've got a nerve!" she said, rising and pushing back her chair. "Over +whose ticker are you getting quotations that I come cheap?" + +He was immediately conciliatory, rising also to enfold her in an embrace +that easily held her slightness. + +"Go on," he said. "You could work me for the Woolworth Building in +diamonds if you wanted it badly enough." + +"Funny way of showing it! I may be a lot of things, Wheeler, but I'm not +cheap. You're darn lucky that the war is on and I'm not asking for a +French car." + +He crushed his lips to hers. + +"You devil!" he said. + +There were frequent parties. Dancing at Broadway cabarets, all-night joy +rides, punctuated with road-house stop-overs, and not infrequently, in +groups of three or four couples, ten-day pilgrimages to showy American +spas. + +"Getting boiled out," they called it. It was part of Hester's scheme for +keeping her sveltness. + +Her friendships were necessarily rather confined to a definite +circle--within her own apartment house, in fact. On the floor above, +also in large, bright rooms of high rental, and so that they were +exchanging visits frequently during the day, often _en déshabillé_, +using the stairway that wound up round the elevator shaft, lived a +certain Mrs. Kitty Drew, I believe she called herself. She was plump and +blond, and so very scented that her aroma lay on a hallway for an hour +after she had scurried through it. She was well known and chiefly +distinguished by a large court-plaster crescent which she wore on her +left shoulder blade. She enjoyed the bounty of a Wall Street broker +who for one day had attained the conspicuousness of cornering the egg +market. + +There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, half +French, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester were +intimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usually +lazy and lacy with negligée, lounging about on the mounds of lingerie +pillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always the +headache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of: +"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about a +dark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails last +night," through their conversation. + +KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day." + +HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring." + +KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks." + +HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!" + +KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball." + +HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat." + +There were the two years of high school, you see. + +"Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him he +could not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not." + +"Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town." + +"Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner of +Forty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth." + +"Demopolis, Ohio." + +"What is that--a skin disease?" + +"My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt. +Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of this +stiffness out of my joints." + +"Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babe +can always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let's +motor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks about +ready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left little +toe. You on?" + +"I am, if he is." + +"If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in his +nose if you wanted it." + +And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-season +evening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into the +solid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled, +veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers, +and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar, +furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows, +robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourteen wardrobe trunks sent by express. + +They took the "cure." Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at the +casino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for the +smarter European idea, with a special _à la carte_ menu for each meal. +Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates of +the "cure," appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on were +reported by the more conservative hotel guests, and the privacy of their +circle was allowed full integrity by the little veranda groups of gouty +ladies or middle-aged husbands with liver spots on their faces. The bath +attendants reveled in the largest tips of the season. When Hester walked +down the large dining room evenings, she was a signal for the craning of +necks for the newest shock of her newest extreme toilette. The kinds of +toilettes that shocked the women into envy and mental notes of how the +underarm was cut, and the men into covert delight. Wheeler liked to sit +back and put her through her paces like a high-strung filly. + +"Make 'em sit up, girl! You got them all looking like dimes around +here." + +One night she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown so +daringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegant +thing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter of +dishes pausing. + +There was a gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over one +shoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied with +it as she walked. + +"Take it from me," said Kitty, who felt fat in lavender that night, +"she's going it one too strong." + +Another evening she descended, always last, in a cloth of silver with a +tiny, an absurd, an impeccably tight silver turban dipped down over one +eye, and absolutely devoid of jewels except the pear-shaped diamond on +her left forefinger. + +They were a noisy, a spending, a cosmopolitan crowd of too-well-fed men +and too-well-groomed women, ignored by the veranda groups of wives and +mothers, openly dazzling and arousing a tremendous curiosity in the +younger set, and quite obviously sought after by their own kind. + +But Hester's world, too, is all run through with sharply defined social +schisms. + +"I wish that Irwin woman wouldn't always hang round our crowd," she +said, one morning, as she and Kitty lay side by side in the cooling room +after their baths, massages, manicures, and shampoos. "I don't want to +be seen running with her." + +"Did you see the square emerald she wore last night?" + +"Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made up +for her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybody +standing back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes to +Tessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap." + +Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and her +little mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow. + +"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard as +nails." + +"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones who +aren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've got +to play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as well +have the game." + +"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one more +wife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if I +had to play it on a South Dakota farm." + +"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in a +copy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything is +worth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin. +I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stock +of myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her arms +in a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There's +not been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd have +married me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow, +too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future to +ladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was a +pretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been pretty +lucky in the long run, I guess." + +"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette +in the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you a +piece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair? +I've been married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven't +you ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walked +into the room?" + +"Once." + +"Once what?" + +"I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I always +think to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes under +heaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs." + +"Thanks, dearie." + +"I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're out +here. Poor old Gerald Fishback!" + +"Sweet name--'Fishback.' No wonder you went wrong, dearie." + +"Oh, I'm not getting soft. I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft and +comfy, and I'm lying on it without a whimper." + +"You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy! You've the right +idea; I have to hand that to you. You command respect from them. Lord! +Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not. But, with me, it pays. The +last one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle." + +"Wouldn't wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond." + +"Superstitious, dearie?" + +"Unlucky. Never knew it to fail." + +"Not a superstition in my bones. I don't believe in walking under +ladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down with +thirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you! Thought you'd have +the hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day out +at the races." + +"Br-r-r! I hated it." + +"Lay easy, dearie. Nothing can touch you the way he's raking in the war +contracts." + +"Great--isn't it?" + +"Play for a country home, dearie. I always say real estate and jewelry +are something in the hand. Look ahead in this game, I always say." + +"You just bet I've looked ahead." + +"So have I, but not enough." + +"Somehow, I never feel afraid. I could get a job to-morrow if I had to." + +"Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there's +not a chorus I couldn't land back in." + +"I worked once, you know, in Lichtig's import shop." + +"Fifth Avenue?" + +"Yes. It was in between the salesman and Al. I sold two thousand five +hundred dollars' worth of gowns the first week." + +"Sure enough?" + +"'Girl,' old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit--'girl,' he said, 'if +ever you need this job again, comeback; it's waiting.'" + +"Fine chance!" + +"I've got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minute +in the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work. I paid for +that suit with my first month's savings. A little dark-blue Norfolk, +Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty." + +"Were they giving them away with a pound of tea?" + +"Honest, Kitty, it was neat. Little white shirt waist, tan shoes, and +one of those slick little five-dollar sailors, and every cent paid out +of my salary. I could step into that outfit to-morrow, look the part, +and land back that job or any other. I had a way with the trade, even +back at Finley's." + +"Here, hold my jewel bag, honey; I'm going to die of cold-cream +suffocation if she don't soon come back and unsmear me." + +"Opal beetle in it?" + +"Yes, dearie; but it won't bite. It's muzzled with my diamond +horseshoe." + +"Nothing doing, Kit. Put it under your pillow." + +"You better watch out. There's a thirteenth letter in the alphabet; you +might accidentally use it some day. You're going to have a sweet time +to-night, you are!" + +"Why?" + +"The boys have engaged De Butera to come up to the rooms." + +"You mean the fortune teller over at the Stag Hotel?" + +"She's not a fortune teller, you poor nervous wreck. She's the +highest-priced spiritualist in the world. Moving tables--spooks--woof!" + +"Faugh!" said Hester, rising from her couch and feeling with her little +bare feet for the daintiest of pink-silk mules. "I could make tables +move, too, at forty dollars an hour. Where's my attendant? I want an +alcohol rub." + +They did hold séance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddled +together in the _de-luxe_ sitting room of one of their suites, and +little half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ribaldry under cover +of darkness. + +Madame de Butera was of a distinctly fat and earthy blondness, with a +coarse-lace waist over pink, and short hands covered with turquoise +rings of many shapes and blues. + +Tables moved. A dead sister of Wheeler's spoke in thin, high voice. Why +is it the dead are always so vocally thin and high? + +A chair tilted itself on hind legs, eliciting squeals from the women. +Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty with +a deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sips +of highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowed +herself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, and +Kitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed a +hundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or to +the legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened, +May, amid riots of laughter, claiming for herself the hundred-dollar +bill, and Kitty, quite resuscitated, jumping up for a table cancan, her +yellow hair tumbling, and her china-blue eyes with the dregs in them +inclined to water. + +All but Hester. She sat off by herself in a peacock-colored gown that +wrapped her body suavity as if the fabric were soaking wet, a band of +smoky-blue about her forehead. Never intoxicated, a slight amount of +alcohol had a tendency to make her morose. + +"What's the matter, Cleo?" asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her and +lifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remote +analogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen. +"What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?" + +She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenly +wind-blown. + +"God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm. +"Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?" + +But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, and +the following morning there they were, the eight of them, light with +laughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, off +for a day's motoring through the springtime countryside. + +"Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat in +the first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind. + +"I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last of +the cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil. + +"Crystal Cave it is, then." + +"Is that through Demopolis?" + +Followed a scanning of maps. + +"Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. Crystal +Cave." + +"Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?" + +"It's my home town," she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had is +buried there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-house +steps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get there +ever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town you +haven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?" + +He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her. + +She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually found +irresistible. + +"Honey," she said, "what do you think?" + +"What?" + +"Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom's +window the day before we left." + +"The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediately +covering his. + +"She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it for +her." + +"Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at the +beautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look at +those hills over there! Great--isn't it?" + +"I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landing +one big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself in +that chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I could +telegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hate +it, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it. So would you. What's +fifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundred +thousands? Honey?" + +"Wire," he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers. + + * * * * * + +They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but with +pleasantry and gibe. + +"Give my love to the town pump." + +"Rush the old oaken growler for me." + +"So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at six +sharp." + +She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, but +otherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store, +and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made a +foray down into the little side street where she had spent those queerly +remote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! The +little unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on the +site. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower and +dirtier than she recalled it. + +She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. It +was a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door opened +directly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly used +instead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie was +married and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine--a master mechanic, and there +were twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, and +halfway she changed her mind. + +Maggie Simms married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What a +world! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on her +way back to the court-house steps. Stupid to have made it six! + +And then, of course, and quite as you would have it, Gerald Fishback +came along. She recognized his blondness long before he saw her. He was +bigger and more tanned, and, as of old, carried his hat in his hand. She +noticed that there were no creases down the front of his trousers, but +the tweed was good and he gave off that intangible aroma of well-being. + +She was surprised at the old thrill racing over her. Seeing him was like +a stab of quick steel through the very pit of her being. She reached +out, touching him, before he saw her. + +"Gerald," she said, soft and teasingly. + +It was actually as if he had been waiting for that touch, because before +he could possibly have perceived her her name was on his lips. + +"Hester!" he said, the blueness of his eyes flashing between blinks. +"Not Hester?" + +"Yes, Hester," she said, smiling up at him. + +He grasped both her hands, stammering for words that wanted to come +quicker than he could articulate. + +"Hester!" he kept repeating. "Hester!" + +"To think you knew me, Gerald!" + +"Know you! I'd know you blindfolded. And how--I--You're beautiful, +Hester! I think you've grown five years younger." + +"You've got on, Gerald. You look it." + +"Yes; I'm general manager now at Finley's." + +"I'm so glad. Married?" + +"Not while there's a Hester Bevins on earth." + +She started at her own name. + +"How do you know I'm not married?" + +"I--I know--" he said, reddening up. + +"Isn't there some place we can talk, Gerald? I've thirty minutes before +my friends call for me." + +"'Thirty minutes?'" + +"Your rooms? Haven't you rooms or a room where we could go and sit +down?" + +"Why--why, no, Hester," he said, still red. "I'd rather you didn't +go there. But here. Let's stop in at the St. James Hotel. There's a +parlor." + +To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly conscious +of her finger tips. + +"You darling!" She smiled up at him. + +They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry, +Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel. + +"Hester," he said, "you're like a vision come to earth." + +"I'm a bad durl," she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew. + +"You're a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in my +dreams." + +She placed her forefinger over his mouth. + +"Sh-h!" she said. "I'm not a saint, Gerald; you know that." + +"Yes," he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, "I do +know it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who can +sometimes come out--new. It was your early environment." + +"My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard. I could have saved her all +that if I had only known. She was cheap, aunt was. Poor soul! She never +looked ahead." + +"It was your early environment, Hester. I've explained that often enough +to them here. I'd bank on you, Hester--swear by you." + +She patted him. + +"I'm a pretty bad egg, Gerald. According to the standards of a town +like this, I'm rotten, and they're about right. For five years, Gerald, +I've--" + +"The real _you_ is ahead of--and not behind you, Hester." + +"How wonderful," she said, "for you to feel that way, but--" + +"Hester," he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond head +nearing hers, "I don't care about anything that's past; I only know +that, for me, you are the--" + +"Gerald," she said, "for God's sake!" + +"I'm a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester. I want to build you the +prettiest, the whitest little house in this town. Out in the Briarwood +section. I'll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I--" + +"Why," she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, "you +couldn't keep me in stockings, Gerald! The aigrettes on this hat cost +more than one month of your salary." + +"Good God!" he said. + +"You're a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I told +you about my crêpe-de-Chine soul." + +"Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists you +used to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats. You remember +that day at Finleys' picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you--you--" + +"You dear boy!" + +"But it--your mistake--it--it's all over. You work now, don't you, +Hester?" + +Somehow, looking into the blueness of his eyes and their entreaty for +her affirmative, she did what you or I might have done. She half lied, +regretting it while the words still smoked on her lips. + +"Why, yes, Gerald; I've held a fine position in Lichtig Brothers, New +York importers. Those places sometimes pay as high as seventy-five a +week. But I don't make any bones, Gerald; I've not been an angel." + +"The--the salesman, Hester?"--his lips quivering with a nausea for the +question. + +"I haven't seen him in four years," she answered, truthfully. + +He laid his cheek on her hand. + +"I knew you'd come through. It was your environment. I'll marry you +to-morrow--to-day, Hester. I love you." + +"You darling boy!" she said, her lips back tight against her teeth. "You +darling, darling boy!" + +"Please, Hester! We'll forget what has been." + +"Let me go," she said, rising and pinning on her hat; "let me go--or--or +I'll cry, and--and I don't want to cry." + +"Hester," he called, rushing after her and wanting to fold her back into +his arms, "let me prove my trust--my love--" + +"Don't! Let me go! Let me go!" + +At slightly after six the ultra cavalcade drew up at the court-house +steps. She was greeted with the pleasantries and the gibes. + +"Have a good time, sweetness?" asked Wheeler, arranging her rugs. + +"Yes," she said, lying back and letting her lids droop; "but +tired--very, very tired." + +At the hotel, she stopped a moment to write a telegram before going up +for the vapor bath, nap, and massage that were to precede dinner. + +"Meyerbloom & Co., Furriers. Fifth Avenue, New York," it was addressed. + + * * * * * + +This is not a war story except that it has to do with profiteering, +parlor patriots, and the return of Gerald Fishback. + +While Hester was living this tale, and the chinchilla coat was +enveloping her like an ineffably tender caress, three hundred thousand +of her country's youths were at strangle hold across three thousand +miles of sea, and on a notorious night when Hester walked, fully dressed +in a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the electric fountain of +a seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in a +sable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, and +his eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gas +cloud rolling at him across the vast bombarded dawn. + + * * * * * + +Hester read of him one morning, sitting up in bed against a mound of +lace-over-pink pillows, a masseuse at the pink soles of her feet. It was +as if his name catapulted at her from a column she never troubled to +read. She remained quite still, looking at the name for a full five +minutes after it had pierced her full consciousness. Then, suddenly, she +swung out of bed, tilting over the masseuse. + +"Tessie," she said, evenly enough, "that will do. I have to hurry to +Long Island to a base hospital. Go to that little telephone in the +hall--will you?--and call my car." + +But the visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of red +tape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seaside +hospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had been +the resort hotel of more than one dancing orgy. + +She thought she would faint when she saw him, jerking herself back with +a straining of all her faculties. The blood seemed to drain away +from her body, leaving her ready to sink, and only the watchful and +threatening eye of a man nurse sustained her. He was sitting up in bed, +and she would never have recognized in him anything of Gerald except +for the shining Scandinavian quality of his hair. His eyes were not +bandaged, but their sockets were dry and bare like the beds of old lakes +long since drained. She had only seen the like in eyeless marble busts. +There were unsuspected cheek bones, pitched now very high in his face, +and his neck, rising above the army nightshirt, seemed cruelly long, +possibly from thinness. + +"Are you Hester?" whispered the man nurse. + +She nodded, her tonsils squeezed together in an absolute knot. + +"He called for you all through his delirium," he said, and went out. She +stood at the bedside, trying to keep down the screams from her speech +when it should come. But he was too quick for her. + +"Hester," he said, feeling out. + +And in their embrace, her agony melted to tears that choked and seared, +beat and scalded her, and all the time it was he who held her with rigid +arm, whispered to her, soothed down the sobs which tore through her like +the rip of silk, seeming to split her being. + +"Now--now! Why, Hester! Now--now--now! Sh-h! It will be over in a +minute. You mustn't feel badly. Come now, is this the way to greet a +fellow that's so darn glad to see you that nothing matters? Why I can +see you, Hester. Plain as day in your little crispy waist. Now, now! +You'll get used to it in a minute. Now--now--" + +"I can't stand it, Gerald! I can't! Can't! Kill me, Gerald, but don't +ask me to stand it!" + +He stroked down the side of her, lingering at her cheek. + +"Sh-h! Take your time, dear," he said, with the first furry note in his +voice. "I know it's hard, but take your time. You'll get used to me. +It's the shock, that's all. Sh-h!" + +She covered his neck with kisses and scalding tears, her compassion for +him racing through her in chills. + +"I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tear +out my heart and give it to you. I'm bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!" + +There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of what +her own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly have +opened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Her +compassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything, +wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on the +agonized crest of the moment. + +"There's a girl! Why, I'm going to get well, Hester, and do what +thousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful, +and a busy life." + +"It's not fair! It's not fair!" + +"I'm ready now, except for this old left lung. It's burnt a bit, you +see--gas." + +"God! God!" + +"It's pretty bad, I admit. But there's another way of looking at it. +There's a glory in being chosen to bear your country's wounds." + +"Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does it +all mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know, +scot-free and Gerald chosen. God! God! where are you?" + +"He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, He +is closer than ever." + +"I'll never leave you, Gerald," she said, crying down into his sleeve +again. "Don't be afraid of the dark, dear; I'll never leave you." + +"Nonsense!" he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen away +from. + +"Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawl +on my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave you, Gerald--never!" + +"My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!" + +But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged to +leave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow's +return, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, a +closeted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tape +and filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse was +called finally to help her through the corridors to her car. + +Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeks +to live. + +All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, +she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down her +uncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in her +mind. + + * * * * * + +That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive +apartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinum +chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the +sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been +talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he +had fallen quite still. + +"And--and that's all, Wheeler," she ended up. "I've told you everything. +We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take my +word for it, because I swear it before God." + +"I take your word, Hester," he said, huskily. + +"And there he lies, Wheeler, without--without any eyes in his head. Just +as if they'd been burned out by irons. And he--he smiles when he talks. +That's the awful part. Smiles like--well, I guess like the angel he--he +almost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of his +country. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he lies +there!" + +"Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!" + +"Gerald's like that. So--so full of faith. And, Wheeler, he thinks he's +going to get well and lead a useful life like they teach the blind to +do. He reminds me of one of those Greek statues down at the Athens Café. +You know--broken. That's it; he's a broken statue." + +"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! Do something for him. Buy the finest fruit in +the town for him. Send a case of wine. Two." + +"I--I think I must be torn to pieces inside, Wheeler, the way I've +cried." + +"Poor little girl!" + +"Wheeler?" + +"Now, now," he said; "taking it so to heart won't do no good. It's +rotten, I know, but worrying won't help. Got me right upset, too. Come, +get it off your mind. Let's take a ride. Doll up; you look a bit peaked. +Come now, and to-morrow we'll buy out the town for him." + +"Wheeler?" she said. "Wheeler?" + +"What?" + +"Don't look, Wheeler. I've something else to ask of you--something +queer." + +"Now, now," he said, his voice hardening but trying to maintain a +chiding note; "you know what you promised after the chinchilla--no more +this year until--" + +"No, no; for God's sake, not that! It's still about Gerald." + +"Well?" + +"Wheeler, he's only got four weeks to live. Five at the outside." + +"Now, now, girl; we've been all over that." + +"He loves me, Wheeler, Gerald does." + +"Yes?" dryly. + +"It would be like doing something decent--the only decent thing I've +done in all my life, Wheeler, almost like doing something for the war, +the way these women in the pretty white caps have done, and you know +we--we haven't turned a finger for it except to--to gain--if I was +to--to marry Gerald for those few weeks, Wheeler. I know it's a--rotten +sacrifice, but I guess that's the only kind I'm capable of making." + +He sat squat, with his knees spread. + +"You crazy?" he said. + +"It would mean, Wheeler, his dying happy. He doesn't know it's all up +with him. He'd be made happy for the poor little rest of his life. He +loves me. You see, Wheeler, I was his first--his only sweetheart. I'm on +a pedestal, he says, in his dreams. I never told you--but that boy was +willing to marry me, Wheeler, knowing--some--of the things I am. He's +always carried round a dream of me, you see--no, you wouldn't see, but +I've been--well, I guess sort of a medallion that won't tarnish in his +heart. Wheeler, for the boy's few weeks he has left? Wheeler?" + +"Well, I'll be hanged!" + +"I'm not turning holy, Wheeler. I am what I am. But that boy lying +out there--I can't bear it! It wouldn't make any difference with +us--afterward. You know where you stand with me and for always, but it +would mean the dying happy of a boy who fought for us. Let me marry +that boy, Wheeler. Let his light go out in happiness. Wheeler? Please, +Wheeler?" He would not meet her eyes. "Wheeler?" + +"Go to it, Hester," he said, coughing about in his throat and rising to +walk away. "Bring him here and give him the fat of the land. You can +count on me to keep out of the way. Go to it," he repeated. + +And so they were married, Hester holding his hand beside the hospital +cot, the man nurse and doctor standing by, and the chaplain incanting +the immemorial words. A bar of sunshine lay across the bed, and Gerald +pronounced each "I will" in a lifted voice that carried to the four +corners of the little room. She was allowed to stay that night past +hospital hours, and they talked with the dusk flowing over them. + +"Hester, Hester," he said, "I should have had the strength to hold out +against your making this terrible sacrifice." + +"It's the happiest hour of my life," she said, kissing him. + +"I feel well enough to get up now, sweetheart." + +"Gerald, don't force. You've weeks ahead before you are ready for that." + +"But to-morrow, dear, home! In whose car are you calling for me +to-morrow to take me _home_?" + +"In a friend's, dearest." + +"Won't I be crowding up our little apartment? Describe it again to me, +dearest--our _home_." + +"It's so little, Gerald. Three rooms and the littlest, babiest kitchen. +When you're once up, I'll teach its every corner to you." + +Tears seeped through the line where his lids had been, and it was almost +more than she could bear. + +"I'll make it up to you, though, Hester. I know I should have been +strong enough to hold out against your marrying me, but I'll make it up. +I've a great scheme; a sort of braille system of accountancy--" + +"Please, Gerald--not now!" + +"If only, Hester, I felt easier about the finances. Will your savings +stand the strain? Your staying at home from your work this way--and then +me--" + +"Gerald dear, I've told you so often--I've saved more than we need." + +"My girl!" + +"My dear, my dear!" she said. + + * * * * * + +They moved him with hardly a jar in an army ambulance, and with the +yellow limousine riding alongside to be of possible aid, and she had the +bed stripped of its laces and cool with linen for him, and he sighed out +when they placed him on it and would not let go her hand. + +"What a feeling of space for so little a room!" + +"It's the open windows, love." + +He lay back tiredly. + +"What sweet linen!" + +"I shopped it for you." + +"You, too--you're in linen, Hester?" + +"A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too." + +"Give me your hand," he said, and pressed a string of close kisses into +its palm. + +The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She held +hothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate them +through a smile. + +"Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said. + +"I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist." + +"Never mind; I'll make it up to you." + +Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward her +as he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung. + +"If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctor +says it's too soon." + +"I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start the +pot boiling." + +She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly. + +Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, and +the day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled his +bed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window, +where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboat +whistles shoot up like rockets. + +She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemed +easier and less blackly futile to give him up. + +Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, one +day, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, and +she, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wanting +even their fragrance released. + +With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside the +apartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of awe +seemed to wrap the Drew woman. + +"I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, in +another way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this." + +"Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive." + +"Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have a +look at him. He wouldn't know." + +"No! No!" + +"God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing the +bills!" + +"Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!" + +"All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here's +some chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's." + +But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewed +some fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out and +purchase. + +She slept on a cot at the foot of his bed, so sensitive to his waking +that almost before he came up to consciousness she was at his side. All +day she wore the little white shirt waists, a starchy one fresh each +morning, and at night scratchy little unlacy nightgowns with long +sleeves and high yokes. He liked to run his hand along the crispness of +the fabric. + +"I love you in cool stuff, Hester. You're so cool yourself, I always +think of you in the little white waist and blue skirt. You remember, +dear--Finleys' annual?" + +"I--I'm going to dress like that for you always, Gerald." + +"I won't let you be going back to work for long, sweetheart. I've some +plans up my sleeve, I have." + +"Yes! Yes!" + +But when the end did come, it was with as much of a shock as if she had +not been for days expecting it. The doctor had just left, puncturing his +arm and squirting into his poor tired system a panacea for the pain. But +he would not react to it, fighting down the drowsiness. + +"Hester," he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, "lean down, +sweetheart, and kiss me--long--long--" + +She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died. + + * * * * * + +It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back. She was on +the _chaise-longue_ that had been dragged out into the parlor, in the +webbiest of white negligées, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, but +sweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of lifting +the brows. + +"Hel-lo, Wheeler!" she said, raising her cheek to be kissed. + +He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down rather +awkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had. + +"Well, girl--you all right?" + +"You helped," she said. + +"It gave me a jolt, too. I made over twenty-five thousand to the Red +Cross on the strength of it." + +"Thank you, Wheeler." + +"Lord!" he said, rising and rubbing his hands together. "Give us a +couple of fingers to drink, honey; I'm cotton-mouthed." + +She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with her +arms dangling and her smile out. Then, as if realizing that the occasion +must be lifted, turned her face to him. + +"Old bummer!" she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him and +two-thirds closing her eyes. Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly on +the lips. + + * * * * * + +For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally +dipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for the +linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Or +maybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history would help. + +In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinous +dancing, Hester awoke at four o'clock the next morning out of an hour of +sound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, her +gesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling. + +"Gerald!" she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and her +arms cutting through the room's blackness. "Gerald!" Suddenly the room +was not black. It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald, +the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of her +dressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his sockets +were deep with eyes. Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerly +sharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as if +bayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing. + +"Gerald!" she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and sat +up in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until her +lips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked window +shades. + +"Gerald!" And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out, +and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased and +flattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with the +addition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light and +went back to bed. + +The next morning Hester carried about what she called "a head," and, +since it was Wheeler's day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until three +o'clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of the +forenoon. + +"It was the rotten night did me up. Dreams! Ugh! dreams!" + +"No wonder," diagnosed Kitty, sweetly. "Indigestion from having your +cake and eating it." + +At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the Ivy +Funeral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs up +her sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right in +the heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and a +quick-lunch room. Gerald had been buried from there with simple +flag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from the +view and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows. There +was a check in Hester's purse made out for an amount that corresponded +to the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And right +here again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least for +the neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--with +one foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tilted +toward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she saw +there her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom as +if against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, she +rushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of every +speed regulation, homeward. + +That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell on +Hester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair, +which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of her +coiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain. + +Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be called +upon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hester +wasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frank +about it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. More +than nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truth +was known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off +holiday iridescence. There were limits! + +"You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up." + +"It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. I +can't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? He +doesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only I +could get rid of this head!" + +"You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get out +and get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will send +your spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good." + +She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her most +bizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process of +dyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, a +long, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginning +down around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in a +burst of crimson. + +He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggy +device of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimson +slipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame she +none too subtly purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softly +across the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadily +enough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mock +sting. + +But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of four +sleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the night +light burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stiletto +might have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and into +her mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees, +her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open, +accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they were +terrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. It +was only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried the +device there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the still +unpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bed +with her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in the +pillow. + +"Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!" + +"Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've been +through it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the sober +horrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child. +I's holdin'." + +You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. A +bird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eye +view can sometimes be very, very close. + +And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into the +mattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up in +bed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at the +pain in her head. + +"God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!" + +The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she would +do. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest. +Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hanging +in the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and two +ten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little blue +sailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She looked +smaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note, +dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, looking +about rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There was +nothing; so she went out quite bare and simply, with all her lovely +jewels in the leather case on the upper shelf of the bedroom closet, as +she had explained to Wheeler in the note. + +That afternoon she presented herself to Lichtig. He was again as you +would expect--round-bellied, and wore his cigar up obliquely from one +corner of his mouth. He engaged her immediately at an increase of five +dollars a week, and as she was leaving with the promise to report at +eight-thirty the next morning he pinched her cheek, she pulling away +angrily. + +"None of that!" + +"My mistake," he apologized. + +She considered it promiscuous and cheap, and you know her aversion for +cheapness. + +Then she obtained, after a few forays in and out of brownstone houses +in West Forty-fifth Street, one of those hall bedrooms so familiar to +human-interest stories--the iron-bed, washstand, and slop-jar kind. +There was a five-dollar advance required. That left her twenty dollars. + +She shopped a bit then in an Eighth Avenue department store, and, with +the day well on the wane, took a street car up to the Ivy Funeral Rooms. +This time she entered, but the proprietor did not recognize her until +she explained. As you know, she looked smaller and younger, and there +was no tan car at the curb. + +"I want to pay this off by the week," she said, handing him out +the statement and a much-folded ten-dollar bill. He looked at her, +surprised. "Yes," she said, her teeth biting off the word in a click. + +"Certainly," he replied, handing her out a receipt for the ten. + +"I will pay five dollars a week hereafter." + +"That will stretch it out to twenty-eight weeks," he said, still +doubtfully. + +"I can't help it; I must." + +"Certainly," he said, "that will be all right," but looked puzzled. + +That night she slept in the hall bedroom in the Eighth Avenue, +machine-stitched nightgown. She dropped off about midnight, praying not +to awaken at four. But she did--with a slight start, sitting up in bed, +her eyes where the wall and ceiling joined. + +Gerald's face was there, and his blue eyes were open, but the steel +points were gone. They were smiling eyes. They seemed to embrace her, to +wash her in their fluid. + +All her fear and the pain in her head were gone. She sat up, looking at +him, the tears streaming down over her smile and her lips moving. + +Then, sighing out like a child, she lay back on the pillow, turned over, +and went to sleep. + + * * * * * + +And this is the story of Hester which so insisted to be told. I think +she must have wanted you to know. And wanted Gerald to know that you +know, and, in the end, I rather think she wanted God to know. + + + + +THE VERTICAL CITY + + +In the most vertical city in the world men have run up their dreams +and their ambitions into slim skyscrapers that seem to exclaim at the +audacity of the mere mortar that sustains them. + +Minarets appear almost to tamper with the stars; towers to impale +the moon. There is one fifty-six-story rococo castle, built from the +five-and-ten-cent-store earnings of a merchant prince, that shoots +upward with the beautiful rush of a Roman candle. + +Any Manhattan sunset, against a sky that looks as if it might give to +the poke of a finger, like a dainty woman's pink flesh, there marches a +silhouetted caravan of tower, dome, and the astonished crests of office +buildings. + +All who would see the sky must gaze upward between these rockets of +frenzied architecture, which are as beautiful as the terrific can ever +be beautiful. + +In the vertical city there are no horizons of infinitude to rest the +eyes; rather little breakfast napkins of it showing between walls and +up through areaways. Sometimes even a lunchcloth of five, six, or maybe +sixty hundred stars or a bit of daylight-blue with a caul of sunshine +across, hoisted there as if run up a flagpole. + +It is well in the vertical city if the eyes and the heart have a lift +to them, because, after all, these bits of cut-up infinitude, as +many-shaped as cookies, even when seen from a tenement window and to the +accompaniment of crick in the neck, are as full of mysterious alchemy +over men's hearts as the desert sky or the sea sky. That is why, up +through the wells of men's walls, one glimpse of sky can twist the soul +with--oh, the bitter, the sweet ache that lies somewhere within the +heart's own heart, curled up there like a little protozoa. That is, if +the heart and the eyes have a lift to them. Marylin's had. + + * * * * * + +Marylin! How to convey to you the dance of her! The silver scheherazade +of poplar leaves when the breeze is playful? No. She was far nimbler +than a leaf tugging at its stem. A young faun on the brink of a pool, +startled at himself? Yes, a little. Because Marylin's head always had a +listening look to it, as if for a message that never quite came through +to her. From where? Marylin didn't know and didn't know that she didn't +know. Probably that accounted for a little pucker that could sometimes +alight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of a +shadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music, +not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caught +Marylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn't +necessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding both +his sides? + +How Marylin, had she understood it, would have kicked the high hat off +of such Miltonic phrasing. Ah, she was like--herself! + +And yet, if there must be found a way to convey her to you more quickly, +let it be one to which Marylin herself would have dipped a bow. + +She was like nothing so much as unto a whole two dollars' worth of +little five-cent toy balloons held captive in a sea breeze and tugging +toward some ozonic beyond in which they had never swum, yet strained so +naturally toward. + +That was it! A whole two dollars' worth of tugging balloons. +Red--blue--orange--green--silver, jerking in hollow-sided collisions, +and one fat-faced pink one for ten cents, with a smile painted on one +side and a tear on the other. + +And what if I were to tell you that this phantom of a delight of a +Marylin, whose hair was a sieve for sun and whose laughter a streamer of +it, had had a father who had been shot to death on the underslinging +of a freight car in one of the most notorious prison getaways ever +recorded, and whose mother--but never mind right here; it doesn't matter +to the opening of this story, because Marylin, with all her tantalizing +capacity for paradox, while every inch a part of it all, was not at all +a part of it. + +For five years, she who had known from infancy the furtive Bradstreet of +some of the vertical city's most notorious aliases and gang names, and +who knew, almost by baptism of fire, that there were short cuts to an +easier and weightier wage envelope, had made buttonholes from eight +until five on the blue-denim pleat before it was stitched down the front +of men's blue-denim shirts. + +At sweet sixteen she, whose mother had borne her out of wed--well, +anyway, at sweet sixteen, like the maiden in the saying, she had never +been kissed, nor at seventeen, but at eighteen-- + +It was this way. Steve Turner--"Getaway," as the quick lingo of the +street had him--liked her. Too well. I firmly believe, though, that +if in the lurid heat lightning of so stormy a career as Getaway's the +beauty of peace and the peace of beauty ever found moment, Marylin +nestled in that brief breathing space somewhere deep down within the +noisy cabaret of Getaway's being. His eyes, which had never done +anything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which he +ate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at the +thought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, and +which he could not translate, he became facetious--idiotically so. + +Slim and supine as the bamboo cane he invariably affected, he would wait +for her, sometimes all of the six work-a-evenings of the week, until +she came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where she +worked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, in +his further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously at +a vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing at +where a mustache might have been. + +"Getaway!" she would invariably admonish, with her reproach all in the +inflection and with the bluest blue in her eyes he had ever seen outside +of a bisque doll's. + +The peculiar joy, then, of linking her sweetly resisting arm into his; +of folding over each little finger, so! until there were ten tendrils +at the crotch of his elbow and his heart. Of tilting his straw "katy" +forward, with his importance of this possession, so that the back of his +head came out in a bulge and his hip, and then of walking off with her, +so! Ah yes, so! + +MARYLIN _(who had the mysterious little jerk in her laugh of a very +young child_): "Getaway, you're the biggest case!" + +GETAWAY _(wild to amuse her further_): "Hocus pocus, Salamagundi! I +smell the blood of an ice-cream sundae!" + +MARYLIN _(hands to her hips and her laughter full of the jerks_): +"Getaway, stop your monkeyshines. The cop has his eye on you!" + +GETAWAY _(sobered):_ "C'm on!" + +Therein lay some of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because to +Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, +designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night +stick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short, +wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dread +brother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days of +her childhood. + +Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with the +inside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerest +of baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a whole +bolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until it +hung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through the +fire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace. + +Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her father +in a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingers +peeping over each of his shoulders! + +A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freight +car. Her mother had died with the phantom of one marching across her +delirium. Even opposite the long, narrow, and exceedingly respectable +rooming house in which she now dwelt a uniform had stood for several +days lately, contemplatively. + +There was a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, so +close they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh when +Getaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up into +exaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his approach, focused. + +"Getaway," said Marylin, hop-skipping to keep up with him now, "why has +old Deady got his eye on you nowadays?" + +Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing +inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed +to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be. + +"You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapping granny's +wrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!" + +But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway," she +said, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face must +be almost level with hers--"you're up to something again." + +"I'm up to snuff," he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped a +circle. + +She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood, +her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away." And pushed him aside that she might +walk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustling +that was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one of +those moments when she could make his eyes smart. + +But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?" + +"Me, in here," she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsy +blouse where her heart beat under it. + +"Whadda you mean, dead?" + +"Just dead, sometimes--as if something inside of me that can't get out +had--had just curled up and croaked." + +The walk from the shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, lean +house in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidious +bedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed even +high-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, with +aërial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked and +sweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there on +these sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming with +enormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certain +fox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feel +the bite of his elaborately manicured finger nails. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, "and you'll wear diamonds." + +In spite of herself, his bay-rummed nearness was not unpleasant to her. +"Cut it out--here, Getaway," she said through a blush. + +He hooked her very close to him by the elbow, and together they crossed +through the crash of a street bifurcated by elevated tracks. + +"You hear, Marylin," he shouted above the din. "Marry me and you'll wear +diamonds." + +"Getaway, you're up to something again!" + +"Whadda you mean?" + +"Diamonds on your twenty a week! It can't be done." + +His gaze lit up with the pointiness. "I tell you, Marylin, I can promise +you headlights!" + +"How?" + +"Never you bother your little head how; O.K., though." + +"_How_, Getaway?" + +"Oh--clean--if that's what's worrying you. Clean-cut." + +"It _is_ worrying me." + +"Saw one on a little Jane yesterday out to Belmont race track. A +fist-load for a little trick like her. And sparkle! Say, every time that +little Jane daubed some whitewash on her little nosie she gave that +grand stand the squints. That's what I'm going to do. Sparkle you up! +With a diamond engagement ring. Oh boy! How's that? A diamond engagement +ring!" + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, with her hand on the flutter of her throat and +closing her eyes as if to imprison the vision against her lids. "A pure +white one with lots of fire dancing around it." And little Marylin, who +didn't want to want it, actually kissed the bare dot on her left ring +finger where she could feel the burn of it, and there in the crowded +street, where he knew he was surest of his privacy with her, he stole a +kiss off that selfsame finger, too. + +"I'll make their eyes hang out on their cheeks like grapes when they see +you coming along, Marylin." + +"I love them because they're so clear--and clean! Mountain water that's +been filtered through pebbles." + +"Pebbles is right! I'm going to dike you out in one as big as a pebble. +And poils! Sa-y, they're what cost the spondulicks. A guy showed me a +string of little ones no bigger than pimples. Know what? That little +string could knock the three spots out of a thousand-dollar bond--I mean +bill!" + +It was then that something flashed out of Marylin's face. A shade might +have been lowered; a candle blown out. + +"Getaway," she said, with a quick little dig of fingers into his +forearm, "you're up to something!" + +"Snuff, I said." + +"What did you mean by that word, 'bond'?" + +"Who built a high fence around the word 'bond'?" + +"Bonds! All that stuff in the newspapers about those messengers +disappearing out of Wall Street with--bonds! Getaway, are you mixed up +in that? Getaway!" + +"Well, well! I like that! I had you doped out for fair and warmer +to-day. The weather prophet didn't predict no brainstorm." + +"That's not answering." + +"Well, whadda you know! Miss Sherlock Holmes finds a corkscrew in the +wine cellar and is sore because it's crooked!" + +"Getaway--answer." + +"Whadda you want me to answer, Fairylin? That I'm the master mind behind +the--" + +"It worries me so! You up in Monkey's room so much lately. You think I +don't know it? I do! All the comings and goings up there. Muggs Towers +sneaking up to Monkey's room in that messenger boy's suit he keeps +wearing all the time now. He's no more messenger boy than I am. Getaway, +tell me, you and Muggs up in Monkey's room so often? Footsteps up there! +Yours!" + +"Gawalmighty! Now it's my footsteps!" + +"I know them! Up in Monkey's room, right over mine. I know how you sneak +up there evenings after you leave me. It don't look nice your going into +the same house where I live, Getaway, even if it isn't to see me. It +don't look right from the outside!" + +"Nobody can ever say I wanted to harm a hair of your little head. I even +look the other way when I pass your door. That's the kind of a modest +violet I am." + +"It's not that, but the looks. That's the reason, I'll bet, if the +truth's known, why Monkey squirmed himself into that room over mine--to +hide your comings and goings as if they was to see me." + +"Nothing of the kind!" + +"Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine. +My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. I +know your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. The +ball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!" + +"Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!" + +"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps +that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented +a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel +young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. +Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he +calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, for +all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time +I met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal." + +"You would, like hell." + +"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectable +house, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there, +it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that and +hatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in that +room--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?" + +"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like +'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets for +honest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirt +factory and dike her out in--" + +"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!" + +"Well, if that's all you think of me--" + +"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. How +could a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--you +see, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirts +and now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with your +twenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery." + +Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I +tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her, +and me thinking I did." + +"What, Getaway, what?" + +"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have +pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket +used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just +because I--" + +"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of +the newspaper!" + +"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like +vaccination, they take or they don't." + +"They never take with you, Getaway." + +"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--" + +"A job?" + +"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on. +If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solid +gold." + +"What is it, then, the proposition?" + +"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through? +Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a good +thing." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets." + +"What kind of money?" + +"Real money." + +"_Honest_ money?" + +"Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea. +Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one of +them hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a lace +umbrella and--" + +"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers on +a hat." + +"Red-white-and-blue ones!" + +"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket." + +"And slippers with real diamond buckles." + +"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoe +buckles--" + +"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new business +proposition?" + +"I do, only you've had so many--" + +"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!" + +"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you're +cornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh, +Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--" + +"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she has +to rub her fingers in old soot to do it." + +"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it's +in me so to suspect." + +"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!" + +"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it's +been so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it. +Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me not +getting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on the +beat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep. +Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You're +finger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt if +there was one. Don't--Getaway!" + +"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome." + +"Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything else +wasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unless +it's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in you +I--can't trust." + +"Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up to +your door in a six-cylinder--" + +"I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the same +old job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money. +Too easy--" + +"Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days, +when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal, +if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up beside +you with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just like +that! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you. +Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!" + +"Getaway, why did you turn down this street so all of a sudden? This +isn't my way home." + +"It's only a block out of the way. Come on! Don't stand gassing." + +"You-thought-that-fellow-on-the-corner-of-Dock-Street-might-be-a-plain +-clothes-man!" + +"What if I did? Want me to go up and kiss him?" + +"Why-should-you-care, Getaway?" + +"Don't." + +"But--" + +"Don't believe in hugging the law, though. It's enough when it hugs +you." + +"I want to go home, Getaway." + +"Come on. I'll buy some supper. Steak and French frieds and some French +pastry with a cherry on top for your little sweet tooth. That's the kind +of a regular guy I am." + +"No. I want to go home." + +"All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?" + +"Straight." + +"Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home." + +They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouth +wilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flower +in the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenly +and so whitely that almost a second could blight her. + +"Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quickly +conciliatory and trying to make his voice grate. + +"No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad." + +She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and +as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the +riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole +jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one with +gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed +ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can. + +"I'm going in now, Getaway." + +"Gowann! Get into your blue dress and I'll blow you to supper." + +"Not to-night." + +"Mad?" + +"No. I said only--" + +"Sad?" + +"No--tired--I guess." + +"Please, Marylin." + +"No. Some other time." + +"When? To-morrow? It's Saturday! Coney?" + +"Oh!" + +He thought he detected the flash of a dimple. He did. Remember, she was +very young and, being fanciful enough to find the witch in the face of +her rooming house, the waves at Coney Island, peanut cluttered as they +were apt to be, told her things. Silly, unrepeatable things. Nonsense +things. Little secret goosefleshing things. Prettinesses. And then the +shoot the chutes! That ecstatic leap of heart to lips and the feeling +of folly down at the very pit of her. Marylin did like the shoot the +chutes! + +"All right, Getaway--to-morrow--Coney!" + +He did not conceal his surge of pleasure, grasping her small hand in +both his. "Good girlie!" + +"Good night, Getaway," she said, but with the inflection of something +left unsaid. + +He felt the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped +its stick, and started up the steps after her. + +"What is it, Marylin?" + +"Nothing," she said and ran in. + +The window in her little rear room with the zigzag of fire escape across +it was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with a +little pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left a +red rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a city +bouquet of frying foods; from a pool of old water near a drain pipe; +from the rear of a butcher shop. Slops. Noises, too. Babies, traffic, +whistles, oaths, barterings, women, strife, life. On her very +own ceiling the whisper of footsteps--of restless comings and +goings--stealthy comings and goings--and then after an hour, +suddenly and ever so softly, the ball-of-a-foot--squeak! +The-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! + +Marylin knew that step. + +And yet she sat, quiet. A star had come out. Looking up at the napkin of +sky let in through the walls of the vertical city, Marylin had learned +to greet it almost every clear evening. It did something for her. It +was a little voice. A little kiss. A little upside down pool of light +without a spill. A little of herself up there in that beyond--that +little napkin of beyond that her eyes had the lift to see. + + * * * * * + +Who are you, whose neck has never ached from nine hours a day, six days +a week, of bending over the blue-denim pleat that goes down the front +of men's shirts, to quiver a supersensitive, supercilious, and superior +nose over what, I grant you, may appear on the surface to be the omelet +of vulgarities fried up for you on the gladdest, maddest strip of +carnival in the world? + +But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than to +remain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if little +red dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tight +heartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longer +plong. + +To Marylin, whose neck very often ached clear down into her shoulder +blade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city walls +were sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, her +enjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by any +awarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple, +unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, half +ashamed of being amused. She _was_ Coney Island! Her heart a shoot the +chutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, the +surf creaming no higher than her vitality. + +And it was so the evening following, as she came dancing down the +kicked-up sand of the beach, in a little bright-blue frock, mercerized +silk, if you please, with very brief sleeves that ended right up in the +jolliest part of her arm, with a half moon of vaccination winking out +roguishly beneath a finish of ribbon bow, and a white-canvas sport hat +with a jockey rosette to cap the little climax of her, and by no means +least, a metal coin purse, with springy insides designed to hold exactly +fifty cents in nickels. + +Once on the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, her +spirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. The +window, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week, +faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint. +Coney Island faced a world of sky. So that when she pinched Getaway's +nose in between the lips of her coin purse and he, turning a double +somersault right in his checked suit, landed seated in a sprawl of mock +daze, off she went into peals of laughter only too ready to be released. + +He bought her a wooden whirring machine, an instrument of noise that, +because it was not utilitarian, became a toy of delicious sound. + +They rode imitation ocean waves at five cents a voyage, their only _mal +de mer_, regret when it was over. He bought her salt-water taffy, and +when the little red cave of her mouth became too ludicrously full of the +pully stuff he tried to kiss its state of candy paralysis, and instantly +she became sober and would have no more of his nonsense. + +"Getaway," she cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go in +bathing!" + +"I'll say we will!" + +No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if you +will, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a little +blue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her head +flowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew bound +her up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribable +softiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he looked +at them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit in +his cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees and +hairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, down +the sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker. + +Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak of +seaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever, +pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only less +skillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water, +he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almost +reverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keep +intact. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean about +them. + +She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it. + +"That's you," he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't." + +"I wish," she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!" + +"What do you wish?" + +She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don't +know! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there is +what I wish." + +"Out where?" + +"There." + +"I don't see--" + +"You--wouldn't." + +And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing her +through shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merriment +they emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearms +lashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of her +chin. + +Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, her +hair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on his +stomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. And +the crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon, +almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quiet +now with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilled +little rills of sand from one fist into the other. + +"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!" + +"Are I, Getaway?" + +"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the other +blind." + +"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so." + +"You've had enough fellows tell you so." + +"Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ mean +by pretty." + +"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty." + +"What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?" + +"Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holes +in your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty. +Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?" + +"Yes--and no--" + +"Well, what the--" + +"It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--not +enough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guess +pretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean." + +"All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty." + +"The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurt +and want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something you +understand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly." + +"Well, then, whistle it!" + +"It has to be _felt_." + +"Peel me," he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep. "Some little +gladiator, eh? Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take you +away from me." + +She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him. The beach +was all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost in +her eyes, too. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, on a sigh, and again, "Getaway!" + +His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel, +went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almost +sinking his teeth. The curve of her chin down into her throat, as she +turned her head, had maddened him. + +"Quit," she said. + +"Never you mind. You'll wear diamonds," he said, in his sole phraseology +of promise. "Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?" + +"What?" + +"Want one now?" + +"Want what?" + +"A diamond." + +"No," she said. "When I'm out here I quit wanting things like that." + +"Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!" + +"Getaway!" + +"What?" + +"What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?" + +"When?" + +"You know when." + +"Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!" + +"Please, Getaway--" + +"Home, Fairy." + +"You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think, +Getaway!" + +"Aw now--" + +"You were." + +"Aw now--" + +"Nobody can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth, +but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your +foot--squeak!" + +"Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, but +only for a minute--" + +"Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings and +goings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were so +noisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey the +friend you got the deal on with, Getaway?" + +"We just sat up there talking old times--" + +"And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressed +like the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door to +see who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, for God's sake--" + +He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bony +face, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitched +close, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now, +because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in that +dip of bang which frightened her. + +"What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell you +that after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will be +over. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. But +first I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to make +this old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going to +carry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren't +so touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want one +now?" + +"Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs are +tied up with those Wall Street bond getaways." + +"For the luvagod, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have me +in a brainstorm too." + +"Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead of +delivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them. +Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkey +are working with him under cover on something. You can't pass a cop any +more without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You've +got that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it. +My--mother--too. Getaway!" + +"By gad! you can't beat a woman!" + +"You don't deny it." + +"I do!" + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!" + +"Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minute +I'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I got +to be afraid of." + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!" + +"Well, then, lay off--" + +"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only a +kid popping a paper bag." + +"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting! +The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look here +now, you got to get the hell out of my business." + +She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violent +nervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away from +him, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted. + +After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg some +ways, but when it comes to you, I'm there." + +"I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him. +"Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full of +rest." + +He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands and +dredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line of +her chin to her throat still teased him. + +Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit was +playing a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth and +hand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouette +of him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might be +cloven. + +What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood of +Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, +a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the new +day yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ. + +"Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That's +what I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on the +mouth organ!" + +"It?" + +"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just like +I do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen." + +"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?" + +"All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward the +bathhouse. + +He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence. + +"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?" + +"No, Getaway--not mad." + +"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've had +something to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off." + +"What is it?" she said, tiptoe. + +His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know." + +"No, I don't." + +"Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handful +of sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?" + +"Why--nothing." + +"Want to know?" + +But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stooping +down at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him. + +"No," she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carrying +her laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea. + +On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred the +puzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness. + +In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart of +the most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasure +seekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellow +with a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off his +right brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wide +apart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles with +little lakes shining at the ends of them. + +"Thank you," said Marylin, the infinitesimal second while his hat and +cowlick lifted, her own gaze seeming to run down those avenues of his +eyes for a look into the pools at the back. + +"That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that I +couldn't say. He said it--with his eyes." + +"Who?" + +"That fellow who gave me this seat." + +"I'll break his face if he goo-goos you," said Getaway, who by this time +had a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patent +leather. + +But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of the +stoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. His +first of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly she +was so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested by +the smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat. + +The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine to +him and as truly an intoxicant. + +"Marylin," he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off much +longer. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too." + +"Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe." + +"I'm crazy for you!" + +"Go home now, Getaway." + +"Yes--but just one more--" + +"Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed." + +"I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--" + +"No, no--not now. Go--" + +Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something down +Marylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scraped +the flesh. + +"That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you? +Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?" + +In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazed +into a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head, +and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you! +Now will you!" + +"Getaway," she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did you +get this?" + +"It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat and +a half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going to +have one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Now +you've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!" + +"Getaway," she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to her +mouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "where +did you get this?" + +"There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips. + +Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its light +as it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylin +was up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through her +own door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and half +crying over her left third finger where the flash had been. + +She was frightened, because for all of an hour she sat on the end of the +cot in her little room trembling and with her palms pressed into her +eyes so tightly that the darkness spun. There was quick connection in +Marylin between what was emotional and what was merely sensory. She +knew, from the sickness at the very pit of her, how sick were her heart +and her soul--and how afraid. + +She undressed in the dark--a pale darkness relieved by a lighted window +across the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, +covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into +careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes +closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And +then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird +machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct +footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallway +outside her door, where the stairs led up still another flight, +the-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! The sharp crack of a voice. Running. + +"Getaway!" cried Marylin's heart, almost suffocating her with a dreadful +spasm of intuition. + +It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her head +in its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double over +the upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a white +terribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an arm +suddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him. + +There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, with +an immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairs +backward, face up. + +Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the second +figure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at the +already-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over the +banister with the smoking pistol. + +By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected that +perfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, then +stayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision with +another. + +So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched across +Marylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from the +underslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had stepped +in from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; her +mother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier. +Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those four +fingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom. +Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair. +Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help-- + +When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down the +third-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and merciful +faint. Marylin had not reached out. + + * * * * * + +Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that were +often groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. And +then, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lighter +tears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears. + +Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hung +unworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill of +lace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the last +of her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reason +began to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not faded +it. + +These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ceiling agitation +had long ago ceased since the shame of the raided room above, and Muggs, +in his absurd messenger's suit, and Monkey marching down the three +flights to the clanking of steel at the wrists. + +There were new footsteps now. Steps that she had also learned to know, +but pleasantly. They marched out so regularly of mornings, invariably +just as she was about to hook her skirtband or pull on her stockings. +They came home so patly again at seven, about as she sat herself down to +a bit of sewing or washing-out. They went to bed so pleasantly. Thud, +on the floor, and then, after the expectant interval of unlacing, thud +again. They were companionable, those footsteps, almost like reverential +marching on the grave of her heart. + +Marylin reversed the rosette, and as the light began to go sat down +beside her window, idly, looking up. There was the star point in her +patch of sky, eating its way right through the purple like a diamond, +and her ache over it was so tangible that it seemed to her she could +almost lift the hurt out of her heart, as if it were a little imprisoned +bird. And as it grew darker there came two stars, and three, and nine, +and finally the sixty hundred. + +Then from the zig of the fire escape above, before it twisted down into +the zag of hers, there came to Marylin, through the medley of city +silences and the tears in her heart, this melody, on a jew's-harp: + +If it had any key at all, it was in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in D +flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beauty +of that death, and the throb of an ecstasy for the new day not yet born. + +Looking up against the sheer wall of the vertical city, on the ledge of +fire escape above hers, and in the yellow patch of light thrown out from +the room behind, a youth, with his knees hunched up under his chin, and +his mouth and hand moving at cross purposes, was playing the harmonica. + +Wide apart were his eyes, and blue, so that while she gazed up, smiling, +as he gazed down, smiling, it was almost as if she ran up the fire +escape through the long clear lanes of those eyes, for a dip into the +little twin lakes at the back of them. + +And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the right +side of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, that +was exactly the shape of an apostrophe! + + + + +THE SMUDGE + + +In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves, +and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sag +and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel. + +That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is a +tender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that still +aches with threads of life. + +Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug with +the fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet. +It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles. + +Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where there +have been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among the +headstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Just +drearily. + +There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. But +it, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth with +receding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. They +had. + +Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids +now. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat of +kettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet. + +She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedy +black." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster! +Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week and +no road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" had +been especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedy +relief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept the +audience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whose +heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly. + +And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love, +but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, could +kiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly. + +Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivory +fan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke her +tongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy: + +It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, for +instance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck of +Marcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume. + +Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown Cold +Cream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had come +Marcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet set; the Steinway +grand piano; the yearly and by no means light tuition toll at Miss +Harperly's Select Day School for Girls. + +You get the whimsy of it? For everything fair that was Marcia, Hattie +had brownly paid for. Liltingly, and with the rill of the song of +thanksgiving in her heart. + +That was how Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody of +Marcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. +Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. +Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into the +look of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of red +meat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of a +cocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and caking +the breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed. +The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Men +in undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddy +bears you're puttin' on." Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor's +overtone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait in +the wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jaws +etched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eat +you. Faces swimming in the stage ozone and wolfish for cue. The purple +lips-- + +Almost like a frieze stuck on to the border of each day was Hattie's +life in the theater. Passementerie. + +That was how Hattie treated it. Especially during those placid years of +the phenomenal New York run of "Love Me Long." The outer edge of her +reality. The heart of her reality? Why, the heart of it was the long +morning hours in her own fragrant kitchen over doughnuts boiled in oil +and snowed under in powdered sugar! Cookies that bit with a snap. Filet +of sole boned with fingers deft at it and served with a merest fluff of +tartar sauce. Marcia ate like that. Preciously. Pecksniffily. An egg at +breakfast a gag to the sensibilities! So Hattie ate hers in the kitchen, +standing, and tucked the shell out of sight, wrapped in a lettuce leaf. +Beefsteak, for instance, sickened Marcia, because there was blood in the +ooze of its juices. But Hattie had a sly way of camouflage. Filet +mignon (so strengthening, you see) crushed under a little millinery of +mushrooms and served under glass. Then when Marcia's neat little row of +neat little teeth bit in and the munch began behind clean and careful +lips, Hattie's heart, a regular old bandit for cunning, beat hoppity, +skippity, jump! + +Those were her realities. Home. The new sandwich cutters. Heart shape. +Diamond shape. Spade. The strip of hall carpet newly discovered to scour +like new with brush and soap and warm water. Epstein's meat market +throws in free suet. The lamp with the opal-silk shade for Marcia's +piano. White oilcloth is cleaner than shelf paper. Dotted Swiss +curtains, the ones in Marcia's room looped back with pink bows. Old +sashes, pressed out and fringed at the edges. + +And if you think that Hattie's six rooms and bath and sunny, full-sized +kitchen, on Morningside Heights, were trumped-up ones of the press agent +for the Sunday Supplement, look in. + +Any afternoon. Tuesday, say, and Marcia just home from school. On +Tuesday afternoon of every other week Hattie made her cream, in a large +copper pot that hung under the sink. Six dozen half-pint jars waiting +to be filled with Brown Cold Cream. One hundred and forty-four jars +a month. Guaranteed Color-fast. Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate. Labeled. +Sealed. Sold. And demand exceeding the supply. An ingratiating, expert +cream, known the black-faced world over. It slid into the skin, not +sootily, but illuminating it to winking, African copper. For instance, +Hattie's make-up cream for Linda in "Love Me Long" was labeled +"Chocolate." But it worked in even a truer brown, as if it had come out +of the pigment instead of gone into the pores. + +Four hours of stirring it took, adding with exact minutiae the +mysteriously proper proportions of spermacetti, oil of sweet almonds, +white wax--But never mind. Hattie's dark secret was her own. + +Fourteen years of her black art as Broadway's maid _de luxe_ had been +her laboratory. It was almost her boast now--remember the sunken +headstones--that she had handled spotlessly every fair young star of the +theaters' last ten years. + +It was as mysterious as pigment, her cream, and as true, and netted +her, with occasional extra batches, an average of two hundred dollars a +month. She enjoyed making it. Singing as she stirred or rather stirring +as she sang, the plenitude of her figure enveloped in a blue-and-white +bungalow apron with rickrack trimming. + +Often Marcia, home from day school, watched. Propped up in the window +frame with her pet cat, a Persian, with eyes like swimming pools with +painted green bottoms, seated in a perfect circle in her quiet lap, +for all the world in the attitude of a sardel except for the toothpick +through. + +Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sit +like that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie that +stare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little suns +were having their high noon. + +Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's back +could ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into her +face when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at her +nerves. + +"Momie, I'll stir for a while." + +Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as precise +as a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and her +teeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word, +biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had never +grown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was something +about them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes that +she had saved. Little innocences. + +"I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired." + +"But your face is all twisted." + +Hattie's twisted face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor that +the egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there. + +"Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon." + +"Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep." + +As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could +keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a +little arch of sweat came out in a mustache. + +The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of it +into her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so was +the bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been a +prettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkled +and were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But the +red of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars were +just freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing above +the ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheeks +hung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's arms +and thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckled +granite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hips +were like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it. +Mab smacking the Himalayas. + +After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There +was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her +kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. +The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from +Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat +as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. The +seventy-two jars were untopped now, in a row on a board over the built-in +washtub. Seventy-two yawning for content. Squnch! Her enormous spoon +into the copper kettle and flop, gurgle, gooze, softly into the jars. +One--two--three--At the sixty-eighth, Marcia, without stirring or +lifting her lids, spoke into the sucky silence. + +"Momie?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"You'll be glad." + +Hattie, pausing at the sixty-eighth, "Why, dear?" + +"I came home in Nonie Grosbeck's automobile. I'm invited to a dinner +dance October the seventeenth. At their house in Gramercy Park." + +The words must have gone to Hattie's knees, because, dropping a spat of +mulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchen +chair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal set +on the shelf above it. + +"Marcy!" + +"And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I'm to +be her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invited +except Edwina Nelson, because her father's on nearly all the same boards +of directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and--" + +"Marcia! Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing had +happened! Child, sometimes I think you're made of ice." + +"Why, I'm glad, momie." + +But that's what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfaction +in Marcia's eyes. + +"Glad," said Hattie, the word full of tears. "Why, honey, you don't +realize it, but this is the beginning! This is the meaning of my +struggle to get you into Miss Harperly's school. It wasn't easy. I've +never told you the--strings I had to pull. Conservative people, you see. +That's what the Grosbecks are, too. Home people. The kind who can afford +to wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirty +years." + +"Nome's mother was born in the house they live in." + +"Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges. +Taxpayers. Policyholders. Church members. Oh, Marcia, those are the safe +people!" + +"There's a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church." + +"I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to the +make-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear for +you! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotel +room, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for just +throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's because +I'm too tired, Marcy. Too lonesome for home. On the road I always used +to think of all the families in the audience. The husbands and wives. +Brides and grooms. Sweethearts. After the performance they all went to +homes. To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks'. To cottages. To flats. +With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-room +table. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turned +back. And then--me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the dark +downtown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. The +dingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reach +over that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell of +disinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you." + +"Ugh!" + +"Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia! The unexciting people, maybe, but +the safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones." + +"Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy." + +"Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia." + +"Nonie goes to riding academy." + +"So shall you." + +"It's six dollars an hour." + +"I don't care." + +"Her father's retired except for being director in banks. And, +momie--they don't mind, dear--about us. Nonie knows that my--father +is--is separated and never lived at home with us. She's broad-minded. +She says just so there's no scandal, a divorce, or anything like that. +She said it's vulgar to cultivate only rich friends. She says she'd go +with me even if she's forbidden to." + +"Why, Marcy darling, why should she be forbidden?" + +"Oh, Nonie's broadminded. She says if two people are unsuited they +should separate, quietly, like you and my father. She knows we're one of +the first old Southern families on my father's side. I--I'm not trying +to make you talk about it, dear, but--but we are--aren't we?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"He--he was just--irresponsible. That's not being--not nice people, is +it?" + +"No, Marcy." + +"Nonie's not forbidden. She just meant in case, momie. You see, with +some old families like hers--the stage--but Nonie says her father +couldn't even say anything to that if he wanted to. His own sister went +on the stage once, and they had to hush it up in the papers." + +"Did you explain to her, Marcy, that stage life at its best can be full +of fine ideals and truth? Did you make her see how regular your own +little life has been? How little you know about--my work? How away I've +kept you? How I won't even play out-of-town engagements so we can always +be together in our little home? You must explain all those things to +your friends at Miss Harperly's. It helps--with steady people." + +"I have, momie, and she's going to bring me home every afternoon in +their automobile after we've called for her brother Archie at Columbia +Law School." + +"Marcy! the Grosbeck automobile bringing you home every day!" + +"And it's going to call for me the night of the party. Nonie's getting a +lemon taffeta." + +"I'll get you ivory, with a bit of real lace!" + +"Oh, momie, momie, I can scarcely wait!" + +"What did she say, Marcy, when she asked--invited you?" + +"She?" + +"Nonie." + +"Why--she--didn't invite me, momie." + +"But you just said--" + +"It was her brother Archie invited me. We called for him at Columbia Law +School, you see. It was he invited me. Of course Nonie wants me and said +'Yes' right after him--but it's he--who wants Nonie and me to be chums. +I--He--I thought--I--told--you--momie." + +Suddenly Marcia's eyes, almost with the perpendicular slits of her +kitten's in them, seemed to swish together like portières, shutting +Hattie behind them with her. + +"Oh--my Marcy!" said Hattie, dimly, after a while, as if from their +depths. "Marcy, dearest!" + +"At--at Harperly's, momie, almost all the popular upper-class girls +wear--a--a boy's fraternity pin." + +"Fraternity pin?" + +"It's the--the beginning of being engaged." + +"But, Marcy--" + +"Archie's a Pi Phi!" + +"A--what?" + +"A Pi Phi." + +"Phi--pie--Marcy--dear--" + + * * * * * + +On October 17th "Love Me Long" celebrated its two-hundredth performance. +Souvenir programs. A few appropriate words by the management. +A flashlight of the cast. A round of wine passed in the +after-the-performance gloom of the wings. Aqueous figures fading off in +the orderly back-stage fashion of a well-established success. + +Hattie kissed the star. They liked each other with the unenvy of their +divergent roles. Miss Robinson even humored some of Hattie's laughs. She +liked to feel the flame of her own fairness as she stood there waiting +for the audience to guffaw its fill of Hattie's drolleries; a narcissus +swaying reedily beside a black crocodile. + +She was a new star and her beauty the color of cloth of gold, and Hattie +in her lowly comedian way not an undistinguished veteran. So they could +kiss in the key of a cat cannot unseat a king. + +But, just the same, Miss Robinson's hand flew up automatically against +the dark of Hattie's lips. + +"I don't fade off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. +I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never so +much as a speck or a spot on her. My cream don't fade." + +"Of course not, dear! How silly of me! Kiss me again." + +That was kind enough of her. Oh yes, they got on. But sometimes Hattie, +seated among her sagging headstones, would ache with the dry sob of the +black crocodile who yearned toward the narcissus.... + +Quite without precedent, there was a man waiting for her in the wings. + +The gloom of back-stage was as high as trees and Hattie had not seen +him in sixteen years. But she knew. With the stunned consciousness of a +stabbed person that glinting instant before the blood begins to flow. + +It was Morton Sebree--Marcia's father. + +"Morton!" + +"Hattie." + +"Come up to my dressing room," she said, as matter-of-factly as if her +brain were a clock ticking off the words. + +They walked up an iron staircase of unreality. Fantastic stairs. Wisps +of gloom. Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit very +hard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to her +pain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant little +ideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now. +Terribly. Morton was back. + +His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister. +It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of a +hand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again. +Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesque +show. + +Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in a +wire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks of +grease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end. +Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with the +gesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinks +seeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around her +lips. It made of her mouth a comedy blubber, her own rather firm lips +sliding about somewhere in the lightish swamp. That was all of Hattie +that looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with popping +whites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the irises +were in their pools, inviolate. + +"Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black." + +"I thought you were in Rio." + +"Got to hankering after the States, Hattie." + +"I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to think +maybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one." + +"No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while." + +"Where?" + +"Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?" + +"No." + +"Cancer." + +It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowly +soluble in it. Gurgling down. + +"O-oh!" + +"Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin' +behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night. +You looked right natural. Little heavier." + +"What do you want?" + +"Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular, +as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey." + +"Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking in +a box of echoes. + +"Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into the +theater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey." + +She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of the +foment of torture. + +"What's my looks to you?" + +"You've filled out." + +"You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven't +aged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. A +wall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone." + +"I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin' +streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had a +different way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn in +me." + +"Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!" + +"But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I ever +really cared for, too. You and m' mother." + +Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him. + +"Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuate +me only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathe +now. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eats +out the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from a +distance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine big +house with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were the +sickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! If +she and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that there +aren't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that a +Morris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good! +You're no good!" + +She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice. + +"Why, Hattie," he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!" + +"I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten apple +that can speck every one it touches." + +"That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong." + +"Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The very +sound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had. +I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is you +might as well go. I'm cured!" + +He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He was +dressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There was +still a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But his +hands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowly +stained, like meerschaum darkening. + +"Grantin' everything you say, Hattie--and I'm holdin' no brief for +myself--_I've_ been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been down +sick with hookworm." + +"With devilishness." + +"No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick man +all my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knocked +it out of me." + +"Faugh!" + +"I'm a new man since I'm well of it." + +"Hookworm! That's an easy word for ingrained no-'countness, deviltry, +and deceit. It wasn't hookworm came into the New Orleans stock company +where I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play big +things. It wasn't hookworm put me in a position where I had to take +anything I could get! So that instead of finding me playing leads +you find me here--black-face! It was a devil! A liar! A spendthrift, +no-'count son out of a family that deserved better. I've cried more +tears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry. +Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in New +Orleans! Peach Tree Street! I remember how beautiful even the name of +it was when you took me there--lying--and how horrible it became to me. +Those months when I used to see your mother's carriage drive by the +house twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains. That's +what I've never forgiven myself for. She was a woman who stood for +fine things in New Orleans. A good woman whom the whole town pitied! A +no-'count son squandering her fortune and dragging down the family name. +If only I had known all that then! She would have helped me if I had +appealed to her. She wouldn't have let things turn out secretly--the way +they did. She would have helped me. I--You--Why have you come here +to jerk knives out of my heart after it's got healed with the points +sticking in? You're nothing to me. You're skulking for a reason. You've +been hanging around, getting pointers about me. My life is my own! You +get out!" + +"The girl. She well?" + +It was a quiet question, spoken in the key of being casual, and Hattie, +whose heart skipped a beat, tried to corral the fear in her eyes to take +it casually, except that her eyelids seemed to grow old even as they +drooped. Squeezed grape skins. + +"You get out, Morton," she said. "You've got to get out." + +He made a cigarette in an old, indolent way he had of wetting it with +his smile. He was handsome enough after his fashion, for those who like +the rather tropical combination of dark-ivory skin, and hair a lighter +shade of tan. It did a curious thing to his eyes. Behind their allotment +of tan lashes they became neutralized. Straw colored. + +"She's about sixteen now. Little over, I reckon." + +"What's that to you?" + +"Blood, Hattie. Thick." + +"What thickened it, Morton--after sixteen years?" + +"Used to be an artist chap down in Rio. On his uppers. One night, +according to my description of what I imagined she looked like, he drew +her. Yellow hair, I reckoned, and sure enough--" + +"You're not worthy of the resemblance. It wouldn't be there if I had the +saying." + +"You haven't," he said, suddenly, his teeth snapping together as if +biting off a thread. + +"Nor you!" something that was the whiteness of fear lightening behind +her mask. She rose then, lifting her chair out of the path toward the +door and flinging her arm out toward it, very much after the manner of +Miss Robinson in Act II. + +"You get out, Morton," she said, "before I have you put out. They're +closing the theater now. Get out!" + +"Hattie," his calm enormous, "don't be hasty. A man that has come to his +senses has come back to you humble and sincere. A man that's been sick. +Take me back, Hattie, and see if--" + +"Back!" she said, lifting her lips scornfully away from touching the +word. "You remember that night in that little room on Peach Tree Street +when I prayed on my knees and kissed--your--shoes and crawled for your +mercy to stay for Marcia to be born? Well, if you were to lie on this +floor and kiss my shoes and crawl for my mercy I'd walk out on you the +way you walked out on me. If you don't go, I'll call a stage hand and +make you go. There's one coming down the corridor now and locking the +house. You go--or I'll call!" + +His eyes, with their peculiar trick of solubility in his color scheme, +seemed all tan. + +"I'll go," he said, looking slim and Southern, his imperturbability ever +so slightly unfrocked--"I'll go, but you're making a mistake, Hattie." + +Fear kept clanging in her. Fire bells of it. + +"Oh, but that's like you, Morton! Threats! But, thank God, nothing you +can do can harm me any more." + +"I reckon she's considerable over sixteen now. Let's see--" + +Fire bells. Fire bells. + +"Come out with what you want, Morton, like a man! You're feeling +for something. Money? Now that your mother is dead and her fortune +squandered, you've come to harass me? That's it! I know you, like a +person who has been disfigured for life by burns knows fire. Well, I +won't pay!" + +"Pay? Why, Hattie--I want you--back--" + +She could have cried because, as she sat there blackly, she was sick +with his lie. + +"I'd save a dog from you." + +"Then save--her--from me." + +The terrible had happened so quietly. Morton had not raised his voice; +scarcely his lips. + +She closed the door then and sat down once more, but that which had +crouched out of their talk was unleashed now. + +"That's just exactly what I intend to do." + +"How?" + +"By saving her sight or sound of you." + +"You can't, Hattie." + +"Why?" + +"I've come back." There was a curve to his words that hooked into her +heart like forceps about a block of ice. But she outstared him, holding +her lips in the center of the comedy rim so that he could see how firm +their bite. + +"Not to me." + +"To her, then." + +"Even you wouldn't be low enough to let her know--" + +"Know what?" + +"Facts." + +"You mean she doesn't know?" + +"Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I've +kept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband and +wife--who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her--" And +suddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayed +her. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leap +of her error into her consciousness. + +"Oh," he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely as +sorghum in the pouring. + +"You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!" + +"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected. +Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it." + +"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you are +and what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you going +to do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips were +taking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device. + +"Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of great +pink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!" + +"Wouldn't tell what?" + +He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying to +fasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyes +there. Only the neutral, tricky tan. + +"You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more important +than anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared like +her to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little school +friends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton. +For God's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care so +terribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'll +tell her then. But for God's sake, Morton, let us live--now!" + +"Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to one +of these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lie +to her won't be a lie any more." + +"Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?" + +"I'll marry you." + +"You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gotten +on a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over the +jar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're so +easy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can get +the coward words out. Marry you! You fool!" + +It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, sucking +back her lower lip, then hurling. + +"Well, Hattie," he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that's +pretty plain." + +"I reckon it is, Morton." + +"All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to the +grave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something to +know I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out of +here for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it." + +"I'd advise you to." + +"No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Entitled to a +little natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. The +girl. No harm." + +"You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn't +tell--that--child!" + +"Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well, +you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'." + +"You can't put your foot--" + +"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Course +there's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. I +wouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I even +know where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, +Miss Harperly's." + +"You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her +tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. +They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she +could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God! +Marcia! + +That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately she +could manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! She +must keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black. + +"Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab." + +"How do you know it's--up?" + +"Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural to +put it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate." + +"So--you _have_--been watching." + +"Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got to +town--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's a +mighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl brings +your--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a family +of Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon." + +"O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rolling +suddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake! +Please!" + +He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheek +and its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid's +dress. + +"By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream if +you handle it right, honey." + +"My way is the right way for me." + +"But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on the +job. Promote it!" + +"Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of your +mother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of your +wildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you in +South America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way you +squandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. The +alfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't get +your hands on my affairs. My way suits me!" + +The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in the +circular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the door +and the hairy voice that came through. + +"All out!" + +"Yes," she said, without knowing it. + +"You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman like +you, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something with +a fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regard +for the girl. Black-face!" + +"What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kept +her like a lily!" + +"Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eating +humble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart, +I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwich +to-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years is +the truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's done +every day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there cream +will--" + +She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leaves +scuttling ahead of wind. + +"The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, piece +by piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to you +again is, 'Get out!'" + +"All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin' +to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!" + +"No. It's late. She's--" + +"Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another. +If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'd +let me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but if +I were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me." + +"Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer without +trying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Would +a hundred--two hundred--" + +"I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--" + +"You see, Morton, she's such a little thing. A little thing with big +eyes. All her life those eyes have looked right down into me, believing +everything I ever told her. About you too, Morton. Good things. Not that +I'm ashamed of anything I ever told her. My only wrong was ignorance. +And innocence. Innocence of the kind of lesson I was to learn from you." + +"Nothin' was ever righted by harping on it, Hattie." + +"But I want you to understand--O God, make him understand--she's such a +sensitive little thing. And as things stand now--glad I'm her mother. +Yes, glad--black-face and all! Why, many's the time I've gone home from +the theater, too tired to take off my make-up until I got into my own +rocker with my ankles soaking in warm water. They swell so terribly +sometimes. Rheumatism, I guess. Well, many a time when I kissed her in +her sleep she's opened her eyes on me--black-face and all. Her arms up +and around me. I was there underneath the black! She knows that! And +that's what she'll always know about me, no matter what you tell her. +I'm there--her mother--underneath the black! You hear, Morton! That's +why you must let us--live--" + +"My proposition is the mighty decent one of a gentleman." + +"She's only a little baby, Morton. And just at that age where being +like all the other boys and girls is the whole of her little life. It's +killing--all her airiness and fads and fancies. Such a proper little +young lady. You know, the way they clip and trim them at finishing +school. Sweet-sixteen nonsense that she'll outgrow. To-night, Morton, +she's at a party. A boy's. Her first. That fine-looking yellow-haired +young fellow and his sister that bring her home every afternoon. At +their house. Gramercy Park. A fine young fellow--Phi Pi--" + +"Looka here, Hattie, are you talking against time?" + +"She's home asleep by now. I told her she had to be in bed by eleven. +She minds me, Morton. I wouldn't--couldn't--wake her. Morton, Morton, +she's yours as much as mine. That's God's law, no matter how much man's +law may have let you shirk your responsibility. Don't hurt your own +flesh and blood by coming back to us--now. I remember once when you cut +your hand it made you ill. Blood! Blood is warm. Red. Sacred stuff. +She's your blood, Morton. You let us alone when we needed you. Leave us +alone, now that we don't!" + +"But you do, Hattie girl. That's just it. You're running things a +woman's way. Why, a man with the right promoting ideas--" + +There was a fusillade of bangs on the door now, and a shout as if the +hair on the voice were rising in anger. + +"All out or the doors 'll be locked on yuh! Fine doings!" + +She grasped her light wrap from its hook, and her hat with its whirl of +dark veil, fitting it down with difficulty over the fizz of wig. + +"Come, Morton," she said, suddenly. "I'm ready. You're right, now or +never." + +"Your face!" + +"No time now. Later--at home! She'll know that I'm there--under the +black!" + +"So do I, Hattie. That's why I--" + +"I'm not one of the ready-made heroines you read about. That's not my +idea of sacrifice! I'd let my child hang her head of my shame sooner +than stand up and marry you to save her from it. Marcia wouldn't want me +to! She's got your face--but my character! She'll fight! She'll glory +that I had the courage to let you tell her the--truth! Yes, she will," +she cried, her voice pleading for the truth of what her words exclaimed. +"She'll glory in having saved me--from you! You can come! Now, too, +while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't want +you skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head--or hers! You +can tell her to-night--but in my presence! Come!" + +"Yes, sir," he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!" +Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click. +"Yes--sir!" + +They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat of +rain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timbers +taxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did something +horrid to her. + +It was as if the skull of her, set in torment, were looking through a +transparent black mask, but, because there were not lips, forced to +grin. + +And yet, do you know that while she rode with him Hattie's heart was +high? So high that when she left him finally, seated in her little +lamplit living room, it was he whose unease began to develop. + +"I--If she's asleep, Hattie--" + +Her head looked so sure. Thrust back and sunk a little between the +shoulders. + +"If she's asleep, I'll wake her. It's better this way. I'm glad, now. I +want her to see me save myself. She would want me to. You banked on mock +heroics from me, Morton. You lost." + +Marcia was asleep, in her narrow, pretty bed with little bowknots +painted on the pale wood. About the room all the tired and happy muss of +after-the-party. A white-taffeta dress with a whisper of real lace at +the neck, almost stiffishly seated, as if with Marcia's trimness, on +a chair. A steam of white tulle on the dressing table. A buttonhole +gardenia in a tumbler of water. One long white-kid glove on the table +beside the night light. A naked cherub in a high hat, holding a pink +umbrella for the lamp shade. + +"Dear me! Dear me!" screamed Hattie to herself, fighting to keep her +mind on the plane of casual things. "She's lost a glove again. Dear me! +Dear me! I hope it's a left one to match up with the right one she saved +from the last pair. Dear me!" + +She picked up a white film of stocking, turning and exploring with +spread fingers in the foot part for holes. There was one! Marcia's big +toe had danced right through. "Dear me!" + +Marcia sleeping. Very quietly and very deeply. She slept like that. +Whitely and straightly and with the covers scarcely raised for the ridge +of her slim body. + +Sometimes Marcia asleep could frighten Hattie. There was something about +her white stilliness. Lilies are too fair and so must live briefly. +That thought could clutch so that she would kiss Marcia awake. Kiss her +soundly because Marcia's sleep could be so terrifyingly deep. + +"Marcia," said Hattie, and stood over her bed. Then again, "Mar-cia!" On +more voice than she thought her dry throat could yield her. + +There was the merest flip of black on the lacy bosom of Marcia's +nightgown, and Hattie leaned down to fleck it. No. It was a pin--a small +black-enameled pin edged in pearls. Automatically Hattie knew. + +"Pi Phi!" + +"Marcia," cried Hattie, and shook her a little. She hated so to waken +her. Always had. Especially for school on rainy days. Sometimes didn't. +Couldn't. Marcia came up out of sleep so reluctantly. A little dazed. A +little secretive. As if a white bull in a dream had galloped off with +her like Persephone's. + +Only Hattie did not know of Persephone. She only knew that Marcia slept +beautifully and almost breathlessly. Sweet and low. It seemed silly, +sleeping beautifully. But just the same, Marcia did. + +Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marcia +should know. Now, too, while her heart was so high. + +Sometimes it took as many as three kisses to awaken Marcia. Hattie bent +for the first one, a sound one on the tip of her lip. + +"Marcia!" she cried. "Marcy, wake up!" and drew back. + +Something had happened! Darkly. A smudge the size of a quarter and +the color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly on +Marcia's whiteness. + +Hattie had smudged Marcia! _Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_ + +There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge. + + * * * * * + +It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat dangling +from soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else. +Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent about +it. + +"We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married," he +said. + +"Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia." + +"Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her. + +"Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without noting +that his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--" + +"To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour for +Greenwich." + +He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur. + +"Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now." + +"Of course," he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strapped +me--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help." + +She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehow +her fingers were not flexible enough to open it. + +His were. + +There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactly +as he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence. + +Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, banging +shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck by +lightning. + +And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder. + + + + +GUILTY + + +To the swift hiss of rain down soot-greasy window panes and through a +medley of the smells of steam off wet overcoats and a pale stench +of fish, a judge turned rather tired Friday-afternoon eyes upon the +prisoner at the bar, a smallish man in a decent-enough salt-and-pepper +suit and more salt than pepper in his hair and mustache. + +"You have heard the charge against you," intoned the judge in the holy +and righteous key of justice about to be administered. "Do you plead +guilty or not guilty?" + +"I--I plead guilty of not having told her facts that would have helped +her to struggle against the--the thing--her inheritance." + +"You must answer the Court directly. Do you--" + +"You see, Your Honor--my little girl--so little--my promise. Yes, yes, +I--I plead guilty of keeping her in ignorance of what she should have +known, but you see, Your Honor, my little gi--" + +"Order! Answer to the point. Do you," began the judge again, "plead +guilty or not guilty?" his tongue chiming the repetition into the +waiting silence like a clapper into a bell. + +The prisoner at the bar thumbed his derby hat after the immemorial +dry-fingered fashion of the hunted meek, his mouth like an open wound +puckering to close. + +"Guilty or not guilty, my man? Out with it." + +Actually it was not more than a minute or two before the prisoner found +reply, but it was long enough for his tortured eye to flash inward and +backward with terrible focus.... + + * * * * * + +On its long cross-town block, Mrs. Plush's boarding house repeated +itself no less than thirty-odd times. Every front hall of them smelled +like cold boiled potato, and the gilt chair in the parlor like banana. +At dinner hour thirty-odd basement dining rooms reverberated, not +uncheerfully, to the ironstone clatter of the canary-bird bathtub of +succotash, the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, and +on Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, +oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-down +high shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pints +of water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle with old +broom runts. + +If Mrs. Plush's house broke rank at all, it did so by praiseworthy +omission. In that row of the fly-by-night and the van-by-day, the moving +or the express wagon seldom backed up before No. 28, except immediately +preceding a wedding or following a funeral. And never, in twenty-two +years of respectable tenancy, had the furtive lodger oozed, under +darkness, through the Plush front door by night, or a huddle of +sidewalk trunks and trappings staged the drab domestic tragedy of the +dispossessed. + +The Kellers (second-story back) had eaten their satisfied way through +fourteen years of the breakfasts of apple sauce or cereal; choice of ham +and eggs any style or country sausage and buckwheat cakes. + +Jeanette Peopping, born in the back parlor, was married out of the +front. + +On the night that marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Dangs into +the third-floor alcove room there was frozen pudding with hot fudge +sauce for dessert, and a red-paper bell ringing silently from the +dining-room chandelier. + +For the eight years of their placid connubiality Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jett +had occupied the second-story front. + +Stability, that was the word. Why, Mrs. Plush had dealt with her corner +butcher for so long that on crowded Saturday mornings it was her custom +to step without challenge into the icy zone of the huge refrigerator, +herself pinching and tearing back the cold-storage-bitten wings of +fowls, weighing them with a fidelity to the ounce, except for a few +extra giblets (Mr. Keller loved them), hers, anyhow, most of the time, +for the asking. + +Even the nearest drug store, wary of that row of the transient +hat-on-the-peg, off-the-peg, would deliver to No. 28 a mustard plaster +or a deck of cards and charge without question. + +To the Jett Fish Company, "Steamers, Hotels, and Restaurants +Supplied--If It Swims We Have It," Mrs. Plush paid her bill quarterly +only, then Mr. Jett deducting the sum delicately from his board. + +So it may be seen that Mrs. Plush's boarding house offered scanty palate +to the dauber in local color. + +On each of the three floors was a bathroom, spotlessly clean, with a +neat hand-lettered sign over each tin tub: + + DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU + + PLEASE WASH OUT THE TUB AFTER YOU + +Upon the outstanding occasion of the fly in the soup and Mr. Keller's +subsequent deathly illness, the regrettable immersion had been directly +traceable, not to the kitchen, but to the dining-room ceiling. It was +November, a season of heavy dipterous mortality. Besides, Mrs. Peopping +had seen it fall. + +Nor entered here the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffy +stacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. +Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea and +half an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to settle it. + +The Jetts, with whom we have really to do, drank two cups apiece at +breakfast. Mrs. Jett, to the slight aid and abetment of one of her two +rolls, stopped right there; Mr. Jett plunging on into choice-of-- + +The second roll Mrs. Jett usually carried away with her from the table. +Along about ten o'clock she was apt to feel faint rather than hungry. + +"Gone," she called it. "Feeling a little gone." + +Not that there was a suggestion of frailty about Mrs. Jett. Anything but +that. On the contrary, in all the eight years in the boarding house, +she held the clean record of not a day in bed, and although her history +previous to that time showed as many as fifteen hours a day on duty in +the little fancy-goods store of her own proprietorship, those years +showed her guilty of only two incapacitated days, and then because she +ran an embroidery needle under her finger nail and suffered a slight +infection. + +Yet there was something about Emma Jett--eight years of married life +had not dissipated it--that was not eupeptic; something of the sear and +yellow leaf of perpetual spinsterhood. She was a wintry little body +whose wide marriage band always hung loosely on her finger with an air +of not belonging; wore an invariable knitted shawl iced with beads +across her round shoulders, and frizzed her graying bangs, which, +although fruit of her scalp, had a set-on look. Even the softness to her +kind gray eyes was cozy rather than warm. + +She could look out tabbily from above a lap of handiwork, but in her +boudoir wrapper of gray flannelette scalloped in black she was scrawny, +almost rangy, like a horse whose ribs show. + +"I can no more imagine those two courting," Mrs. Keller, a proud twin +herself and proud mother of twins, remarked one afternoon to a euchre +group. "They must have sat company by correspondence. Why, they won't +even kiss when he comes home if there's anybody in the room!" + +"They kiss, all right," volunteered Mrs. Dang of the bay-window alcove +room, "and she waves him good-by every morning clear down the block." + +"You can't tell about anybody nowadays," vouchsafed some one, +tremendously. + +But in the end the consensus of opinion, unanimous to the vote, was: +Lovely woman, Mrs. Jett. + +Nice couple; so unassuming. The goodness looks out of her face; and so +reserved! + +But it was this aura of reserve that kept Mrs. Jett, not without a bit +of secret heartache about it, as remote from the little world about her +as the yolk of an egg is remote from the white. Surrounded, yet no part +of those surroundings. No osmosis took place. + +Almost daily, in some one or another's room, over Honiton lace or the +making of steel-bead chatelaine bags, then so much in vogue, those +immediate, plushy-voiced gatherings of the members of the plain gold +circle took place. Delicious hours of confidence, confab, and the +exchanges of the connubially loquacious. + +The supreme _lèse majesté_ of the married woman who wears her state of +wedlock like a crown of blessed thorns; bleeds ecstatically and swaps +afternoon-long intimacies, made nasty by the plush in her voice, with +her sisters of the matrimonial dynasty. + +Mrs. Jett was also bidden, by her divine right, to those conclaves of +the wives, and faithfully she attended, but on the rim, as it were. +Bitterly silent she sat to the swap of: + +"That's nothing. After Jeanette was born my hair began to fall out just +as if I had had typhoid"; or, "Both of mine, I am proud to say, were +bottle babies"; and once, as she listened, her heart might have been a +persimmon, puckering: "The idea for a woman of forty-five to have her +first! It's not fair to the child." + +They could not, of course, articulate it, but the fact of the matter was +not alone that Mrs. Jett was childless (so was Mrs. Dang, who somehow +belonged), it was that they sensed, with all the antennae of their busy +little intuitions, the ascetic odor of spinsterhood which clung to Mrs. +Jett. She was a little "too nice." Would flush at some of the innuendoes +of the _contes intimes_, tales of no luster and dulled by soot, but in +spite of an inner shrinkage would loop up her mouth to smile, because +not to do so was to linger even more remotely outside the privileged rim +of the wedding band. + +Evenings, after these gatherings, Mrs. Jett was invariably even a bit +gentler than her wont in her greetings to Mr. Jett. + +Of course, they kissed upon his arrival home, comment to the contrary +notwithstanding, in a taken-for-granted fashion, perhaps, but there was +something sweet about their utter unexcitement; and had the afternoon +session twisted her heart more than usual, Mrs. Jett was apt to place a +second kiss lightly upon the black and ever so slightly white mustache, +or lay her cheek momentarily to his, as if to atone by thus yearning +over him for the one aching and silent void between them. + +But in the main Henry Jett was a contented and happy man. + +His wife, whom he had met at a church social and wooed in the front of +the embroidery and fancy-goods store, fitted him like the proverbial +glove--a suede one. In the eight years since, his fish business had +almost doubled, and his expenses, if anything, decreased, because more +and more it became pleasanter to join in the evening game of no-stakes +euchre down in the front parlor or to remain quietly upstairs, a +gas lamp on the table between them, Mr. Jett in a dressing gown of +hand-embroidered Persian design and a newspaper which he read from first +to last; Mrs. Jett at her tranquil process of fine needlework. + +Their room abounded in specimens of it. Centerpieces of rose design. +Mounds of cushions stamped in bulldog's head and pipe and appropriately +etched in colored floss. A poker hand, upheld by realistic five fingers +embroidered to the life, and the cuff button denoted by a blue-glass +jewel. Across their bed, making it a dais of incongruous splendor, was +flung a great counterpane of embroidered linen, in design as narrative +as a battle-surging tapestry and every thread in it woven out of these +long, quiet evenings by the lamp side. + +He was exceedingly proud of her cunning with a needle, so fine that its +stab through the cloth was too slight to be seen, and would lose no +occasion to show off the many evidences of her delicate workmanship that +were everywhere about the room. + +"It's like being able to create a book or a piece of music, Em, to say +all that on a piece of cloth with nothing but a needle." + +"It's a good thing I am able to create something, Henry," placing her +thimbled hand on his shoulder and smiling down. She was slightly the +taller. + +It was remarkable how quick and how tender his intuitions could be. +An innuendo from her, faint as the brush of a wing, and he would +immediately cluck with his tongue and throw out quite a bravado of +chest. + +"You're all right, Em. You suit me." + +"And you suit me, Henry," stroking his hand. + +This he withdrew. It was apt to smell of fish and he thought that once +or twice he had noticed her draw back from it, and, anyway, he was +exceedingly delicate about the cling of the rottenly pungent fish odor +of his workadays. + +Not that he minded personally. He had long ago ceased to have any +consciousness of the vapors that poured from the bins and the incoming +catches into his little partitioned-off office. But occasionally he +noticed that in street cars noses would begin to crinkle around him, +and every once in a while, even in a crowded conveyance he would find +himself the center of a little oasis of vacant seats which he had +created around himself. + +Immediately upon his arrival home, although his hands seldom touched the +fish, he would wash them in a solution of warm water and carbolic +acid, and most of the time he changed his suit before dinner, from a +salt-and-pepper to a pepper-and-salt, the only sartorial variety in +which he ever indulged. + +His wife was invariably touched by this little nicety of his, and +sometimes bravely forced his hand to her cheek to prove her lack of +repugnance. + +Boarding-house lore had it correctly. They were an exceedingly nice +couple, the Jetts. + +One day in autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhaven +oyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one of +the afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back +parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jetts +loved to borrow Sunday mornings, while she was still in her little +nightdress, playing paper dolls in the background. + +Her embroidery hoop, with a large shaded pink rose in the working, had, +contrary to her custom, fallen from idle hands, and instead of following +the dart of the infinitesimal needle, Mrs. Jett's eyes were burningly +upon Mrs. Peopping, following, with almost lip-reading intensity, that +worthy lady's somewhat voluptuous mouthings. + +She was a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked as +if at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets and +a characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to an +explosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it would hold. + +It had been a long tale of obstetrical fact and fancy, told plushily, +of course, against the dangerous little ears of Jeanette, and at its +conclusion Mrs. Peopping's steel-bead bag, half finished, lay in a +huddle at her feet, her pink and flabby face turned reminiscently toward +the fire. + +"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanette +until the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis, +you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmas +present to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn't +have gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women go +through--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselves +they would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall and +turn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I've +been a great sufferer in my day." + +"Thu, thu, thu," and, "I could tell tales," and, "I've been through my +share"--from various points of vantage around the speaker. + +It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straight +chair, and put her question. + +There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if an +intruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only the +most negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping. + +"Forty-three." + +Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in point +that had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital. + +"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on +_ad infinitum, ad lib._, and _ad nauseaum_. + +That night Mrs. Jett did an unprecedented thing. She crept into the +crevice of her husband's arm from behind as he stood in his waistcoat, +washing his hands in the carbolic solution at the bowl and washstand. +He turned, surprised, unconsciously placing himself between her and the +reeky water. + +"Henry," she said, rubbing up against the alpaca back to his vest like +an ingratiating Maltese tabby, "Hen-ery." + +"In a minute, Em," he said, rather puzzled and wishing she would wait. + +Suddenly, swinging herself back from him by his waistcoat lapel, easily, +because of his tenseness to keep her clear of the bowl of water, she +directed her eyes straight into his. + +"Hen-ery--Hen-ery," each pronouncement of his name surging higher in her +throat. + +"Why, Em?" + +"Hen-ery, I haven't words sweet enough to tell you." + +"Em, tell what?" And stopped. He could see suddenly that her eyes were +full of new pins of light and his lightening intuition performed a +miracle of understanding. + +"Emmy!" he cried, jerking her so that her breath jumped, and at the +sudden drench of tears down her face sat her down, supporting her +roundish back with his wet hands, although he himself felt weak. + +"I--can't say--what I feel, Henry--only--God is good and--I'm not +afraid." + +He held her to his shoulder and let her tears rain down into his watch +pocket, so shaken that he found himself mouthing silent words. + +"God is good, Henry, isn't He?" + +"Yes, Emmy, yes. Oh, my Emmy!" + +"It must have been our prayers, Henry." + +"Well," sheepishly, "not exactly mine, Emmy; you're the saint of this +family. But I--I've wished." + +"Henry. I'm so happy--Mrs. Peopping had Jeanette at forty-three. Three +years older than me. I'm not afraid." + +It was then he looked down at her graying head there, prone against his +chest, and a dart of fear smote him. + +"Emmy," he cried, dragging her tear-happy face up to his, "if you're +afraid--not for anything in the world! You're _first_, Em." + +She looked at him with her eyes two lamps. + +"Afraid? That's the beautiful _part_, Henry. I'm not. Only happy. Why +afraid, Henry--if others dare it at--forty-three--You mean because it +was her second?" + +He faced her with a scorch of embarrassment in his face. + +"You--We--Well, we're not spring chickens any more, Em. If you are sure +it's not too--" + +She hugged him, laughing her tears. + +"I'm all right, Henry--we've been too happy not to--to--perpetuate--it." + +This time he did not answer. His cheek was against the crochet of her +yoke and she could hear his sobs with her heart. + + * * * * * + +Miraculously, like an amoeba reaching out to inclose unto itself, the +circle opened with a gasp of astonishment that filled Mrs. Peopping's O +to its final stretch and took unto its innermost Emma Jett. + +Nor did she wear her initiation lightly. There was a new tint out in her +long cheeks, and now her chair, a rocker, was but one removed from Mrs. +Peopping's. + +Oh, the long, sweet afternoons over garments that made needlework +sublime. No longer the padded rose on the centerpiece or the futile +doily, but absurd little dresses with sleeves that she measured to the +length of her hand, and yokes cut out to the pattern of a playing card, +and all fretted over with feather-stitching that was frailer than +maidenhair fern and must have cost many an eye-ache, which, because of +its source, was easy to bear. + +And there happened to Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimes +comes to men and women in middle life. She who had enjoyed no particular +youth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before her +birth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquire +comeliness which her youth had never boasted. + +The round-shouldered, long-cheeked girl had matured gingerly to rather +sparse womanhood that now at forty relented back to a fulsome thirty. + +Perhaps it was the tint of light out in her face, perhaps the splendor +of the vision; but at any rate, in those precious months to come, Mrs. +Jett came to look herself as she should have looked ten years back. + +They were timid and really very beautiful together, she and Henry Jett. +He came to regard her as a vase of porcelain, and, in his ignorance, +regarded the doctor's mandates harsh; would not permit her to walk, but +ordered a hansom cab every day from three to four, Mrs. Jett alternating +punctiliously with each of the boarding-house ladies for driving +companion. + +Every noon, for her delectation at luncheon, he sent a boy from the +store with a carton of her special favorites--Blue Point oysters. She +suddenly liked them small because, as she put it, they went down easier, +and he thought that charming. Lynnhavens for mortals of tougher growth. + +Long evenings they spent at names, exercising their pre-determination +as to sex. "Ann" was her choice, and he was all for canceling his +preference for "Elizabeth," until one morning she awakened to the white +light of inspiration. + +"I have it! Why not Ann Elizabeth?" + +"Great!" And whistled so through his shaving that his mouth was rayed +with a dark sunburst of beard where the razor had not found surface. + +They talked of housekeeping, reluctantly, it is true, because Mrs. Plush +herself was fitting up, of hard-to-spare evenings, a basinette of pink +and white. They even talked of schools. + +Then came the inevitable time when Mrs. Jett lost interest. Quite out of +a clear sky even the Blue Points were taboo, and instead of joining this +or that card or sewing circle, there were long afternoons of stitching +away alone, sometimes the smile out on her face, sometimes not. + +"Em, is it all right with you?" Henry asked her once or twice, +anxiously. + +"Of course it is! If I weren't this way--now--it wouldn't be natural. +You don't understand." + +He didn't, so could only be vaguely and futilely sorry. + +Then one day something quite horrible, in a small way, happened to Mrs. +Jett. Sitting sewing, suddenly it seemed to her that through the very +fluid of her eyeballs, as it were, floated a school of fish. Small +ones--young smelts, perhaps--with oval lips, fillips to their tails, and +sides that glisted. + +She laid down her bit of linen lawn, fingers to her lids as if to +squeeze out their tiredness. She was trembling from the unpleasantness, +and for a frightened moment could not swallow. Then she rose, shook out +her skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up to +Mrs. Dang's, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroit +questions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous state +in her "condition" was highly normal. + +She felt easier, but there was the same horrid recurrence three times +that week. Once during an evening of lotto down in the front parlor she +pushed back from the table suddenly, hand flashing up to her throat. + +"Em!" said Mr. Jett, who was calling the numbers. + +"It's nothing," she faltered, and then, regaining herself more fully, +"nothing," she repeated, the roundness out in her voice this time. + +The women exchanged knowing glances. + +"She's all right," said Mrs. Peopping, omnipotently. "Those things +pass." + +Going upstairs that evening, alone in the hallway, they flung an arm +each across the other's shoulder, crowding playfully up the narrow +flight. + +"Emmy," he said, "poor Em, everything will be all right." + +She restrained an impulse to cry. "Poor nothing," she said. + +But neither the next evening, which was Friday, nor for Fridays +thereafter, would she venture down for fish dinner, dining cozily up +in her room off milk toast and a fluffy meringue dessert prepared +especially by Mrs. Plush. It was floating-island night downstairs. + +Henry puzzled a bit over the Fridays. It was his heaviest day at the +business, and it was upsetting to come home tired and feel her place +beside him at the basement dinner table vacant. + +But the women's nods were more knowing than ever, the reassuring +insinuations more and more delicate. + +But one night, out of one of those stilly cisterns of darkness that +between two and four are deepest with sleep, Henry was awakened on the +crest of such a blow and yell that he swam up to consciousness in a +ready-made armor of high-napped gooseflesh. + +A regrettable thing had happened. Awakened, too, on the high tide of +what must have been a disturbing dream, Mrs. Jett flung out her arm as +if to ward off something. That arm encountered Henry, snoring lightly in +his sleep at her side. But, unfortunately, to that frightened fling of +her arm Henry did not translate himself to her as Henry. + +That was a fish lying there beside her! A man-sized fish with its mouth +jerked open to the shape of a gasp and the fillip still through its +enormous body, as if its flanks were uncomfortably dry. A fish! + +With a shriek that tore a jagged rent through the darkness Mrs. Jett +began pounding at the slippery flanks, her hands sliding off its +shininess. + +"Out! Out! Henry, where are you? Help me! O God, don't let him get me. +Take him away, Henry! Where are you? My hands--slippery! Where are +you--" + +Stunned, feeling for her in the darkness, he wanted to take her +shuddering form into his arms and waken her out of this horror, but with +each groping move of his her hurtling shrieks came faster, and finally, +dragging the bedclothing with her, she was down on the floor at the +bedside, blobbering. That is the only word for it--blobbering. + +He found a light, and by this time there were already other lights +flashing up in the startled household. When he saw her there in the ague +of a huddle on the floor beside the bed, a cold sweat broke out over him +so that he could almost feel each little explosion from the pores. + +"Why, Emmy--Emmy--my Emmy--my Emmy--" + +She saw him now and knew him, and tried in her poor and already +burningly ashamed way to force her chattering jaws together. + +"Hen-ery--dream--bad--fish--Hen-ery--" + +He drew her up to the side of the bed, covering her shivering knees as +she sat there, and throwing a blanket across her shoulders. Fortunately +he was aware that the soothing note in his voice helped, and so he sat +down beside her, stroking her hand, stroking, almost as if to hypnotize +her into quiet. + +"Henry," she said, closing her fingers into his wrists, "I must have +dreamed--a horrible dream. Get back to bed, dear. I--I don't know what +ails me, waking up like that. That--fish! O God! Henry, hold me, hold +me." + +He did, lulling her with a thousand repetitions of his limited store of +endearments, and he could feel the jerk of sobs in her breathing subside +and she seemed almost to doze, sitting there with her far hand across +her body and up against his cheek. + +Then came knocks at the door, and hurried explanations through the slit +that he opened, and Mrs. Peopping's eye close to the crack. + +"Everything is all right.... Just a little bad dream the missus had.... +All right now.... To be expected, of course.... No, nothing anyone can +do.... Good night. Sorry.... No, thank you. Everything is all right." + +The remainder of the night the Jetts kept a small light burning, after a +while Henry dropping off into exhausted and heavy sleep. For hours Mrs. +Jett lay staring at the small bud of light, no larger than a human eye. +It seemed to stare back at her, warning, Now don't you go dropping off +to sleep and misbehave again. + +And holding herself tense against a growing drowsiness, she didn't--for +fear-- + + * * * * * + +The morning broke clear, and for Mrs. Jett full of small reassurances. +It was good to hear the clatter of milk deliveries, and the first bar +of sunshine came in through the hand-embroidered window curtains like a +smile, and she could smile back. Later she ventured down shamefacedly +for the two cups of coffee, which she drank bravely, facing the +inevitable potpourri of comment from this one and that one. + +"That was a fine scare you gave us last night, Mrs. Jett." + +"I woke up stiff with fright. Didn't I, Will? Gracious! That first yell +was a curdler!" + +"Just before Jeanette was born I used to have bad dreams, too, but +nothing like that. My!" + +"My mother had a friend whose sister-in-law walked in her sleep right +out of a third-story window and was dashed to--" + +"Shh-h-h!" + +"It's natural, Mrs. Jett. Don't you worry." + +She really tried not to, and after some subsequent and private +reassurance from Mrs. Peopping and Mrs. Keller, went for her hansom ride +with a pleasant anticipation of the Park in red leaf, Mrs. Plush, in a +brocade cape with ball fringe, sitting erect beside her. + +One day, in the presence of Mrs. Peopping, Mrs. Jett jumped to her feet +with a violent shaking of her right hand, as if to dash off something +that had crawled across its back. + +"Ugh!" she cried. "It flopped right on my hand. A minnow! Ugh!" + +"A what?" cried Mrs. Peopping, jumping to her feet and her flesh seeming +to crawl up. + +"A minnow. I mean a bug--a June bug. It was a bug, Mrs. Peopping." + +There ensued a mock search for the thing, the two women, on all-fours, +peering beneath the chairs. In that position they met levelly, eye to +eye. Then without more ado rose, brushing their knees and reseating +themselves. + +"Maybe if you would read books you would feel better," said Mrs. +Peopping, scooping up a needleful of steel beads. "I know a woman who +made it her business to read all the poetry books she could lay hands +on, and went to all the bandstand concerts in the Park the whole time, +and now her daughter sings in the choir out in Saginaw, Michigan." + +"I know some believe in that," said Mrs. Jett, trying to force a smile +through her pallor. "I must try it." + +But the infinitesimal stitching kept her so busy. + + * * * * * + +It was inevitable, though, that in time Henry should begin to shoulder +more than a normal share of unease. + +One evening she leaned across the little lamplit table between them as +he sat reading in the Persian-design dressing gown and said, as rapidly +as her lips could form the dreadful repetition, "The fish, the fish, the +fish, the fish." And then, almost impudently for her, disclaimed having +said it. + +He urged her to visit her doctor and she would not, and so, secretly, he +did, and came away better satisfied, and with directions for keeping her +diverted, which punctiliously he tried to observe. + +He began by committing sly acts of discretion on his own accord. Was +careful not to handle the fish. Changed his suit now before coming +home, behind a screen in his office, and, feeling foolish, went out and +purchased a bottle of violet eau de Cologne, which he rubbed into his +palms and for some inexplicable reason on his half-bald spot. + +Of course that was futile, because the indescribably and faintly rotten +smell of the sea came through, none the less, and to Henry he was +himself heinous with scent. + +One Sunday morning, as was his wont, Mr. Jett climbed into his dressing +gown and padded downstairs for the loan of little Jeanette Peopping, +with whom he returned, the delicious nub of her goldilocks head showing +just above the blanket which enveloped her, eyes and all. + +He deposited her in bed beside Mrs. Jett, the little pink feet peeping +out from her nightdress and her baby teeth showing in a smile that Mr. +Jett loved to pinch together with thumb and forefinger. + +"Cover her up quick, Em, it's chilly this morning." + +Quite without precedent, Jeanette puckered up to cry, holding herself +rigidly to Mr. Jett's dressing gown. + +"Why, Jeanette baby, don't you want to go to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No!" Trying to ingratiate herself back into Mr. Jett's arms. + +"Baby, you'll take cold. Come under covers with Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! Take me back." + +"Oh, Jeanette, that isn't nice! What ails the child? She's always so +eager to come to me. Shame on Jeanette! Come, baby, to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! My mamma says you're crazy. Take me back--take me." + +For a frozen moment Henry regarded his wife above the glittering fluff +of little-girl curls. It seemed to him he could almost see her face +become smaller, like a bit of ice under sun. + +"Naughty little Jeanette," he said, shouldering her and carrying her +down the stairs; "naughty little girl." + +When he returned his wife was sitting locked in the attitude in which he +had left her. + +"Henry!" she whispered, reaching out and closing her hand over his so +that the nails bit in. "Not that, Henry! Tell me not that!" + +"Why, Em," he said, sitting down and trembling, "I'm surprised at you, +listening to baby talk! Why, Em, I'm surprised at you!" + +She leaned over, shaking him by the shoulder. + +"I know. They're saying it about me. I'm not that, Henry. I swear I'm +not that! Always protect me against their saying that, Henry. Not +crazy--not that! It's natural for me to feel queer at times--now. +Every woman in this house who says--that--about me has had her nervous +feelings. It's not quite so easy for me, as if I were a bit younger. +That's all. The doctor said that. But nothing to worry about. Mrs. +Peopping had Jeanette--Oh, Henry promise me you'll always protect me +against their saying that! I'm not that--I swear to you, Henry--not +that!" + +"I know you're not, Emmy. It's too horrible and too ridiculous to talk +about. Pshaw--pshaw!" + +"You do know I'm not, don't you? Tell me again you do know." + +"I do. Do." + +"And you'll always protect me against anyone saying it? They'll believe +you, Henry, not me. Promise me to protect me against them, Henry. +Promise to protect me against our little Ann Elizabeth ever thinking +that of--of her mother." + +"Why, Emmy!" he said. "Why, Emmy! I just promise a thousand times--" and +could not go on, working his mouth rather foolishly as if he had not +teeth and were rubbing empty gums together. + +But through her hot gaze of tears she saw and understood and, satisfied, +rubbed her cheek against his arm. + +The rest is cataclysmic. + +Returning home one evening in a nice glow from a January out-of-doors, +his mustache glistening with little frozen drops and his hands (he never +wore gloves) unbending of cold, Mrs. Jett rose at her husband's entrance +from her low chair beside the lamp. + +"Well, well!" he said, exhaling heartily, the scent of violet denying +the pungency of fish and the pungency of fish denying the scent of +violet. "How's the busy bee this evening?" + +For answer Mrs. Jett met him with the crescendo yell of a gale sweeping +around a chimney. + +"Ya-a-ah! Keep out--you! Fish! Fish!" she cried, springing toward him; +and in the struggle that ensued the tubing wrenched off the gas lamp and +plunged them into darkness. "Fish! I'll fix you! Ya-a-ah!" + +"Emmy! For God's sake, it's Henry! Em!" + +"Ya-a-ah! I'll fix you! Fish! Fish!" + + * * * * * + +Two days later Ann Elizabeth was born, beautiful, but premature by two +weeks. + +Emma Jett died holding her tight against her newly rich breasts, for a +few of the most precious and most fleeting moments of her life. + +All her absurd fears washed away, her free hand could lie without spasm +in Henry's, and it was as if she found in her last words a secret +euphony that delighted her. + +"Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful." + +Later in his bewildered and almost ludicrous widowerhood tears would +sometimes galumph down on his daughter's face as Henry rocked her of +evenings and Sunday mornings. + +"Sweet-beautiful," came so absurdly from under his swiftly graying +mustache, but often, when sure he was quite alone, he would say it over +and over again. + +"Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth." + + * * * * * + +Of course the years puttied in and healed and softened, until for Henry +almost a Turner haze hung between him and some of the stark facts of +Emma Jett's death, turping out horror, which is always the first to fade +from memory, and leaving a dear sepia outline of the woman who had been +his. + +At seventeen, Ann Elizabeth was the sun, the sky, the west wind, and the +shimmer of spring--all gone into the making of her a rosebud off the +stock of his being. + +His way of putting it was, "You're my all, Annie, closer to me than I am +to myself." + +She hated the voweling of her name, and because she was so nimble with +youth could dance away from these moods of his rather than plumb them. + +"I won't be 'Annie.' Please, daddy, I'm your Ann Elizabeth." + +"Ann Elizabeth, then. My Ann Elizabeth," an inner rhythm in him echoing: +Sweet-Beautiful. Sweet-Beautiful. + +There was actually something of the lark about her. She awoke with a +song, sometimes kneeling up in bed, with her pretty brown hair tousling +down over her shoulders and chirruping softly to herself into the little +bird's-eye-maple dressing-table mirror, before she flung her feet over +the side of the bed. + +And then, innate little housekeeper that she was, it was to the +preparing of breakfast with a song, her early morning full of antics. +Tiptoeing in to awaken her father to the tickle of a broom straw. +Spreading his breakfast piping hot, and then concealing herself behind a +screen, that he might marvel at the magic of it. And once she put salt +in his coffee, a fresh cup concealed behind the toast rack, and knee to +knee they rocked in merriment at his grimace. + +She loved thus to tease him, probably because he was so stolid that each +new adventure came to him with something of a shock. He was forever +being taken unawares, as if he could never become entirely accustomed to +the wonder of her, and that delighted her. Even the obviousness of his +slippers stuffed out with carrots could catch him napping. To her dance +of glee behind him, he kept poking and poking to get into them, only +the peck of her kiss upon his neck finally initiating him into the +absurdity. + +There was a little apartment of five rooms, twenty minutes removed by +Subway from the fish store; her bedroom, all pink and yellow maple; his; +a kitchen, parlor, and dining room worked out happily in white-muslin +curtains, spindle-legged parlor chairs, Henry's newfangled chifferobe +and bed with a fine depth of mattress, and a kitchen with eight shining +pots above the sink and a border of geese, cut out to the snip of Ann's +own scissors, waddling across the wall. + +It was two and a half years since Mrs. Plush had died, and the boarders, +as if spilled from an ark on rough seas, had struck out for diverse +shores. The marvel to them now was that they had delayed so long. + +"A home of our own, Ann. Pretty sweet, isn't it?" + +"Oh, daddy, it is!" + +"You mustn't overdo, though, baby. Sometimes we're not so strong as we +think we are. A little hired girl would be best." The fish business had +more than held its own. + +"But I love doing it alone, dad. It--it's the next best thing to a home +of--my own." + +He looked startled into her dreaming eyes. + +"Your own? Why, Annie, isn't this--your own?" + +She laid fingers against his eyes so that he could not see the pinkiness +of her. + +"You know what I mean, daddy--my--very--own." + +At that timid phrasing of hers Henry felt that his heart was actually +strangling, as if some one were holding it back on its systolic swing, +like a caught pendulum. + +"Why, Annie," he said, "I never thought--" + +But inevitably and of course it had happened. + +The young man's name was Willis--Fred E. Willis--already credit man in +a large wholesale grocery firm and two feet well on the road to +advancement. A square-faced, clean-faced fellow, with a clean love of +life and of Ann Elizabeth in his heart. + +Henry liked him. + +Ann Elizabeth loved him. + +And yet, what must have been a long-smoldering flame of fear shot up +through the very core of Henry's being, excoriating. + +"Why, Ann Elizabeth," he kept repeating, in his slow and always +inarticulate manner, "I--You--Mine--I just never thought." + +She wound the softest of arms about his neck. + +"I know, daddy-darlums, and I'll never leave you. Never. Fred has +promised we will always be together. We'll live right here with you, or +you with us." + +"Annie," he cried, "you mustn't ever--marry. I mean, leave daddy--that +way--anyway. You hear me? You're daddy's own. Just his by himself. +Nobody is good enough for my girl." + +"But, daddy," clouding up for tears, "I thought you liked Fred so much!" + +"I do, but it's you I'm talking about. Nobody can have you." + +"But I love him, daddy. This is terrible. I love him." + +"Oh, Ann, Ann! daddy hasn't done right, perhaps, but he meant well. +There are _reasons_ why he wants to keep his little girl with him +always--alone--his." + +"But, daddy dear, I promise you we'll never let you be lonely. Why, I +couldn't stand leaving you any more than you could--" + +"Not those reasons alone, Ann." + +"Then what?" + +"You're so young," he tried to procrastinate. + +"I'll be eighteen. A woman." + +All his faculties were cornered. + +"You're--so--Oh, I don't know--I--" + +"You haven't any reasons, dad, except dear silly ones. You can't keep me +a little girl all the time, dear. I love Fred. It's all planned. Don't +ruin my life, daddy--don't ruin my life." + +She was lovely in her tears and surprisingly resolute in her mind, and +he was more helpless than ever with her. + +"Ann--you're not strong." + +"Strong!" she cried, flinging back her curls and out her chest. "That is +a fine excuse. I'm stronger than most. All youngsters have measles and +scarlet fever and Fred says his sister Lucile out in Des Moines had St. +Vitus' dance when she was eleven, just like I did. I'm stronger than you +are, dad. I didn't get the flu and you did." + +"You're nervous, Annie. That's why I want always to keep you at +home--quiet--with me." + +She sat back, her pretty eyes troubled-up lakes. + +"You mean the dreams and the scared feeling, once in a while, that I +can't swallow. That's nothing. I know now why I was so frightened in my +sleep the other night. I told Fred, and he said it was the peach sundae +on top of the crazy old movie we saw that evening. Why, Jeanette +Peopping had to take a rest cure the year before she was married. Girls +are always more nervous than fellows. Daddy--you--you frighten me when +you look at me like that! I don't know what you mean! What-do-you-mean?" + +He was helpless and at bay and took her in his arms and kissed her hair. + +"I guess your old daddy is a jealous pig and can't bear to share his +girl with anyone. Can't bear to--to give her up." + +"You won't be giving up, daddums. I couldn't stand that, either. It +will be three of us then. You'll see. Look up and smile at your Ann +Elizabeth. Smile, now, smile." + +And of course he did. + +It was typical of her that she should be the busiest of brides-to-be, +her complete little trousseau, every piece down to the dishcloths, +monogrammed by her--A.E.W. + +Skillful with her needle and thrifty in her purchases, the outfit when +completed might have represented twice the outlay that Henry expended +on it. Then there were "showers,"--linen, stocking, and even a tin one; +gifts from her girl friends--cup, face, bath and guest towels; all the +tremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-loving +heart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile school +friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a +silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an +apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week +with her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt of +pink and white sateen. + +"Jeanette," said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in +a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel that +time when you had the nerv--the breakdown?" + +Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still bright +hair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharp +white teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills. + +"I was just about gone, that's what I was. Let anybody so much as look +at me twice and, pop! I'd want to cry about it." + +"And?" + +"For six weeks I didn't even have enough interest to ask after Truman, +who was courting me then. Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, that +nervous breakdown of mine!" + +"What--else?" + +"Isn't that enough?" + +"Did it--was it--was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?" + +"To swallow?" + +"Yes. I mean--did you ever dream or--think--or feel so frightened you +couldn't swallow?" + +"I felt lots of ways, but that wasn't one of them. Swallow! Who ever +heard of not swallowing?" + +"But didn't you ever dream, Jeanette--terrible things--such terrible +things--and get to thinking and couldn't stop yourself? Silly, +ghostly--things." + +Jeanette put down her sewing. + +"Ann, are you quizzing me about--your mother?" + +"My mother? Why my mother? Jeanette, what do you mean? Why do you ask me +a thing like that? What has my mother got to do with it? Jeanette!" + +Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back. + +"Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddie +how your mamma used to--to imagine all sorts of things just to pass the +time away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces. You're like her, +mamma used to say--a handy little body. Poor mamma, to think she had to +be taken before Truman, junior, was born! Ah me!" + +That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the little +parlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock saved +from the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbell +with a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying it +with eager, fumbling fingers, her father laying aside his newspaper to +venture three guesses as to its contents. + +"Another one of those syrup pitchers." + +"Oh dear!"--plucking the twine--"I hope not!" + +"Some more nut picks." + +"Daddy, stop calamity howling. Here's the card. Des Moines, Iowa. 'From +Lucile Willis, with love to her new sister.' Isn't that the sweetest! +It's something with a pearl handle." + +"I know. Another one of those pie-spade things." + +"Wrong! Wrong! It's two pieces. Oh!" + +It was a fish set of silver and mother-of-pearl. A large-bowled spoon +and a sort of Neptune's fork, set up in a white-sateen bed. + +"Say now, that _is_ neat," said Henry, appraising each piece with a show +of critical appreciation not really his. All this spread of the gewgaws +of approaching nuptials seemed meaningless to him; bored him. Butter +knives. Berry spoons. An embarrassment of nut picks and silver pitchers. +A sliver of silver paper cutter with a hilt and a dog's-head handle. And +now, for Fred's delectation this evening, the newly added fish set, so +appropriately inscribed from his sister. + +Tilting it against the lamp in the place of honor, Ann Elizabeth turned +away suddenly, looking up at her father in a sudden dumb panic of which +he knew nothing, her two hands at her fair, bare throat. It was so hard +again to swallow. Impossible. + +But finally, as was always the case, she did swallow, with a great surge +of relief. A little later, seated on her father's knee and plucking at +his tie in a futile fashion that he loved, she asked him: + +"Daddy--about mother--" + +They seldom talked of her, but always during these rare moments a +beautiful mood shaped itself between them. It was as if the mere breath +of his daughter's sweetly lipped use of "mother" swayed the bitter-sweet +memory of the woman he carried so faithfully in the cradle of his heart. + +"Yes, baby--about mother?" + +"Daddy"--still fingering at the tie--"was mother--was everything all +right with her up--to the very--end? I mean--no nerv--no pain? Just all +of a sudden the end--quietly. Or have you told me that just to--spare +me?" + +She could feel him stiffen, but when his voice came it was even. + +"Why, Ann, what a--question! Haven't I told you so often how mother just +peacefully passed on, holding a little pink you." + +Sweet-Beautiful--his heart was tolling through a sense of +panic--Sweet-Beautiful. + +"I know, daddy, but before--wasn't there any nerv--any sickness?" + +"No," he said, rather harshly for him. "No. No. What put such ideas into +your head?" + +You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of her +words was raging through his head: + +"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying--that. Promise me." + +And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protecting +her with her own daughter. + +"Then, daddy, just one more thing," and her underlip caught while she +waited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear silly +one of loneliness--why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?" + +"No, baby," he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if his +body were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?" + +Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happy +self again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly bald +head, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne. + +"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he held +suddenly very still and far from her reach. + +Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived. All the evening, +long after Henry lay on his deep-mattressed bed, staring, the little +apartment trilled to her laughter and the basso of Fred's. + + * * * * * + +A few weeks later there occurred a strike of the delivery men and truck +drivers of the city, and Henry, especially hard hit because of the +perishable nature of his product, worked early and late, oftentimes +loading the wagons himself and riding alongside of the precariously +driving "scab." + +Frequently he was as much as an hour or two late to dinner, and upon one +or two occasions had tiptoed out of the house before the usual hour +when Ann opened her eyes to the consciousness of his breakfast to be +prepared. + +They were trying days, the scheme of his universe broken into, and Henry +thrived on routine. + +The third week of the strike there were street riots, some of them +directly in front of the fish store, and Henry came home after a day of +the unaccustomed labor of loading and unloading hampers of fish, really +quite shaken. + +When he arrived Ann Elizabeth was cutting around the scalloped edge of +a doily with embroidery scissors, the litter of cut glass and silver +things out on the table and throwing up quite a brilliance under the +electric lamp, and from the kitchen the slow sizzle of waiting chops. + +"Whew!" he said, as he entered, both from the whiff he emanated as he +shook out of his overcoat, and from a great sense of his weariness. +Loading the hampers, you understand. "Whew!" + +Ann Elizabeth started violently, first at the whiff which preceded him +and at his approach into the room; then sat forward, her hand closing +into the arm of the chair, body thrust forward and her eyes widening +like two flowers opening. + +Then she rose slowly and slyly, and edged behind the table, her two +hands up about her throat. + +"Don't you come in here," she said, lowly and evenly. "I know you, but +I'm not afraid. I'm only afraid of you at night, but not by light. You +let me swallow, you hear! Get out! Get out!" + +Rooted, Henry stood. + +"Why, Annie!" he said in the soothing voice from out of his long ago, +"Annie--it's daddy!" + +"No, you don't," she cried, springing back as he took the step forward. +"My daddy'll kill you if he finds you here. He'll slit you up from your +tail right up to your gill. He knows how. I'm going to tell him and Fred +on you. You won't let me swallow. You're slippery. I can't stand it. +Don't you come near me! Don't!" + +"Annie!" he cried. "Good God! Annie, it's daddy who loves you!" Poor +Henry, her voice was still under a whisper and in his agony he committed +the error of rushing at her. "Annie, it's daddy! See, your own dear +daddy!" + +But she was too quick. Her head thrown back so that the neck muscles +strained out like an outraged deer's cornered in the hunt and her +eyes rolled up, Ann felt for and grasped the paper knife off the +trinket-littered table. + +"Don't you touch me--slit you up from tail to your gills." + +"Annie, it's daddy! Papa! For God's sake look at daddy--Ann! God!" And +caught her wrist in the very act of its plumb-line rush for his heart. + +He was sweating in his struggle with her, and most of all her strength +appalled him, she was so little for her terrible unaccountable power. + +"Don't touch me! You can't! You haven't any arms! Horrible gills!" + +She was talking as she struggled, still under the hoarse and frantic +whisper, but her breath coming in long soughs. "Slit-you-up-from-tail. +Slit--you--up--from--tail--to--gills." + +"Annie! Annie!" still obsessed by his anguished desire to reassure +her with the normality of his touch. "See, Annie, it's daddy. Ann +Elizabeth's daddy." With a flash her arm and the glint of the paper +cutter eluded him again and again, but finally he caught her by the +waist, struggling, in his dreadful mistake, to calm her down into the +chair again. + +"Now I've got you, darling. Now--sit--down--" + +"No, you haven't," she said, a sort of wild joy coming out in her +whisper, and cunningly twisting the upper half of her body back from +his, the hand still held high. "You'll never get me--you fish!" + +And plunged with her high hand in a straight line down into her throat. + +It was only when the coroner withdrew the sliver of paper knife from its +whiteness, that, coagulated, the dead and waiting blood began to ooze. + + * * * * * + +"Do you," intoned the judge for the third and slightly more impatient +time, "plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of murder against you?" + +This time the lips of the prisoner's wound of a mouth moved stiffly +together: + +"Guilty." + + + + +ROULETTE + + +I + +Snow in the village of Vodna can have the quality of hot white plush +of enormous nap, so dryly thick it packs into the angles where fences +cross, sealing up the windward sides of houses, rippling in great seas +across open places, flaming in brilliancy against the boles of ever so +occasional trees, and tucking in the houses up to the sills and down +over the eaves. + +Out in the wide places it is like a smile on a dead face, this snow +hush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broody +God, and out of that frozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills and +down to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangs +of childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, +twin sons were born. + +Sturdy sons, with something even in their first crescendo wails that +bespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a mother's +life-of-love. + +No Sicilian sunrise was ever more glossy with the patina of hope +than the iced one that crept in for a look at the wide-faced, +high-cheek-boned beauty of Sara Turkletaub as she lay with her sons to +the miracle of her full breasts, her hair still rumpled with the agony +of deliverance. So sweetly moist her eyes that Mosher Turkletaub, his +own brow damp from sweat of her writhings, was full of heartbeat, even +to his temples. + +Long before moontime, as if by magic of the brittle air, the tidings had +spread through the village, and that night, until the hand-hewn rafters +rang, the house of Turkletaub heralded with twofold and world-old fervor +the advent of the man-child. And through it all--the steaming warmth, +the laughter through bushy beards, the ministering of women wise and +foolish with the memory of their own pangs, the shouts of vodka-stirred +men, sheepish that they, too, were part custodians of the miracle of +life--through it all Sara Turkletaub lay back against her coarse bed, so +rich--so rich that the coves of her arms trembled each of its burden and +held tighter for fear somehow God might repent of his prodigality. + +That year the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to the +plow, and Mosher started heavy with his peddler's pack and returned +light. It was no trick now for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring in +the door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, +undertake household chores of water lugging, furniture heaving, +marketing with baskets that strained her arms from the sockets as she +carted them from the open square to their house on the outskirts, her +massive silhouette moving as solemnly as a caravan against the sky line. + +Rich months these were and easy to bear because they were backed by a +dream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer to +reality. + +"America!" + +The long evenings full of the smell of tallow; maps that curled under +the fingers; the well-thumbed letters from Aaron Turkletaub, older +brother to Mosher and already a successful pieceworker on skirts in +Brooklyn. The picture postcards from him of the Statue of Liberty! Of +the three of them, Aaron, Gussie, his wife, and little Leo, with donkey +bodies sporting down a beach labeled "Coney." A horrific tintype of +little Leo in tiny velveteen knickerbockers that fastened with large, +ruble-sized, mother-of-pearl buttons up to an embroidered sailor blouse. + +It was those mother-of-pearl buttons that captured Sara's imagination +so that she loved and wept over the tintype until little Leo quite +disappeared under the rust of her tears. Long after young Mosher, who +loved his Talmud, had retired to sway over it, Sara could yearn at this +tintype. + +Her sons in little knickerbockers that fastened to the waistband with +large pearl buttons! + +Her black-eyed Nikolai with the strong black hair and the virile little +profile that hooked against the pillow as he slept. + +Her red-headed Schmulka with the tight curls, golden eyes, and even +more thrusting profile. So different of feature her twins and yet so +temperamentally of a key. Flaming to the same childish passions, often +too bitter, she thought, and, trembling with an unnamed fear, would tear +them apart. + +Pull of the cruelties and the horrible torture complex of the young +male, they had once burned a cat alive, and the passion of their father +and their cries under flaying had beat about in her brain for weeks +after. Jealousies, each of the other, burned fiercely, and, aged three, +they scratched blood from one another over the favor of the shoemaker's +tot of a girl. And once, to her soul-sickness, Nikolai, the black one, +had found out the vodka and drunk of it until she discovered him in a +little stupor beside the cupboard. + +Yet--and Sara would recount with her eyes full of more tears than they +could hold the often-told tale of how Schmulka, who could bear no +injustice, championed the cause of little Mottke, the butcher's son, +against the onslaught of his drunken father, beating back the lumbering +attack with small fists tight with rage; of little Nikolai, who fell +down the jagged wall of a quarry and endured a broken arm for the six +hours until his father came home rather than burden his mother with what +he knew would be the agony of his pain. + +Red and black were Sara's sons in pigment. But by the time they were +four, almost identical in passion, inflammable both to the same angers, +the impulsive and the judiciary cunningly distributed in them. + +And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and the +wide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons, +so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pulling +power of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tight +as fists. And from the bookkeeping one snow-smelling night, to the +drip-drip of tallow, there came the decisive moment when America looked +exactly four months off! + +Then one starlit hour before dawn the pogrom broke. Redly, from the very +start, because from the first bang of a bayonet upon a door blood began +to flow and smell. + +There had been rumors. For days old Genendel, the ragpicker, had +prophetically been showing about the village the rising knobs of his +knotting rheumatic knuckles, ill omen of storm or havoc. A star had shot +down one night, as white and sardonic as a Cossack's grin and almost +with a hiss behind it. Mosher, returning from a peddling tour to a +neighboring village, had worn a furrow between his eyes. Headache, he +called it. Somehow Sara vaguely sensed it to be the ache of a fear. + +One night there was a furious pink tint on the distant horizon, and +borne on miles of the stiffly thin air came the pungency of burning +wood and flesh across the snowlight. Flesh! The red sky lay off in the +direction of Kishinef. What was it? The straw roof of a burning barn? +The precious flesh of an ox? What? Reb Baruch, with a married daughter +and eleven children in Kishinef, sat up all night and prayed and swayed +and trembled. + +Packed in airtight against the bite of the steely out-of-doors, most of +the village of Vodna--except the children and the half-witted Shimsha, +the _ganef_--huddled under its none-too-plentiful coverings that night +and prayed and trembled. + +At five o'clock that red dawn, almost as if a bayonet had crashed into +her dream, Sara, her face smeared with pallor, awoke to the smell of +her own hair singeing. A bayonet _had_ crashed, but through the door, +terribly! + +The rest is an anguished war frieze of fleeing figures; of running +hither and thither in the wildness of fear; of mothers running with +babes at breasts; of men, their twisted faces steaming sweat, locked in +the Laocoön embrace of death. Banners of flame. The exultant belch of +iridescent smoke. Cries the shape of steel rapiers. A mouth torn back to +an ear. Prayers being moaned. The sticky stench of coagulating blood. +Pillage. Outrage. Old men dragging household chattels. Figures crumpling +up in the outlandish attitudes of death. The enormous braying of +frightened cattle. A spurred heel over a face in that horrible moment +when nothing can stay its descent. The shriek of a round-bosomed girl +to the smear of wet lips across hers. The superb daring of her lover to +kill her. A babe in arms. Two. The black billowing of fireless smoke. + +A child in the horse trough, knocked there from its mother's arms by the +butt end of a bayonet, its red curls quite sticky in a circle of its +little blood. A half-crazed mother with a singed eyebrow, blatting over +it and groveling on her breasts toward the stiffening figure for the +warmth they could not give; the father, a black-haired child in his +arms, tearing her by force out of the zone of buckshot, plunging back +into it himself to cover up decently, with his coat, what the horse +trough held. + +Dawn. A huddle of fugitives. Footsteps of blood across the wide open +places of snow. A mother, whose eyes are terrible with what she has left +in the horse trough, fighting to turn back. A husband who literally +carries her, screaming, farther and farther across the cruel open +places. A town. A ship. The crucified eyes of the mother always looking +back. Back. + +And so it was that Sara and Mosher Turkletaub sailed for America with +only one twin--Nikolai, the black. + + * * * * * + +The Turkletaubs prospered. Turkletaub Brothers, Skirts, the year after +the war, paying a six-figure excess-profit tax. + +Aaron dwelt in a three-story, American-basement house in West 120th +Street, near Lenox Avenue, with his son Leo, office manager of the +Turkletaub Skirt Company, and who had recently married the eldest +daughter of an exceedingly well-to-do Maiden Lane jewelry merchant. + +The Mosher Turkletaubs occupied an eight-room-and-two-baths apartment +near by. Sara, with much of the fleetness gone from her face and a smile +tempered by a look of unshed tears, marketing now by white-enameled desk +telephone or, on days when the limp from an old burn down her thigh was +not too troublesome, walked up to a plate-glass butcher shop on 125th +Street, where there was not so much as a drop of blood on the marble +counter and the fowl hung in white, plucked window display with +garnitures of pink tissue paper about the ankles and even the dangling +heads wrapped so that the dead eyes might not give offense. + +It was a widely different Sara from the water lugger of those sweaty +Russian days. Such commonplaces of environment as elevator service, +water at the turning of a tap, potatoes dug and delivered to her +dumbwaiter, had softened Sara and, it is true, vanquished, along with +the years, some of the wing flash of vitality from across her face. So +was the tough fiber of her skin vanquished to almost a creaminess, and +her hair, due perhaps to the warm water always on tap, had taken on +a sheen, and even through its grayness grew out hardily and was well +trained to fall in soft scallops over the singed place. + +Yes, all in all, life had sweetened Sara, and, except for the occasional +look of crucifixion somewhere back in her eyes, had roly-polied her +into new rotundities of hip and shelf of bosom, and even to what +mischievously promised to be a scallop of second chin. + +Sara Turkletaub, daughter of a ne'er-do-well who had died before her +birth with the shadow of an unproved murder on him; Sara, who had run +swiftly barefoot for the first dozen summers of her life, and married, +without dower or approval, the reckless son of old Turkletaub, the +peddler; Sara, who once back in the dim years, when a bull had got loose +in the public square, had jerked him to a halt by swinging herself from +his horns, and later, standing by, had helped hold him for the emergency +of an un-kosher slaughter, not even paling at the slitting noises of the +knife. + +Mosher Turkletaub, who had peddled new feet for stockings and calico for +the sacques the peasant women wore in the fields, reckoning no longer in +dozens of rubles but in dozens of thousands! Indeed, Turkletaub Brothers +could now afford to owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars! Mosher +dwelling thus, thighs gone flabby, in a seven-story apartment house with +a liveried lackey to swing open the front door and another to shoot him +upward in a gilded elevator. + +It was to laugh! + +And Sara and Mosher with their son, their turbulent Nikolai, now an +accredited Doctor of Law and practicing before the bar of the city of +New York! + +It was upon that realization, most of all, that Sara could surge tears, +quickly and hotly, and her heart seem to hurt of fullness. + +Of Nikolai, the black. Nicholas, now: + +It was not without reason that Sara had cried terrible tears over him, +and that much, but not all, of the struggle was gone from her face. +Her boy could be as wayward as the fling to his fierce black head, and +sickeningly often Mosher, with a nausea at the very pit of him, had +wielded the lash. + +Once even Nicholas in his adolescent youth, handsomely dark, had stood +in Juvenile Court, ringleader of a neighborhood gang of children on a +foray into the strange world of some packets of cocaine purloined from +the rear of a vacated Chinese laundry. + +Bitterly had Mosher stood in the fore of that court room, thumbing his +hat, his heart gangrening, and trying in a dumbly miserable sort of way +to press down, with his hand on her shoulder, some of the heaving of +Sara's enormous tears. + +There had followed a long, bitter evening of staying the father's lash +from descending, and finally, after five hours with his mother in his +little room, her wide bosom the sea wall against which the boiling +waywardness of him surged, his high head came down like a black swan's +and apparently, at least so far as Mosher knew, Sara had won again. + +And so it was that with the bulwark of this mother and a father who +spared not the wise rod even at the price of the sickness it cost +him, Nicholas came cleanly through these difficult years of the long +midchannel of his waywardness. + +At twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the city of New York, +although an event so perilous followed it by a year or two that the +scallops of strong hair that came down over the singed place of Sara's +brow whitened that year; although Mosher, who was beginning to curve +slightly of the years as he walked, as if a blow had been struck him +from behind, never more than heard the wind before the storm. + +Listen in on the following: + +The third year that Nicholas practiced law, junior member in the Broad +Street firm of Leavitt & Dilsheimer, he took to absenting himself from +dinner so frequently, that across the sturdy oak dining table, laid out +in a red-and-white cloth, gold-band china not too thick of lip, and a +cut-glass fern dish with cunningly contrived cotton carnations stuck in +among the growing green, Sara, over rich and native foods, came more and +more to regard her husband through a clutch of fear. + +"I tell you, Mosher, something has come over the boy. It ain't like him +to miss _gefülte_-fish supper three Fridays in succession." + +"All right, then, because he has a few more or less _gefülte_-fish +suppers in his life, let it worry you! If that ain't a woman every +time." + +"_Gefülte_ fish! If that was my greatest worry. But it's not so easy to +prepare, that you should take it so much for granted. _Gefülte_ fish, he +says, just like it grew on trees and didn't mean two hours' chopping on +my feet." + +"Now, Sara, was that anything to fly off at? Do I ever so much as eat +two helpings of it in Gussie's house? That's how I like yours better!" + +"Gussie don't chop up her onions fine enough. A hundred times I tell her +and a hundred times she does them coarse. Her own daughter-in-law, a +girl that was raised in luxury, can cook better as Gussie. I tell you, +Mosher, I take off my hat to those Berkowitz girls. And if you should +ask me, Ada is a finer one even than Leo's Irma." + +The sly look of wiseacre wizened up Mosher's face. + +"Ada!" she says. "The way you pronounce that girl's name, Sara, it's +like every tooth in your mouth was diamond filled out of Berkowitz's +jewelry firm." + +Quite without precedent Sara's lips began to quiver at this pleasantry. + +"I'm worried, Mosher," she said, putting down a forkful of untasted food +that had journeyed twice toward her lips. "I don't say he--Nicky--I +don't say he should always stay home evenings when Ada comes over +sometimes with Leo and Irma, but night after night--three times whole +nights--I--Mosher, I'm afraid." + +In his utter well-being from her warming food, Mosher drank deeply and, +if it must be admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhaling +copiously the draughts of Sara's coffee. + +Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that +Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so +to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, +velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche. + +They had furnished newly three years before, the year the business +almost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poring +with bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature. + +Bravely had Sara, even more so than Gussie, sacrificed her old regime to +the dealer. Only a samovar remained. A red-and-white pressed-glass punch +bowl, purchased out of Nicholas's--aged fourteen--pig-bank savings. An +enlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker which +she kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling.) +Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable of +metamorphosis into a ladder. And Mosher's cup. + +From this Mosher drank with gusto. His mustache, to Sara so thrillingly +American, without its complement of beard, could flare so above the +relishing sounds of drinking. It flared now and Mosher would share none +of her concern. + +"You got two talents, Sara. First, for being my wife; and second, for +wasting worry like it don't cost you nothing in health or trips to +Cold Springs in the Catskills for the baths. Like it says in Nicky's +Shakespeare, a boy who don't sow his wild oats when he's young will some +day do 'em under another name that don't smell so sweet." + +"I--It ain't like I can talk over Nicky with you, Mosher, like another +woman could with her husband. Either you give him right or right away +you get so mad you make it worse with him than better." + +"Now, Sara--" + +"But only this morning that Mrs. Lessauer I meet sometimes at Epstein's +fish store--you know the rich sausage-casings Lessauers--she says to me +this morning, she says with her sweetness full of such a meanness, like +it was knives in me--'Me and my son and daughter-in-law was coming out +of a movie last night and we saw your son getting into a taxicab with +such a blonde in a red hat!' The way she said it, Mosher, like a cat +licking its whiskers--'such a blonde in a red hat'!" + +"I wish I had one dollar in my pocket for every blond hat with red hair +her Felix had before he married." + +"But it's the second time this week I hear it, Mosher. The same +description of such a--a nix in a red hat. Once in a cabaret show Gussie +says she heard it from a neighbor, and now in and out from taxicabs with +her. Four times this week he's not been home, Mosher. I can't help it, +I--I get crazy with worry." + +A sudden, almost a simian old-age seemed to roll, like a cloud that can +thunder, across Sara's face. She was suddenly very small and no little +old. Veins came out on her brow and upon the backs of her hands, and +Mosher, depressed with an unconscious awareness, was looking into the +tired, cold, watery eyes of the fleet woman who had been his. + +"Why, Sara!" he said, and came around the table to let her head wilt in +unwonted fashion against his coat. "Mamma!" + +"I'm tired, Mosher." She said her words almost like a gush of warm blood +from the wound of her mouth. "I'm tired from keeping up and holding in. +I have felt so sure for these last four years that we have saved him +from his--his wildness--and now, to begin all over again, I--I 'ain't +got the fight left in me, Mosher." + +"You don't have to have any fight in you, Mamma. 'Ain't you got a +husband and a son to fight for you?" + +"Sometimes I think, except for the piece of my heart I left lying back +there, that there are worse agonies than even massacres. I've struggled +so that he should be good and great, Mosher, and now, after four years +already thinking I've won--maybe, after all, I haven't." + +"Why, Sara! Why, Mamma! Shame! I never saw you like this before. You +ain't getting sick for another trip to the Catskills, are you? Maybe you +need some baths--" + +"Sulphur water don't cure heart sickness." + +"Heart sickness, nonsense! You know I don't always take sides with +Nicky, Mamma. I don't say he hasn't been a hard boy to raise. But a man, +Mamma, is a man! I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't. You 'ain't +got him to your apron string in short pants any more. Whatever troubles +we've had with him, women haven't been one of them. Shame, Mamma, the +first time your grown-up son of a man cuts up maybe a little nonsense +with the girls! Shame!" + +"Girls! No one would want more than me he should settle himself down to +a fine, self-respecting citizen with a fine, sweet girl like Ad--" + +"Believe me, and I ain't ashamed to say it, I wasn't an angel, neither, +every minute before I was married." + +"My husband brags to me about his indiscretioncies." + +"_Na, na_, Mamma, right away when I open my mouth you make out a +case against me. I only say it to show you how a mother maybe don't +understand as well as a father how natural a few wild oats can be." + +"L-Leo didn't have 'em." + +"Leo ain't a genius. He's just a good boy." + +"I--I worry so!" + +"Sara, I ask you, wouldn't I worry, too, if there was a reason? God +forbid if his nonsense should lead to really something serious, then +it's time to worry." + +Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow of +crucifixion had moved forward in them. + +"If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did for +Gussie. When Leo's time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitz +from a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry her +eyes out first maybe he's in company that--that--" + +"I don't say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But we +got results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. With +a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm +with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with +a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the +family, for theirs. _We_ got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't that +something to be proud of?" + +She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying. + +"I--I know it, Mosher. It ain't--often I give way like this." + +"We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara. A genius of a lawyer +son on his way to the bench. Mark my word if I ain't right, on his way +to the bench!" + +"Yes, yes, Mosher." + +"Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to--" + +"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you to +go easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he was +the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so. +When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'm +tired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years of +struggling for him--alone--" + +"Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I was +a sick man!" + +"That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why I +should say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in." + +"Say what?" + +"You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn't +the way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temper +like yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why so +much of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraid +to tell you, for fear--for fear--" + +"Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? I +don't say I'm not sometimes hasty--" + +"Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundry +that night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months of +nights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Me +alone with him--" + +"Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!" + +"It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. That +time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thought +it was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. The +nights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of his +gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, +Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?" + +"Liked what?" + +"It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the Juvenile +Court, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night. +He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. All +druggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he was +in with--learned him--" + +"You mean--?" + +"It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit like +that. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!" + +"Why, Sara!" + +"You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted the +doctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't let +him have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should suffer +than have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, +Mosher. He liked that--stuff." + +"That--don't--seem possible." + +"And that wasn't the only lead-pipe case that time, neither, Mosher. +Twice I had to lay out of my own pocket so you wouldn't know, and talk +to him 'til sometimes I thought I didn't have any more tears left +inside of me. Between you and your business worries that year of the +garment-workers' strike--and our boy--I--after all that I haven't got +the strength left. Now that he's come out of it big, I can't begin over +again. I haven't got what he would call the second wind for it. If +anything should keep him now from going straight ahead to make him count +as a citizen, I wouldn't have the strength left to fight it, Mosher. +Wouldn't!" + +And so Sara Turkletaub lay back with the ripple writing of stormy high +tides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that he +had never seen low, wilting there against his breast. + +He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly as +puckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up. + +"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! God knows I never dreamt--" + +"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't got +the struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be all +right, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired." + +"My poor Sara!" + +"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Night +after night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened." + +Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed +paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-on +cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor +bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars +of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in +Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of +it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face. + +"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your +little finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-night +business. By God! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--" + +On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, all +her faculties coiled to spring. + +"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else he +is, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'! +You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_ +for sons--" + +"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!" + +"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding +fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!" + +"I'll break his--" + +"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! I +get a little tired and I try to make myself funny." + +"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--" + +"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that child +has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more. +That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for only +being half of my twins." + +"Then what the devil is--" + +"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you say +yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?" + +"Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick." + +"Sick! If I felt any better I'd be ashamed of having so much health! If +you get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night is +all that can cause me worry. It's natural a handsome boy like ours +should sow what they call his wild oat. With such a matzos face like +poor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain't so easy for him +to have his wild oat. Promise me, Mosher, you won't ask one question or +get mad at him. His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don't even +know he's handled." + +"I'll handle him--" + +"See now, just look at yourself once in the glass with your eyes full of +red. That's why I can't tell you nothing. Right away you fly to pieces. +I say again, you don't know how to handle your son. Promise me you won't +say nothing to him or let on, Mosher. Promise me." + +"That's the way with you women. You get a man crazy and then--" + +"I tell you it's just my nonsense." + +"If I get mad you're mad, and if I don't get mad you're mad! Go do me +something to help me solve such a riddle like you." + +"It's because me and his aunt Gussie are a pair of matchmaking old +women. That the two cousins should marry the two sisters, Irma and Ada, +we got it fixed between us! Just as if because we want it that way it's +got to happen that way!" + +"A pair of geeses, the two of you!" + +"I wouldn't let on to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo's +Irma beat for looks. Such a complexion! And the way she comes over to +sew with me afternoons! A young girl like that! An old woman like me! +You see, Mosher? See?" + +"See, she asks me. What good does it do me if I see or I don't see when +his mother gets her mind made up?" + +"But does Nicky so much as look at her? That night at Leo's birthday I +was ashamed the way he right away had an engagement after supper, when +she sat next to him and all through the meal gave him the white meat off +her own plate. Why, the flowered chiffon dress that girl had on cost ten +dollars a yard if it cost a cent. Did Nicky so much as look at her? No." + +"Too many birthdays in this family." + +"I notice you eat them when they are set down in front of you!" + +"Eat what?" + +"The birthdays." + +"Ha! That's fine! A new dish. Boiled birthdays with horseradish sauce." + +"All right, then, the birthday _parties_. Don't be so exactly with me. +Many a turn in his grave you yourself have given the man who made the +dictionary. I got other worries than language. If I knew where he +is--to-night--" + +Rather contentedly, while Sara cleared and tidied, Mosher snapped open +his evening paper, drawing his spectacles down from the perch of his +forehead. + +"You women," he said, breathing out with the male's easy surcease from +responsibility--"you women and your worries. If you 'ain't got 'em, you +make 'em." + +"Heigh-ho!" sighed out Sara, presently, having finished, and diving +into her open workbasket for the placidity her flying needle could so +cunningly simulate. "Heigh-ho!" + +But inside her heart was beating over and over again to itself, rapidly: + + +"If--only-I--knew--where--he--is--to--night--if--only--I--knew--where +--he--is--to--night." + + +II + +This is where he was: + +In the Forty-fifth-Street flat of Miss Josie Drew, known at various +times and places as Hattie Moore, Hazel Derland, Mrs. Hazel, and--But +what does it matter. + +At this writing it was Josie Drew of whom more is to be said of than +for. + +Yet pause to consider the curve of her clay. Josie had not molded her +nose. Its upward fling was like the brush of a perfumed feather duster +to the senses. Nor her mouth. It had bloomed seductively, long before +her lip stick rushed to its aid and abetment, into a cherry at the +bottom of a glass for which men quaffed deeply. There was something +rather terrifyingly inevitable about her. Just as the tide is plaything +of the stars, so must the naughty turn to Josie's ankle have been +complement to the naughty turn of her mind. + +It is not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a +hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of +the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for +instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the +challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply +drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of +herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth of a gladiator. + +That had been the Josie Drew of eighteen. + +At thirty she penciled the droop to her eyebrows a bit and had a not +always successful trick of powdering out the lurking caves under her +eyes. There was even a scar, a peculiar pocking of little shotted spots +as if glass had ground in, souvenir of one out of dozens of such nights +of orgies, this particular one the result of some unmentionable jealousy +she must have coaxed to the surface. + +She wore it plastered over with curls. It was said that in rage it +turned green. But who knows? It was also said that Josie Drew's correct +name was Josie Rosalsky. But again who knows? Her past was vivid with +the heat lightning of the sharp storms of men's lives. At nineteen she +had worn in public restaurants a star-sapphire necklace, originally +designed by a soap magnate for his wife, of these her birthstones. + +At twenty her fourteen-room apartment faced the Park, but was on the +ground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadcloth +little pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roof +to his mouth, disliked elevators. + +At twenty-three and unmentionably enough, a son of a Brazilian coffee +king, inflamed with the deviltry of debauch, had ground a wine tumbler +against her forehead, inducing the pock marks. At twenty-seven it was +the fourth vice-president of a Harlem bank. At twenty-nine an interim. +Startling to Josie Drew. Terrifying. Lean. For the first time in eight +years her gasoline expenditures amounted to ninety cents a month instead +of from forty to ninety dollars. And then not at the garage, but at the +corner drug store. Cleaning fluid for kicked-out glove and slipper tips. + +The little jangle of chatelaine absurdities which she invariably +affected--mesh bag, lip stick, memorandum (for the traffic in telephone +numbers), vanity, and cigarette case were gold--filled. There remained +a sapphire necklace, but this one faithfully copied to the wink of the +stars and the pearl clasp by the Chemic Jewel Company. Much of the +indoor appeal of Miss Drew was still the pink silkiness of her, a +little stiffened from washing and ironing, it is true, but there was a +flesh-colored arrangement of intricate drape that was rosily kind to +her. Also a vivid yellow one of a later and less expensive period, all +heavily slashed in Valenciennes lace. This brought out a bit of virago +through her induced blondness, but all the same it italicized her, just +as the crescent of black court plaster exclaimed at the whiteness of her +back. + +She could spend an entire morning fluffing at these things, pressing +out, with a baby electric iron and a sleeve board, a crumple of chiffon +to new sheerness, getting at spots with cleaning fluid. Under alcoholic +duress Josie dropped things. There was a furious stain down the +yellow, from a home brew of canned lobster á la Newburg. The stain +she eliminated entirely by cutting out the front panel and wearing it +skimpier. + +In these first slanting years, in her furnished flat of upright, +mandolin-attachment piano, nude plaster-of-Paris Bacchante holding +a cluster of pink-glass incandescent grapes, divan mountainous with +scented pillows, she was about as obvious as a gilt slipper that has +started to rub, or a woman's kiss that is beery and leaves a red +imprint. + +To Nicholas Turkletaub, whose adolescence had been languid and who had +never known a woman with a fling, a perfume, or a moue (there had been +only a common-sense-heeled co-ed of his law-school days and the rather +plump little sister-in-law of Leo's), the dawn of Josie cleft open +something in his consciousness, releasing maddened perceptions that +stung his eyeballs. He sat in the imitation cheap frailty of her +apartment like a young bull with threads of red in his eyeballs, his +head, not unpoetic with its shag of black hair, lowered as if to bash at +the impotence of the thing she aroused in him. + +Also, a curious thing had happened to Josie. Something so jaded in +her that she thought it long dead, was stirring sappily, as if with +springtime. + +Maybe it was a resurgence of sense of power after months of terror that +the years had done for her. + +At any rate, it was something strangely and deeply sweet. + +"Nicky-boy," she said, sitting on the couch with her back against the +wall, her legs out horizontally and clapping her rubbed gilt slippers +together--"Nicky-boy must go home ten o'clock to-night. Josie-girl +tired." + +Her mouth, like a red paper rose that had been crushed there, was always +bunched to baby talk. + +"Come here," he said, and jerked her so that the breath jumped. + +"Won't," she said, and came. + +His male prowess was enormous to him. He could bend her back almost +double with a kiss, and did. His first kisses that he spent wildly. He +could have carried her off like Persephone's bull, and wanted to, so +swift his mood. His flare for life and for her leaped out like a flame, +and something precious that had hardly survived sixteen seemed to stir +in the early grave of her heart. + +"Oh, Nicky-boy! Nicky-boy!" she said, and he caught that she was +yearning over him. + +"Don't say it in down curves like that. Say it up. Up." + +She didn't get this, but, with the half-fearful tail of her eye for +the clock, let him hold her quiescent, while the relentlessly sliding +moments ticked against her unease. + +"I'm jealous of every hour you lived before I met you." + +"Big-bad-eat-Josie-up-boy!" + +"I want to kiss your eyes until they go in deep--through you--I don't +know--until they hurt--deep--I--want--to hurt you--" + +"Oh! Oh! Josie scared!" + +"You're like one of those orange Angora kittens. Yellow. Soft. Deep." + +"I Nicky's pussy." + +"I can see myself in your eyes. Shut me up in them." + +"Josie so tired." + +"Of me?" + +"Nicky so--so strong." + +"My poor pussy! I didn't mean--" + +"Nicky-boy, go home like good Nicky." + +"I don't want ever to go home." + +"Go now, Josie says." + +"You mean never." + +"Now!" + +He kissed his "No, No," down against each of her eyelids. + +"You must," she said this time, and pushed him off. + +For a second he sat quite still, the black shine in his eyes seeming to +give off diamond points. + +"You're nervous," he said, and jerked her back so that the breath jumped +again. + +The tail of her glance curved to the gilt clock half hidden behind a +litter of used highball glasses, and then, seeing that his quickly +suspicious eye followed hers: + +"No," she said, "not nervous. Just tired--and thirsty." + +He poured her a high drink from a decanter, and held it so that, while +she sipped, her teeth were magnified through the tumbler, and he thought +that adorable and tilted the glass higher against her lips, and when she +choked soothed her with a crush of kisses. + +"You devil," he said, "everything you do maddens me." + +There was a step outside and a scraping noise at the lock. It was only +a vaudeville youth, slender as a girl, who lived on the floor above, +feeling unsteadily, and a bit the worse for wear, for the lock that must +eventually fit his key. + +But on that scratch into the keyhole, Josie leaped up in terror, so that +Nicholas went staggering back against the Bacchante, shattering to a +fine ring of crystal some of the pink grapes, and on that instant she +clicked out the remaining lights, shoving him, with an unsuspected and +catamount strength, into an adjoining box of a kitchenette. + +There an uncovered bulb burned greasily over a small refrigerator, that +stood on a table and left only the merest slit of walking space. It was +the none too fastidious kitchen of a none too fastidious woman. A pair +of dress shields hung on the improvised clothesline of a bit of twine. +A clump of sardines, one end still shaped to the tin, cloyed in its own +oil, crumbily, as if bread had been sopped in, the emptied tin itself, +with the top rolled back with a patent key, filled now with old beer. +Obviously the remaining contents of a tumbler had been flung in. +Cigarette stubs floated. A pasteboard cylindrical box, labeled "Sodium +Bi-carbonate," had a spoon stuck in it. A rubber glove drooped deadly +over the sink edge. + +On the second that he stood in that smelling fog, probably for no longer +than it took the swinging door to settle, something of sickness rushed +over Nicholas. The unaired odors of old foods. Those horrific things on +the line. The oil that had so obviously been sopped up with bread. The +old beer, edged in grease. Something of sickness and a panoramic flash +of things absurdly, almost unreasonably irrelevant. + +Snow, somewhere back in his memory. A frozen silence of it that was +clean and thin to the smell. The ridges in the rattan with which his +father had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry. The fine +white head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Friday +night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Red +curls--some one's--somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls that +rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Pretty +perturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in a +pink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of a +rubbed gilt slipper. Josie's slipper. + +Something seemed suddenly to rise in Nicholas, with the quick +capillarity of water boiling over. + +The old familiar star-spangled red over which Sara had time after time +laid sedative hand against his seeing, sprang out. The pit of his +passion was bottomless, into which he was tumbling with the icy laughter +of breaking glass. + +Then he struck out against the swinging door so that it ripped outward +with a sough of stale air, striking Josie Drew, as she approached it +from the room side, so violently that her teeth bit down into her lips +and the tattling blood began to flow. + +"Nicky! It's a mistake. I thought--my sister--It got so late--you +wouldn't go. Go now! The key--turning--Nervous--silly--mistake. Go--" + +He laughed, something exhilarant in his boiling over, and even in her +sudden terror of him she looked at his bare teeth and felt the unnice +beauty of the storm. + +"Nicky," she half cried, "don't be--foolish! I--" + +And then he struck her across the lip so that her teeth cut in again. + +"There is some one coming here to-night," he said, with his smile still +very white. + +She sat on the couch, trying to bravado down her trembling. + +"And what if there is? He'll beat you up for this! You fool! I've tried +to explain a dozen times. You know, or if you don't you ought to, that +there's a--friend. A traveling salesman. Automobile accessories. Long +trips, but good money. Good money. And here you walk in a few weeks ago +and expect to find the way clear! Good boy, you like some one to go +ahead of you with a snow cleaner, don't you? Yes, there's some one due +in here off his trip to-night. What's the use trying to tell Nicky-boy +with his hot head. He's got a hot head, too. Go, and let me clear the +way for you, Nicky. For good if you say the word. But I have to know +where I'm at. Every girl does if she wants to keep her body and soul +together. You don't let me know where I stand. You know you've got me +around your little finger for the saying, but you don't say. Only go +now, Nicky-boy. For God's sake, it's five minutes to eleven and he's due +in on that ten-forty-five. Nicky-boy, go, and come back to me at six +to-morrow night. I'll have the way clear then, for good. Quit blinking +at me like that, Nicky. You scare me! Quit! When you come back to-morrow +evening there won't be any more going home for Josie's Nicky-boy. +Nicky, go now. He's hotheaded, too. Quit blinking, Nicky--for God's +sake--Nicky--" + +It was then Nicholas bent back her head as he did when he kissed her +there on the swan's arch to her neck, only this time his palm was +against her forehead and his other between her shoulder blades. + +"I could kill you," he said, and laughed with his teeth. "I could bend +back your neck until it breaks." + +"Ni--i--Nic--ky--" + +"And I want to," he said through the star-spangled red. "I want you to +crack when I twist. I'm going to twist--twist--" + +And he did, shoving back her hair with his palm, and suddenly bared, +almost like a grimace, up at him, was the glass-shotted spot where +the wine tumbler had ground in, greenish now, like the flanges of her +nostrils. + +Somewhere--down a dear brow was a singed spot like that--singed with the +flame of pain-- + +"Nicky, for God's sake--you're--you're spraining my neck! Let go! Nicky. +God! if you hadn't let go just when you did. You had me croaking. +Nicky-boy--kiss me now and go! Go! To-morrow at six--clear for +you--always--only go--please, boy--my terrible--my wonderful. To-morrow +at six." + +Somehow he was walking home, the burn of her lips still against his, +loathsome and gorgeous to his desires. He wanted to tear her out by the +roots from his consciousness. To be rollickingly, cleanly free of her. +His teeth shone against the darkness as he walked, drenched to the skin +of his perspiration and one side of his collar loose, the buttonhole +slit. + +Rollickingly free of her and yet how devilishly his shoes could clat on +the sidewalk. + +To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. + + * * * * * + +It was some time after midnight when he let himself into the uptown +apartment. He thought he heard his mother, trying to be swift, padding +down the hallway as if she had been waiting near the door. That would +have angered him. + +The first of these nights, only four weeks before (it seemed years), +he had come in hotly about four o'clock and gone to bed. About five he +thought he heard sounds, almost like the scratch of a little dog at +his door. He sprang up and flung it open. The flash of his mother's +gray-flannelette wrapper turned a corner of the hall. She must have +been crying out there and wanting him to need her. None the less it had +angered him. These were men's affairs. + +But in his room to-night the light burned placidly on the little table +next to the bed, a glass of milk on a plate beside it. The bed was +turned back, snowy sheets forming a cool envelope for him to slip +in between. The room lay sedatively in shadow. A man's room. Books, +uncurving furniture, photographs of his parents taken on their +twenty-fifth anniversary standing on the chiffonier in a double leather +frame that opened like a book. Face down on the reading table beside the +glass of milk, quite as he must have left it the night before, except +where Sara had lifted it to dust under, a copy of Bishop's _New Criminal +Law_, already a prognosis, as it were, of that branch of the law he was +ultimately and brilliantly to bend to fuller justice. + +Finally, toward morning Nicholas slept, and at ten o'clock of a +rain-swept Sunday forenoon awoke, as he knew he must, to the grip of a +blinding headache, so called for want of a better noun to interpret the +kind of agony which, starting somewhere around his eyes, could prick +each nerve of his body into a little flame, as if countless matches had +been struck. + +As a youngster these attacks had not been infrequent, usually after a +fit of crying. The first, in fact, had followed the burning of the cat; +a duet of twin spasms then, howled into Sara's apron, And once after he +had fished an exhausted comrade out of an ice hole in Bronx Park. They +had followed the lead-pipe affairs and the Chinese-laundry episode with +dreadful inevitability. But it had been five years since the last--the +night his mother had fainted with terror at what she had found concealed +in the toes of his gymnasium shoes. + +Incredible that into his manhood should come the waving specter of those +early passions. + +At eleven o'clock, after she heard him up and moving about, his mother +carried him his kiss and his coffee, steaming black, the way he liked +it. She had wanted to bring him an egg--in fact, had prepared one, to +just his liking of two minutes and thirty seconds--but had thought +better of it, and wisely, because he drank the coffee at a quick gulp +and set down the cup with his mouth wry and his eyes squeezed tight. +From the taste of it he remembered horridly the litter of tall glasses +beside the gilt clock. + +With all her senses taut not to fuss around him with little jerks and +pullings, Sara jerked and pulled. Too well she knew that furrow between +his eyes and wanted unspeakably to tuck him back into bed, lower the +shades, and prepare him a vile mixture good for exactly everything that +did not ail him. But Sara could be wise even with her son. So instead +she flung up the shade, letting him wince at the clatter, dragged off +the bedclothes into a tremendous heap on the chair, beat up the pillows, +and turned the mattress with a single-handed flop. + +"The Sunday-morning papers are in the dining room, son." + +"Uhm!" + +He was standing in his dressing gown at the rain-lashed window, +strumming. Lean, long, and, to Sara, godlike, with the thick shock of +his straight hair still wet from the shower. + +"Mrs. Berkowitz telephoned already this morning with such a grand +compliment for you, son. Her brother-in-law, Judge Rosen, says you're +the brains of your firm even if you are only the junior partner yet, and +your way looks straight ahead for big things." + +"Uhm! Who's talking out there so incessantly, mother?" + +"That's your uncle Aaron. He came over for Sunday-morning breakfast with +your father. You should see the way he tracked up my hall with his wet +shoes. I'm sending him right back home with your father. They should +clutter up your aunt Gussie's house with their pinochle and ashes. I had +'em last Sunday. She don't need to let herself off so easy every week. +It's enough if I ask them all over here for supper to-night. Not?" + +"Don't count on me, dear. I won't be home for supper." + +There was a tom-tom to the silence against her beating ear drums. + +"All right, son," she said, pulling her lips until they smiled at him, +"with Leo and Irma that'll only make six of us, then." + +He kissed her, but so tiredly that again it was almost her irresistible +woman's impulse to drag down that fiercely black head to the beating +width of her bosom and plead from him drop by drop some of the bitter +welling of pain she could see in his eyes. + +"Nicky," she started to cry, and then, at his straightening back from +her, "come out in the dining room after I pack off the men. I got my +work to do. That nix of a house girl left last night. Such sass, too! +I'm better off doing my work alone." + +Sara, poor dear, could not keep a servant, and, except for the +instigation of her husband and son, preferred not to. Cooks rebelled +at the exactitude of her household and her disputative reign of the +kitchen. + +"I'll be out presently, mother," he said, and flung himself down in the +leather Morris chair, lighting his pipe and ostensibly settling down to +the open-faced volume of _Criminal Law_. + +Sara straightened a straight chair. She knew, almost as horridly as +if she had looked in on it, the mucky thing that was happening; the +intuitive sixth sense of her hovered over him with great wings that +wanted to spread. Josie Drew was no surmise with her. The blond head and +the red hat were tatooed in pain on her heart and she trembled in a bath +of fear, and, trembling, smiled and went out. + +Sitting there while the morning ticked on, head thrown back, eyes +closed, and all the little darting nerves at him, the dawn of Nicholas +Turkletaub's repugnance was all for self. The unfrowsy room, and himself +fresh from his own fresh sheets. His mother's eyes with that clean-sky +quality in them. The affectionate wrangling of those two decent voices +from the dining room. Books! His books, that he loved. His tastiest +dream of mother, with immensity and grandeur in her eyes, listening +from a privileged first-row bench to the supreme quality of his mercy. +_Judge_--Turkletaub! + +But tastily, too, and undeniably against his lips, throughout these +conjurings, lay the last crushy kiss of Josie Drew. That swany arch to +her neck as he bent it back. He had kissed her there. Countlessly. + +He tried to dwell on his aversions for her. She had once used an +expletive in his presence that had sickened him, and, noting its effect, +she had not reiterated. The unfastidious brunette roots to her light +hair. That sink with the grease-rimmed old beer! But then: her eyes +where the brows slid down to make them heavy-lidded. That bit of blue +vein in the crotch of her elbow. That swany arch. + +Back somewhere, as the tidy morning wore in, the tranced, the maddening +repetition began to tick itself through: + +"Six o'clock. Six o'clock." + +He rushed out into the hallway and across to the parlor pinkly lit with +velours, even through the rainy day, and so inflexibly calm. Sara might +have measured the distance between the chairs, so regimental they +stood. The pink-velour curlicue divan with the two pink, gold-tasseled +cushions, carelessly exact. The onyx-topped table with the pink-velour +drape, also gold-tasseled. The pair of equidistant and immaculate china +cuspidors, rose-wreathed. The smell of Sunday. + +"Nicky, that you?" + +It was his mother, from the dining room. + +"Yes, mother," and sauntered in. + +There were two women sitting at the round table, shelling nuts. One of +them his mother, the other Miss Ada Berkowitz, who jumped up, spilling +hulls. + +Nicholas, in the velveteen dressing gown with the collar turned up, +started to back out, Mrs. Turkletaub spoiling that. + +"You can come in, Nicky. Ada'll excuse you. I guess she's seen a man in +his dressing gown before; the magazine advertisements are full with +them in worse and in less. And on Sunday with a headache from all week +working so hard, a girl can forgive. He shouldn't think with his head so +much, I always tell him, Ada." + +"I didn't know he was here," said Miss Berkowitz, already thinking in +terms of what she might have worn. + +"I telephoned over for Ada, Nicky. They got an automobile and she don't +need to get her feet wet to come over to a lonesome old woman on a +rainy Sunday, to spend the day and learn me how to make those delicious +stuffed dates like she fixed for her mother's card party last week. Draw +up a chair, Nicky, and help." + +She was casual, she was matter-of-fact, she was bent on the business +of nut cracking. They crashed softly, never so much as bruised by her +carefully even pressure. + +"Thanks," said Nicholas, and sat down, not caring to, but with good +enough grace. He wanted his coat, somehow, and fell to strumming the +table top. + +"Don't, Nicky; you make me nervous." + +"Here," said Miss Berkowitz, and gave him a cracker and a handful of +nuts. The little crashings resumed. + +Ada had very fair skin against dark hair, slightly too inclined to curl. +There was quite a creamy depth to her--a wee pinch could raise a bruise. +The kind of whiteness hers that challenged the string of tiny Oriental +pearls she wore at her throat. Her healthily pink cheeks and her little +round bosom were plump, and across the back of each of her hands were +four dimples that flashed in and out as she bore down on the cracker. +She was as clear as a mountain stream. + +"A trifle too plumpy," he thought, but just the same wished he had wet +his military brushes. + +"Ada has just been telling me, Nicky, about her ambition to be an +interior decorator for the insides of houses. I think it is grand +the way some girls that are used to the best of everything prepare +themselves for, God forbid, they should ever have to make their own +livings. I give them credit for it. Tell Nicky, Ada, about the drawing +you did last week that your teacher showed to the class." + +"Oh," said Ada, blushing softly, "Mr. Turkletaub isn't interested in +that." + +"Yes, I am," said Nicholas, politely, eating one of the meats. + +"You mean the Tudor dining room--" + +No, no! You know, the blue-and-white one you said you liked best of +all." + +"It was a nursery," began Ada, softly. "Just one of those blue-and-white +darlingnesses for somebody's little darling." + +"For somebody's little darling," repeated Mrs. Turkletaub, silently. She +had the habit, when moved, of mouthing people's words after them. + +"My idea was--Oh, it's so silly to be telling it again, Mrs. +Turkletaub!" + +"Silly! I think it's grand that a girl brought up to the best should +want to make something of herself. Don't you, Nick?" + +"H-m-m!" + +"Well, my little idea was white walls with little Delft-blue borders +of waddling duckies; white dotted Swiss curtains in the brace of sunny +southern-exposure windows, with little Delft-blue borders of more +waddling duckies; and dear little nursery rhymes painted in blue on the +headboard to keep baby's dreams sweet." + +"--baby's dreams sweet! I ask you, is that cute, Nick? Baby's dreams she +even interior decorates." + +"My--instructor liked that idea, too. He gave me 'A' on the drawing." + +"He should have given you the whole alphabet. And tell him about the +chairs, Ada. Such originality." + +"Oh, Mrs. Turkletaub, that was just a--a little--idea--" + +"The modesty of her! Believe me, if it was mine, I'd call it a big one. +Tell him." + +"Mummie and daddie chairs I call them." + +Sara (mouthing): "Mummie and daddie--" + +"Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so when +mummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby good +night--Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and one +for daddie." Little crash. + +"I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical? 'So when mummie and daddie run up +to kiss baby good night.' I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all the +evening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your little +twin brother were two and a half years old, one night I--" + +"Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?" + +"Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me. She didn't know you were twins. +A red one I had, as red as my black one is black. You see my Nicky how +black and mad-looking he is even when he's glad; well, just so--" + +"Now, mother!" + +"Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby. You +didn't know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I left +lying out there. Nicky--she didn't know--" + +She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhood +came out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her features +like lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son had +learned how to dread for her and spare her. + +"Now, mother!" said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair, +holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand. "Come, one +rainy Sunday is enough. Let's not have an indoor as well as an outdoor +storm. Come along. Didn't I hear Miss Ada play the piano one evening +over at Leo's? Up-see-la! Who said you weren't my favorite dancing +partner?" and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor. "Come, +some music!" + +There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. +Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano +to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging +pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for +ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormous +upholstered hips. + +The "Turkish Patrol" was what Ada played, and then, "Who Is Sylvia?" and +sang it, as frailly as a bird. + +At one o'clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roast +chicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to be +gouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs. +Turkletaub's called "_matzos klose_," balls of unleavened bread, +sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot butter bath and light-brown +onions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice the +depth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups. More cracking +of nuts, interspersed with raisins. Ada, cunningly enveloped in a +much-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away. + +Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain the +unrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to the +rhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led to +the kitchen. Comings--and--goings--his mother who rustled so cleanly of +starch--Ada--clear--yes, that was it--clear as a mountain stream. Their +small laughters--comings--goings-- + +It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp already +lighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and an +Afghan across his knees. It was snug there in the rosied dusk. The women +were in the kitchen yet, or was it again? Again, he supposed, looking +at his watch. He had slept three hours. Presently he rose and sauntered +out. There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen, +his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at the +snowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cube +of Swiss cheese. + +"Sleepyhead," she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble. + +And his mother: "That was a good rest for you, son? You feel better?" + +"Immense," he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands down +into his pockets in a yawny well-being. + +"I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me. There's +four besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie's. I just wish you +would look at Ada. For a girl that don't have to turn her hand at home, +with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handy +she is with everything she touches." + +The litter of Sunday-night supper, awaiting its transfer to the +dining-room table, lay spread in the faithful geometry of the cold, +hebdomadal repast. A platter of ruddy sliced tongue; one of noonday +remnants of cold chicken; ovals of liverwurst; a mound of potato salad +crisscrossed with strips of pimento; a china basket of the stuffed +dates, all kissed with sugar; half of an enormously thick cheese cake; +two uncovered apple pies; a stack of delicious raisin-stuffed curlicues, +known as _"schneken,"_ pickles with a fern of dill across them (Ada's +touch, the dill); a dish of stuffed eggs with a toothpick stuck in each +half (also Ada's touch, the toothpicks). + +She moved rather pussily, he thought, sometimes her fair cheeks +quivering slightly to the vibration of her walk, as if they had jelled. +And, too, there was something rather snug and plump in the way her +little hands with the eight dimples moved about things, laying the slabs +of Swiss cheese, unstacking cups. + +"No, only seven cups, Ada. Nicky--ain't going to be home to supper." + +"Oh," she said, "excuse me! I--I--thought--silly--" and looked up at him +to deny that it mattered. + +"Isn't that what you said this morning, Nicky?" Poor Sara, she almost +failed herself then because her voice ended in quite a dry click in her +throat. + +He stood watching the resumed unstacking of the cups, each with its +crisp little grate against its neighbor. + +"One," said Ada, "two-three-four-five-six--seven!" + +He looked very long and lean and his darkly nervous self, except that he +dilly-dallied on his heels like a much-too-tall boy not wanting to look +foolish. + +"If Miss Ada will provide another cup and saucer, I think I'll stay +home." + +"As you will," said Sara, disappearing into the dining room with the +mound of salad and the basket of sugar-kissed dates. + +She put them down rather hastily when she got there, because, sillily +enough, she thought, for the merest instant, she was going to faint. + + * * * * * + +The week that Judge Turkletaub tried his first case in Court of General +Sessions--a murder case, toward which his criminal-law predilection +seemed so inevitably to lead him, his third child, a little daughter +with lovely creamy skin against slightly too curly hair, was lying, just +two days old, in a blue-and-white nursery with an absurd border of blue +ducks waddling across the wallpaper. + +Ada, therefore, was not present at this inaugural occasion of his first +trial. But each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row bench +of the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with her +son's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, her +bosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnet +blinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's +new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes +must look upon. + +Once, during the recital of the defendant, Sara almost seemed to bleed +her tears, so poignantly terrible they came, scorching her eyes of a +pain too exquisite to be analyzed, yet too excruciating to be endured. + + +III + +Venture back, will you, to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when on +the snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color of +blood, and one woman, who could not keep her eyes ahead, moaned as +she fled, prayed, and even screamed to return to her dead in the +bullet-riddled horse trough. + +Toward the noon of that day, a gray one that smelled charred, a fugitive +group from a distant village that was still burning faltered, as it too +fled toward the horizon, in the blackened village of Vodna, because a +litter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen, and a +mother, whose baby had perished at her breast, would bury her dead. + +Huddled beside the horse trough, over a poor fire she had kindled of +charred wood, Hanscha, the midwife (Hanscha, the drunk, they called her, +fascinatedly, in the Pale of generations of sober women), spied Mosher's +flung coat and reached for it eagerly, with an eye to tearing it into +strips to wrap her tortured feet. + +A child stirred as she snatched it, wailing lightly, and the instinct of +her calling, the predominant motive, Hanscha with her fumy breath warmed +it closer to life and trod the one hundred and eight miles to the port +with it strapped to her back like a pack. + +Thus it was that Schmulka, the red twin, came to America and for the +first fourteen years of his life slept on a sour pallet in a sour +tenement he shared with Hanscha, who with filthy hands brought children +into the filthy slums. + +Jason, she called him, because that was the name of the ship that +carried them over. A rolling tub that had been horrible with the cries +of cattle and seasickness. + +At fourteen he was fierce and rebellious and down on the Juvenile Court +records for truancy, petty trafficking in burned-out opium, vandalism, +and gang vagrancy. + +In Hanscha's sober hours he was her despair, and she could be horrible +in her anger, once the court reprimanding her and threatening to take +Jason from her because of welts found on his back. + +It was in her cups that she was proud of him, and so it behooved Jason +to drink her down to her pallet, which he could, easily. + +He was handsome. His red hair had darkened to the same bronze of the +samovar and he was straight as the drop of an apple from the branch. He +was reckless. Could turn a pretty penny easily, even dangerously, and +spend it with a flip for a pushcart bauble. + +Once he brought home a plaster-of-Paris Venus--the Melos one with the +beautiful arch to her torso of a bow that instant after the arrow has +flown. Hanscha cuffed him for the expenditure, but secretly her old +heart, which since childhood had subjected her to strange, rather +epileptical, sinking spells, and had induced the drinking, warmed her +with pride in his choice. + +Hanscha, with her veiny nose and the dreadful single hair growing out of +a mole on her chin, was not without her erudition. She had read for the +midwifery, and back in the old days could recite the bones in the body. + +She let the boy read nights, sometimes even to dropping another coin +into the gas meter. Some of the books were the lewd penny ones of the +Bowery bookstands, old medical treatises, too, purchased three for a +quarter and none too nice reading for the growing boy. But there he had +also found a _Les Miserables_ and _The Confessions of St. Augustine_, +which last, if he had known it, was a rare edition, but destined for the +ash pit. + +Once he read Hanscha a bit of poetry out of a furiously stained old +volume of verse, so fragrantly beautiful, to him, this bit, that it +wound around him like incense, the perfume of it going deeply and +stinging his eyes to tears: + + Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting! + The soul that rises with us, our life's star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar. + Not in entire forgetfulness, + And not in utter nakedness, + But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home: + Heaven lies about us in our infancy. + Shades of the prison house begin to close + Upon the growing boy, + But he beholds the light, and whence it flows + He sees it in his joy; + The youth who daily farther, from the East + Must travel, still is Nature's priest, + And by the vision splendid + Is on his way attended; + At length the man perceives it die away, + And fade into the light of common day. + +But Hanscha was drunk and threw some coffee-sopped bread at him, and so +his foray into poetry ended in the slops of disgust. + +A Miss Manners, a society social worker who taught poverty +sweet forbearance every Tuesday from four until six, wore a +forty-eight-diamond bar pin on her under bodice (on Tuesday from +four until six), and whose gray-suède slippers were ever so slightly +blackened from the tripping trip from front door to motor and back, took +him up, as the saying is, and for two weeks Jason disported himself on +the shorn lawns of the Manners summer place at Great Neck, where the +surf creamed at the edge of the terrace and the smell of the sea set +something beating against his spirit as if it had a thousand imprisoned +wings. + +There he developed quite a flair for the law books in Judge Manners's +laddered library. Miss Manners found him there, reading, on stomach and +elbows, his heels waving in the air. + +Judge Manners talked with him and discovered a legal turn of mind, and +there followed some veranda talk of educating and removing him from his +environment. But that very afternoon Jason did a horrid thing. It was no +more than he had seen about him all his life. Not as much. He kissed the +little pig-tailed daughter of the laundress and pursued her as she ran +shrieking to her mother's apron. That was all, but his defiant head and +the laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did for +him. + +At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made a +spitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, he +was shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easier +in the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. The piece of its +arch which he could see from his window was even beautiful, a curve of a +stone into some beyond. + +That night he fitted down into the mold his body had worn on the pallet, +sighing out satisfaction. + +Environment had won him back. + +On the other hand, in one of those red star-spangled passions of +rebellion against his fetid days, he blindly cut Hanscha with the edge +of a book which struck against her brow as he hurled it. She had been +drunk and had asked of him, at sixteen, because of the handsomeness +that women would easily love in him, to cadet the neighborhood of Grand +Street, using her tenement as his refuge of vice and herself as sharer +of spoils. + +The corner of the book cut deeply and pride in her terror of him came +out redly in her bloodshot eyes. + +In the short half term of his high-school training he had already forged +ahead of his class when he attained the maturity of working papers. He +was plunging eagerly--brilliantly, in fact--into a rapid translation +of the _Iliad_, fired from the very first line by the epic of the +hexametered anger of Achilles, and stubbornly he held out against the +working papers. + +But to Hanscha they came with the inevitability of a summons rather +than an alternative, and so for a year or two he brought home rather +precocious wages from his speed in a canning factory. Then he stoked his +way to Sydney and back, returning fiery with new and terrible oaths. + +One night Hanscha died. He found her crumpled up in the huddle of her +skirts as if she had dropped in her tracks, which she had, in one of the +epileptic heart strictures. + +It was hardly a grief to him. He had seen red with passion at her +atrociousness too often, and, somehow, everything that she stood for had +been part of the ache in him. + +Yet it is doubtful if, released of her, he found better pasture. Bigger +pastures, it is true, in what might be called an upper stratum of the +lower East Side, although at no time was he ever to become party to any +of its underground system of crime. + +Inevitably, the challenge of his personality cleared the way for him. At +nineteen he had won and lost the small fortune of thirty-three hundred +dollars at a third-class gambling resort where he came in time to be +croupier. + +He dressed flashily, wore soft collars, was constantly swapping sporty +scarfpins for sportier ones, and was inevitably the center, seldom part, +of a group. + +Then one evening at Cooper Union, which stands at the head of the +Bowery, he enrolled for an evening course in law, but never entered the +place again. + +Because the next night, in a Fourteenth Street cabaret with adjacent +gambling rooms, he met one who called herself Winnie Ross, the beginning +of a heart-sickening end. + +There is so little about her to relate. She was the color of cloyed +honey when the sugar granules begin to show through. Pale, pimply in a +fashion the powder could cover up, the sag of her facial muscles showed +plainly through, as if weary of doling out to the years their hush +money, and she was quite obviously down at the heels. Literally so, +because when she took them off, her shoes lopped to the sides and could +not stand for tipsiness. + +She was Jason's first woman. She exhaled a perfume, cheap, tickling, +chewed some advertised tablets that scented her kisses, and her throat, +when she threw up her head, had an arch and flex to it that were +mysteriously graceful. + +Life had been swift and sheer with Winnie. She was very tired and, +paradoxically enough, it gave her one of her last remaining charms. Her +eyelids were freighted with weariness, were waxy white of it, and they +could flutter to her cheeks, like white butterflies against white, and +lay shadows there that maddened Jason. + +She called him Red, although all that remained now were the lights +through his browning hair, almost like the flashings of a lantern down a +railroad track. + +She pronounced it with a slight trilling of the R, and if it was left in +her of half a hundred loves to stir on this swift descent of her life +line, she did over Jason. Partly because he was his winged-Hermes self, +and partly because--because--it was difficult for her rather fagged +brain to rummage back. + +Thus the rest may be told: + +Entering her rooms one morning, a pair of furiously garish ones over a +musical-instrument store on the Bowery, he threw himself full length on +the red-cotton divan, arms locked under his always angry-looking head, +and watching her, through low lids, trail about the room at the business +of preparing him a surlily demanded cup of coffee. Her none too +immaculate pink robe trailed a cotton-lace tail irritatingly about her +heels, which slip-slopped as she walked, her stockings, without benefit +of support, twisting about her ankles. + +She was barometer for his moods, which were elemental, and had learned +to tremble with a queer exaltation of fear before them. + +"My Red-boy blue to-day," she said, stooping as she passed and wanting +to kiss him. + +He let his lids drop and would have none of her. They were curiously +blue, she thought, as if of unutterable fatigue, and then quickly +appraised that his luck was still letting him in for the walloping now +of two weeks' duration. His diamond-and-opal scarfpin was gone, and the +gold cuff links replaced with mother-of-pearl. + +She could be violently bitter about money, and when the flame of his +personality was not there to be reckoned with, ten times a day she +ejected him, with a venom that was a psychosis, out of her further +toleration. Not so far gone was Winnie but that she could count on the +twist of her body and the arch of her throat as revenue getters. + +At first Jason had been lavish, almost with a smack of some of the old +days she had known, spending with the easy prodigality of the gambler in +luck. There was a near-seal coat from him in her cupboard of near-silks, +and the flimsy wooden walls of her rooms had been freshly papered in +roses. + +Then his luck had turned, and to top his sparseness with her this new +sullenness which she feared and yet which could be so delicious to +her--reminiscently delicious. + +She gave him coffee, and he drank it like medicine out of a thick-lipped +cup painted in roses. + +"My Red-boy blue," she reiterated, trying to ingratiate her arms about +his neck. "Red-boy tells Winnie he won't be back for two whole days and +then brings her surprise party very next day. Red-boy can't stay away +from Winnie." + +"Let go." + +"Red-boy bring Winnie nothing? Not little weeny, weeny nothing?" drawing +a design down his coat sleeve, her mouth bunched. + +Suddenly he jerked her so that the breath jumped in a warm fan of it +against her face. + +"You're the only thing I've got in the world, Win. My luck's gone, but +I've got you. Tell me I've got you." + +He could be equally intense over which street car to take, and she knew +it, but somehow it lessened for her none of the lure of his nervosity, +and with her mind recoiling from his pennilessness her body inclined. + +"Tell me, Winnie, that I have you." + +"You know you have," she said, and smiled, with her head back so that +her face foreshortened. + +"I'm going far for you Winnie. Gambling is too rotten--and too easy. I +want to build bridges for you. Practice law. Corner Wall Street." + +This last clicked. + +"Once," she said, lying back, with her pupils enlarging with the +fleeting memories she was not always alert enough to clutch--"once--once +when I lived around Central Park--a friend of mine--vice-president he +was--Well, never mind, he was my friend--it was nothing for him to turn +over a thousand or two a week for me in Wall Street." + +This exaggeration was gross, but it could feed the flame of his passion +for her like oil. + +"I'll work us up and out of this! I've got better stuff in me. I want to +wind you in pearls--diamonds--sapphires." + +"I had a five-thousand-dollar string once--of star sapphires." + +"Trust me, Winnie. Help me by having confidence in me. I'm glad my luck +is welching. It will be lean at first, until I get on my legs. But +it's not too late yet. Win, if only I have some one to stand by me. To +believe--to fight with and for me! Get me, girl? Believe in me." + +"Sure. Always play strong with the cops, Red. It's the short cut to +ready money. Ready money, Red. That's what gets you there. Don't ask +any girl to hang on if it's shy. That's where I spun myself dirt many a +time, hanging on after it got shy. Ugh! That's what did for me--hanging +on--after it got shy." + +"No. No. You don't understand. For God's sake try to get me, Winnie. +Fight up with me. It'll be lean, starting, but I'll finish strong for +you." + +"Don't lean on me. I'm no wailing wall. What's it to me all your +highfaluting talk. You've been as slab-sided in the pockets as a cat all +month. Don't have to stand it. I've got friends--spenders--" + +There had been atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which +some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as +she spoke she regretted, and reached back for the words, + +"I mean--" + +"I know what you mean," he said, quietly, permitting her to lie back +against him and baring his teeth down at her. + +She actually thought he was smiling. + +"I'm not a dead one by a long shot," she said, kindling with what was +probably her desire to excite him. + +"No?" + +"No. I can still have the best. The very best. If you want to know it, +a political Indian with a car as long as this room, not mentioning any +names, is after me--" + +She still harbored the unfortunate delusion that he was smiling. + +"You thought I was up at Ossining this morning, didn't you?" he asked, +lazily for him. He went there occasionally to visit a friend in the +state prison who had once served him well in a gambling raid and was now +doing a short larceny term there. + +"You said you were--" + +"I _said_ I was. Yes. But I came back unexpectedly, didn't I?" + +"Y-yes, Red?" + +"Look at me!" + +She raised round and ready-to-be-terrified eyes. + +"Murphy was here last night!" he cracked at her, +bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, like so many pistol shots. + +"Why, Red--I--You--" + +"Don't lie. Murphy was here last night! I saw him leave this morning as +I came in." + +It was hazard, pure and simple. Not even a wild one, because all +too easily he could kiss down what would be sure to be only her +half-flattered resentment. + +But there was a cigar stub on the table edge, and certain of her +adjustments of the room when he entered had been rather quick. He could +be like that with her, crazily the slave of who knows what beauty he +found in her; jealous of even an unaccountable inflection in her voice. +There had been unmentionable frenzies of elemental anger between them +and she feared and exulted in these strange poles of his nature. + +"Murphy was here last night!" + +It had happened, in spite of a caution worthy of a finer finesse than +hers, and suddenly she seemed to realize the quality of her fear for him +to whom she was everything and who to her was not all. + +"Don't, Red," she said, all the bars of her pretense down and dodging +from his eyes rather than from any move he made toward her. "Don't, Red. +Don't!" And began to whimper in the unbeautifulness of fear, becoming +strangely smaller as her pallor mounted. + +He was as terrible and as swarthy and as melodramatic as Othello. + +"Don't, Red," she called still again, and it was as if her voice came to +him from across a bog. + +He was standing with one knee dug into the couch, straining her head +back against the wall, his hand on her forehead and the beautiful +flexing arch of her neck rising ... swanlike. + +"Watch out!" There was a raw nail in the wall where a picture had hung. +Murphy had kept knocking it awry and she had removed it. "Watch out, +Red! No-o--no--" + +Through the star-spangled red he glimpsed her once where the hair swept +off her brow, and for the moment, to his blurred craziness, it was as if +through the red her brow was shotted with little scars and pock marks +from glass, and a hot surge of unaccountable sickness fanned the +enormous silence of his rage. + +With or without his knowing it, that raw nail drove slowly home to the +rear of Winnie's left ear, upward toward the cerebellum as he tilted and +tilted, and the convex curve of her neck mounted like a bow stretched +outward. + + * * * * * + +There was little about Jason's trial to entitle it to more than a +back-page paragraph in the dailies. He sat through those days, that +were crisscrossed with prison bars, much like those drowned figures +encountered by deep-sea divers, which, seated upright in death, are +pressed down by the waters of unreality. + +It is doubtful if he spoke a hundred words during the lean, celled weeks +of his waiting, and then with a vacuous sort of apathy and solely upon +advice of counsel. Even when he took the stand, undramatically, his +voice, without even a plating of zest for life, was like some old drum +with the parchment too tired to vibrate. + +Women, however, cried over him and the storm in his eyes and the +curiously downy back of his neck where the last of his youth still +marked him. + +To Sara, from her place in the first row, on those not infrequent +occasions when his eyes fumbled for hers, he seemed to drown in her +gaze--back--somewhere-- + +On a Friday at high noon the jury adjourned, the judge charging it with +a solemnity that rang up to wise old rafters and down into one woman's +thirsty soul like life-giving waters. + +In part he told the twelve men about to file out, "If there has been +anything in my attitude during the recital of the defendant's story, +which has appeared to you to be in the slightest manner prejudiced one +way or another, I charge you to strike such mistaken impressions from +your minds. + +"I have tried honestly to wash the slate of my mind clean to take down +faithfully the aspects of this case which for two weeks has occupied +this jury. + +"If you believe the defendant guilty of the heinous crime in question, +do not falter in your use of the power with which the law has vested +you. + +"If, on the other hand and to the best of your judgment, there has been +in the defendant's life extenuating circumstances, er--a limitation +of environment, home influence, close not the avenues of your fair +judgment. + +"Did this man in the kind of er--a--frenzy he describes and to which +witnesses agree he was subject, deliberately strain back the Ross +woman's head until the nail penetrated? + +"If so, remember the law takes knowledge only of self-defense. + +"On the other hand, ask of yourselves well, did the defendant, in the +frenzy which he claims had hold of him when he committed this unusual +crime, know that the nail was there? + +"_Would Winnie Ross have met her death if the nail had not been there?_ + +"Gentlemen, in the name of the law, solemnly and with a fear of God in +your hearts, I charge you." + +It was a quick verdict. Three hours and forty minutes. + +"Not guilty." + +In the front row there, with the titillating folderols on her bonnet and +her hand at her throat as if she would tear it open for the mystery of +the pain of the heartbeat in it, Sara Turkletaub heard, and, hearing, +swooned into the pit of her pain and her joy. + +Her son, with brackets of fatigue out about his mouth, was standing over +her when she opened her eyes, the look of crucifixion close to the front +of them. + +"Mother," he said, pressing her head close to his robes of state and +holding a throat-straining quiver under his voice, "I--I shouldn't have +let you stay. It was too--much for you." + +It took her a moment for the mist to clear. + +"I--Son--did somebody strike? Hit? Strange. I--I must have been hurt. +Son, am I bleeding?" And looked down, clasping her hand to the bosom of +her decent black-silk basque. + +"Son, I--It was a good verdict, not? I--couldn't have stood it--if--if +it wasn't. I--Something--It was good, not?" + +"Yes, mother, yes." + +"Don't--don't let that boy get away, son. I think--those tempers--I can +help--him. You see, I know--how to handle--Somehow I--" + +"Yes, mother, only now you must sit quietly--" + +"Promise me, son, you won't let him get away without I see him?" + +"Yes, dear, only please now--a moment--quiet--" + +You see, the judge was very tired, and, looking down at the spot where +her hand still lay at her bosom as if to press down a hurt, the red of +her same obsession shook and shook him. + +Somehow it seemed to him, too, that her dear heart was bleeding. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vertical City, by Fannie Hurst + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12659 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..93e8cbf --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12659 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12659) diff --git a/old/12659-8.txt b/old/12659-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61a715e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12659-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9174 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vertical City, 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: The Vertical City + +Author: Fannie Hurst + +Release Date: June 25, 2004 [EBook #12659] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VERTICAL CITY *** + + + + +Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +By + +FANNIE HURST + + +_Author of_ + +"GASLIGHT SONATAS" + +"HUMORESQUE" + +ETC. + + +1922 + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + +BACK PAY + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +THE SMUDGE + +GUILTY + +ROULETTE + + + + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + + +By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agra +to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, +so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths +and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly +complete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, +all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home." + +A mausoleum to the hearth. And as true to form as any that ever mourned +the dynastic bones of an Augustus or a Hadrian. + +An Indiana-limestone and Vermont-marble tomb to Hestia. + +All ye who enter here, at sixty dollars a week and up, leave behind the +lingo of the fireside chair, parsley bed, servant problem, cretonne shoe +bags, hose nozzle, striped awnings, attic trunks, bird houses, ice-cream +salt, spare-room matting, bungalow aprons, mayonnaise receipt, fruit +jars, spring painting, summer covers, fall cleaning, winter apples. + +The mosaic tablet of the family hotel is nailed to the room side of each +door and its commandments read something like this: + + One ring: Bell Boy. + + Two rings: Chambermaid. + + Three rings: Valet. + + Under no conditions are guests permitted to use electric irons in + rooms. + + Cooking in rooms not permitted. + + No dogs allowed. + + Management not responsible for loss or theft of jewels. Same can be + deposited for safe-keeping in the safe at office. + + * * * * * + + Note: + + Our famous two-dollar Table d'Hôte dinner is served in the Red + Dining Room from six-thirty to eight. Music. + +It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel Bon +Ton boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along the +forefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping. + +The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw to +all that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hôte +séances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and the +tarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Ton +hotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight. + +Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place where +the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's. +Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were +twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty's +profile. + +Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer because +she had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had no +place there. + +Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of +five rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with her +granddaughters. + +Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lack +of length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the new +filet-lace patterns. + +Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton in +seasonal epidemics. + +The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one. + +In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted in +the lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't. + +The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from little +strands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour. + +Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crêpe-de-Chine +nightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles. + +Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herself +and three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes that +were scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running up +sand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here and +there with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satin +rosebuds. + +It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern, +but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latz +liked watching her. + +There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to the +heart interest. + +Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shy +of likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman's +inevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly, +to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked them +passive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them between +his own, but that had never been. + +Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. That +very morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment, +strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansive +tree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly and +very badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them. + +Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swift +lance. + +He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and the +dry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads. + +Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but just +as correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short. +Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked. + +Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger. + +On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby, +Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself down +on a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread, +taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, but +he sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers up +into a little chapel. + +"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smile +encompassing the question. + +"If I was any better I couldn't stand it," relishing her smile and his +reply. + +The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _à la_ Bon Ton, +mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _sauté_, choice of or both _poulette +emincé_ and spring lamb _grignon_, and on through to fresh strawberry +ice cream in fluted paper boxes, _petits fours_, and _demi-tasse_. +Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational +plush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinner +standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slid +surreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. +Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen +hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a +hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in +bare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, +patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement and +eager to excel in return badinage. + +Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed. + +The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off men. +Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like a +squaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and an +aftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emerged +from the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law. + +"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing his +own kind of cognizance of the scented trail. + +"_Fleur de printemps_," said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis. +"Eight-ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought +the cunning perfection of a sniff. + +"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max Gronauer +when he first started in the produce business in Jersey City and the +only perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not always fresh +killed at that. _Cold storage de printemps_!" + +"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband," said Mrs. Samstag, +tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace handkerchief, itself +guilty of a not inexpensive attar. + +"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort. + +"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs. +Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for a +grandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almost +eight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scented +sigh. + +He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wanting +to seem appropriate. + +"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble." + +"Share," she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of her +eyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma, +Mr. Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My one +consolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto in +life, 'Keep a bold front.'" + +For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleeding +quality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!" + +"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!" + +There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefully +trimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and what +threatened to be a slight depth of flesh across the shoulders had been +carefully massaged of this tendency, fifteen minutes each night and +morning, by her daughter. + +In fact, through the black transparency of her waist Mr. Latz thought +her plumply adorable. + +It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whatever +inroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were little +dark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal, and two unrelenting sacs +that threatened to become pouchy. + +Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, +in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look +of one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found daily +in fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting X-ray appointments. + +What ailed Mrs. Samstag was hardly organic. She was the victim of +periodic and raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side of +her head and down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling and +blazing of nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit up +the one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the wee +hours in her chain of hot applications. + +For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with little +jabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes began +to look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up two +fingers with a little pressing movement to her temple. + +"You're a great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even +Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety of +expression. + +"I try to be," she said, his tone inviting out in her a mood of sweet +forbearance. + +"And a great sufferer, too," he said, noting the pressing fingers. + +She colored under this delightful impeachment. + +"I wouldn't wish one of my neuralgia spells to my worst enemy, Mr. +Latz." + +"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine--I wouldn't stop until +I had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two about +those fellows over there. Some of them are wonders." + +Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if by +little pulleys of emotion. + +"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--widow who wants to do +right by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war." + +"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair that +was as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, then +clutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly, "I +just wish I could help." + +"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift brown look from the lace making and +then at it again. + +He laughed, but from nervousness. + +"My little mother was an ailer, too." + +"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it's +ridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such a +sufferer." + +"Same with her and her joints." + +"Why, except for this old neuralgia, I can outdo Alma when it comes +to dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, or +shopping." + +"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw." + +"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of my +friends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice; +then, hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived. +A regular little mother to me in my spells." + +"Nice girl, Alma." + +"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that up +to then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even know +what a headache was. That long drive. That windy hilltop with two men to +keep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how I +care when I care. But, of course, as the saying is, 'time heals.' But +that's how I got my first attack. 'Intenseness' is what the doctors +called it. I'm terribly intense." + +"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not much +use hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, isn't +it?" + +If he had known it, there was something about his intensity of +expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little Gothic arches +of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved +face, and as he sat on the edge of his chair it seemed that inevitably +the tight sausagelike knees must push their way through mere fabric. + +Ordinarily he presented the slightly bay-windowed, bay-rummed, spatted, +and somewhat jowled well-being of the Wall Street bachelor who is a +musical-comedy first-nighter, can dig the meat out of the lobster claw +whole, takes his beefsteak rare and with two or three condiments, and +wears his elk's tooth dangling from his waistcoat pocket and mounted on +a band of platinum and tiny diamonds. + +Mothers of debutantes were by no means unamiably disposed toward him, +but the debutantes themselves slithered away like slim-flanked minnows. + +It was rumored that one summer at the Royal Palisades Hotel in Atlantic +City he had become engaged to a slim-flanked one from Akron, Ohio. But +on the evening of the first day she had seen him in a bathing suit the +rebellious young girl and a bitterly disappointed and remonstrating +mother had departed on the Buck Eye for "points west." + +There was almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must have +presented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expression +now as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffed +knees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense and creased with +anxiety. + +"That's about the way of it, isn't it?" he said again into the growing +silence. + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag's fingers were rigid at their task of lace making, +the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in her +ears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closing +her ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded. + +"I--When a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll never +be happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once an +affectionate nature, always an affectionate nature." + +"You mean," he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch that +was left of chair--"you mean--me--?" + +The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out on +his scalp. + +"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but you +cannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life." + +At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs. +Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not +intended. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, more abruptly than he might have, without +the act of that knee to immediately justify. + +She spread the lace out on her lap. + +Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawny +soup was cold to-night," or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson +pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than ever +in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in +flashes over his body. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could +repeat their incredible feat. + +With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang. + +"Mr. Latz--" + +"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture. + +"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placed +her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with +his kisses. + +"God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would make +it so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, this +getting it said. Carrie, will you?" + +"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--" + +"Loo--" + +"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you read +about." + +"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up to +five years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had was +alive, I never had eyes for a woman or--" + +"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--" + +"Loo." + +"Loo." + +"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that just +walked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback, +Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when she +was helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that little +stooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it up +to her. Y'understand?" + +"Yes--Loo." + +"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years before +she died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me back +eighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than that +it cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped my +little old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat. + +"I had some friends lived in the Grenoble Apartments when you did--the +Adelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels and +she never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to sit +on it. + +"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting, +without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman in +the world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem." + +Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light. + +"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, but +ask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!" + +"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngster +in years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--" + +"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger." + +"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's +death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl +with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think about +it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I +couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any +more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matches +that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was +too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible to +my own age." + +"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that +gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer +to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?" + +"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your +doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent." + +"I'm--that way." + +"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this +hotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But at +heart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, +you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?" + +"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--" + +"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud +of." + +"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I +haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'" + +"I knew it!" + +"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the +house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my +husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off +the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For +what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the +time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold +snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But +with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--" + +"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to +telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the +little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat +enough herself to keep a bird alive." + +"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr. +Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and +naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People +think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and +a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my +seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a +hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just +the same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the +start." + +"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it." + +"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd a +jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you +know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with +conscientiousness." + +"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you just +said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford for +yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Street +alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousand +last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say +yes?" + +"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean on +her so." + +"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her +mother's light." + +"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family." + +"That don't scare me." + +"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and +through. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too +much to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself. +She's precious to me, Louis." + +"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would +want you to feel different?" + +"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children, +she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spend +the night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it, +but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takes +care of me." + +"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a room +for her." + +"Loo!" + +"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascal +Friedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better business +head you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Dayton +the other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a big +new clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out of +their eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical Supply +Company doubled their excess-profit tax last year." + +A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs. +Samstag into a rigid pallor. + +"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their daughters +off. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's best you +know it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I have to +have my little girl with me!" + +He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist. + +"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to me +further what a grand little woman you are!" + +"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis." + +"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing." + +"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is +reserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the +kind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book or +her sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now." + +"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay young +chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they +start than my little mother did when she finished." + +"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit +of it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More +like the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me, +Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my +baby." + +"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be a +fine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to please +her as a father. Carrie, will you have me?" + +"Oh, Louis--Loo!" + +"Carrie, my dear!" + +And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their +betrothal. + + * * * * * + +None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high +on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening +turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room. + +The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery, +ornamental portières on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant +French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames. + +But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a +green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed +photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. +A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some +circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn +up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn +from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow. + +From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at +her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheek +was a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in the +palm of her hand. + +"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on +the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late." + +There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little +dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness +that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the +pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young +Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly +the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his +heart. + +And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind of +timid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, "Mamma, you stayed +down so late," the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere in +her voice. + +"Why--Mr. Latz--and--I--sat and talked." + +An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right +temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain. + +"You're all right, mamma?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greenness +relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold. + +"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," said +her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand bag +where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and +furtively as if for the shape of its contents. + +"Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her +voice. + +"Come to bed, mamma. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electric +pad." + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in the +invariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by the +ribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock. + +"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her." + +The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's groping +along the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner. + +"Mamma--you haven't--?" + +"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma is +very happy about." + +"Mamma, you've broken your promise again." + +"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?" + +"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--" + +"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamed +Heyman." + +"Mamma, I don't understand." + +"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. But +everything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leaf +that everything is going to be happiness in this family." + +"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that." + +"Alma, look at me." + +"Mamma, you--you frighten me." + +"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?" + +"Why, yes, mamma. Very much." + +"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?" + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying around +loose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himself +up from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire." + +"Mamma?" + +"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close. +He asked me to-night." + +"What?" + +"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have." + +"Seen what?" + +"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as +grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and +he--asked me to-night." + +There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared +there by a hand. + +"Asked you what?" + +"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I +buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, +steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face." + +"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?" + +"Alma?" + +There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and +Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face +stiff with the clench of her mouth. + +"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!" + +A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that +she slanted backward, holding her throat. + +"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own child +against me!" + +"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody." + +"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when +a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my +thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted +him." + +"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like +that!" + +Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little +scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and +stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she +stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash. + +"Alma!" + +It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her +coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice. + +"You can't marry Louis Latz." + +"Can't I? Watch me." + +"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!" + +"Do what?" + +"That!" + +Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an +agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold. + +"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my +own child!" + +"Oh--mamma--!" + +"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and +Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what +happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want +happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter will +see to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me out +something--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help +myself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor's +orders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out something +terrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his +prescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself." + +She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery +with them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her own +face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother +into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there. + +"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. I +blame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I know +your fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize. +Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you're +cured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, +you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!" + +"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enough +to travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel. +Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through this +last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the +neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--" + +"Mamma, don't talk like that!" + +"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this big +hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--" + +"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves a +sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--" + +"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they +will never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one to +humiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way +he did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help me +God if I ever give in to--it again." + +"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often, +only to break your promise." + +"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't been +tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--" + +"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frightening +part. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That's +what's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it these +last months. Just from--desire." + +Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands. + +"O God! My own child against me!" + +"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet and +good you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together and +win! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you've +been nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of you +and--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment of +our own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take up +stenography or social ser--" + +"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. A +young man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't let +him come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, I +know--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what I +am, and mine, too!" + +Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks. + +"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well." + +"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up +when he--" + +"Mamma, how can you?" + +"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--" + +"No!" + +"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for +mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The +minute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, +fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me +would hold me back? See, Alma?" + +"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--" + +"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. +Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak +woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you +away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!" + +"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you." + +"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get +rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it +himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'" + +"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!" + +"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a little +while that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a good +man! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night he +wants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!" + +"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so little +as I do--now." + +"You've said that before--and before." + +"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a new +life. I know it. I'm cured!" + +"Mamma, if I thought you meant it." + +"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case of +neuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad. +I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right." + +"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'd +rather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live to +learn such a--thing about me." + +"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hope +you're cured now, but--" + +"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! You +don't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until I +kill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to Louis +Latz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don't +tell--don't tell!" + +"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you. +Never." + +"Say it again." + +"Never." + +"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. But +it's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured." + +There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke of +her tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling she +could no longer control racing through her like a chill. + +"Oh--how--I hope so!" + +"I know so." + +"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year." + +"No! No!" + +"A few months." + +"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma's +cured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep my +promises to you! Cured, Alma, cured." + +And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to +herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to +her mother that night was the long one of felicitation. + +And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of woman +to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad +under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, +these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night. + +"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that +marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from +his mother." + +"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again." + +"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideas +of a good man." + +"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever." + +"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn +now, Alma, to be care free like other girls." + +"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me." + +"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'" + +"I'll never leave you!" + +"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won't +stand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm not +alone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chance +to--pop--" + +"Shh--sh--h--h!" + +"Don't tremble so, darling. Mamma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer last +night when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for the +Convalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white, +because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag." + +"Oh, mamma!" + +"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyes +off you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the same +thing about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have to +hold him off any more." + +"I'll never leave you. Never!" + +Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in the +dark with the secret of her blushes. + +Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raging +head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with +cruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises that +can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator +depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A +train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak +which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By +three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and +her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay +of he cheek. + +Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest, +floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was very +drowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back as +she said: + +"Mamma, you all right?" + +Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathing +resumed its light cadence. + +Then at four o'clock the kind of nervousness that Mrs. Samstag had +learned to fear began to roll over her in waves, locking her throat and +curling her toes and fingers and her tongue up dry against the roof of +her mouth. + +She must concentrate now--must steer her mind away from the craving! + +Now then: West End Avenue. Louis liked the apartments there. Luxurious. +Quiet. Residential. Circassian walnut or mahogany dining room? Alma +should decide. A baby-grand piano. Later to be Alma's engagement gift +from "mamma and--papa." No, "mamma and Louis." Better so. + +How her neck and her shoulder blade and now her elbow were flaming with +the pain. She cried a little, quite silently, and tried a poor, futile +scheme for easing her head in the crotch of her elbow. + +Now then: She must knit Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater stitch +would do. Married in a traveling suit. One of those smart dark-blue +twills like Mrs. Gronauer, junior's. Topcoat--sable. Louis' hair +thinning. Tonic. O God! let me sleep! Please, God! The wheeze rising in +her closed throat. That little threatening desire that must not shape +itself! It darted with the hither and thither of a bee bumbling against +a garden wall. No! No! Ugh! the vast chills of nervousness. The flaming, +the craving chills of desire! + +Just this last giving-in. This one. To be rested and fresh for him +to-morrow. Then never again. The little beaded hand bag. O God! help me! +That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousand +thousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated. +They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in her +head; the crackle of lightning down that arm-- + +"Let me see--Circassian walnut--baby grand--" The pores demanding, +crying--shrieking-- + +It was then that Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink nightdress a +crone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began by +infinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed, +unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning born of +travail. + +It was actually a matter of fifteen minutes, that breathless swing +toward the floor, the mattress rising after her with scarcely a whisper +and her two bare feet landing patly into the pale-blue room slippers, +there beside the bed. + +Then her bag, the beaded one on the end of the divan. The slow, taut +feeling for it and the floor that creaked twice, starting the sweat out +over her. + +It was finally after more tortuous saving of floor creaks and the +interminable opening and closing of a door that Carrie Samstag, the +beaded bag in her hand, found herself face to face with herself in the +mirror of the bathroom medicine chest. + +She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and little +glass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, +pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm +perch, as it were. + +There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm. +Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! little +graves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one more +little grave-- + +And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma. +No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin. +Here, this little clean and white area. + +"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No! +No! + +Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gaping +and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her +back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the +conflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in her +ears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain. + +Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hair +spread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. The +remaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could never +find the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of her +sweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faint +perfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out. +Out and in. Toward morning she slept. Actually, sweetly, and deeply, as +if she could never have done with deep draughts of it. + +She awoke to the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into their +apartment for about eight minutes of each forenoon. + +Alma was at the pretty chore of lifting the trays from a hamper of +roses. She placed a shower of them on her mother's coverlet with a kiss, +a deeper and dearer one, somehow, this morning. + +There was a card, and Mrs. Samstag read it and laughed: + + Good morning, Carrie. + Louis. + +They seemed to her, poor dear, these roses, to be pink with the glory of +the coming of the dawn. + + * * * * * + +On the spur of the moment and because the same precipitate decision that +determined Louis Latz's successes in Wall Street determined him here, +they were married the following Thursday in Lakewood, New Jersey, +without even allowing Carrie time for the blue-twill traveling suit. She +wore her brown-velvet, instead, looking quite modish, a sable wrap, gift +of the groom, lending genuine magnificence. + +Alma was there, of course, in a beautiful fox scarf, also gift of the +groom, and locked in a pale kind of tensity that made her seem more +than ever like a little white flower to Leo Friedlander, the sole other +attendant, and who during the ceremony yearned at her with his gaze. But +her eyes were squeezed tight against his, as if to forbid herself the +consciousness that life seemed suddenly so richly sweet to her--oh, so +richly sweet! + + * * * * * + +There was a time during the first months of the married life of Louis +and Carrie Latz when it seemed to Alma, who in the sanctity of her +lovely little ivory bedroom all appointed in rose enamel toilet trifles, +could be prayerful with the peace of it, that the old Carrie, who could +come pale and terrible out of her drugged nights, belonged to some +grimacing and chimeric past. A dead past that had buried its dead and +its hatchet. + +There had been a month at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart of +Virginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right to +the privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips, +and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packing +her off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or a +drive over piny roads, he could still smile and pinch her cheek. + +"You're stingy to me with my wife, Alma," he said to her upon one of +these provocations. "I don't believe she's got a daughter at all, but a +little policeman instead." + +And Alma smiled back, out of the agony of her constant consciousness +that she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so that +her fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit down +her sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, but +still politely held in check, bewilderment. + +Once, these first weeks of their marriage, because she saw the dreaded +signal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the little +quivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence for +a day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from the +hotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of her +mother's darkened room and was adamant. + +"It won't hurt if I tiptoe in and sit with her," he pleaded. + +"No, Louis. No one knows how to get her through these spells like I do. +The least excitement will only prolong her pain." + +He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to his +resentment that was bantam and just a little fighty. + +That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep and +watching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a stricken +dog in them. + +"Alma," she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over. +One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?" + +Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. A +lamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, but +at rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep: + +"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma. +Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma." + +And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. The +happily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of the +well-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special body +that was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery with +mother-of-pearl caparisons. The fourteen-room apartment on West End +Avenue with four baths, drawing-room of pink-brocaded walls, and +Carrie's Roman bathroom that was precisely as large as her old hotel +sitting room, with two full-length wall mirrors, a dressing table +canopied in white lace over white satin, and the marble bath itself, two +steps down and with rubber curtains that swished after. + +There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things with +what must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, would +fall asleep almost directly after dinner, her head back against her +husband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up with +matching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings. +Shopping for a strip of pantry linoleum that was just the desired slate +color. Calculating with electricians over the plugs for floor lamps. +Herself edging pantry shelves in cotton lace. + +Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray, +back against his shoulder, and with his newspapers, Wall Street journals +and the comic weeklies which he liked to read, would sit an entire +evening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, his pipe smoke +carefully directed away from her face. + +Weeks and weeks of this, and already Louis Latz's trousers were a little +out of crease, and Mrs. Latz, after eight o'clock and under cover of a +very fluffy and very expensive negligée, would unhook her stays. + +Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after the +second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night +musical-comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to +remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as +many as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband's +shoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with him +in the great white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed. + +And Alma. Almost she tiptoed through these months. Not that her +scorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis' mind ever +diminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see the +displeasure mount in his face. + +If she entered in on a tête-à-tête, as she did once, when by chance she +had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a +room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that +night to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed. + +Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip and +week-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious. + +"Want to join us, Alma?" + +"Oh--yes--thank you, Louis." + +"But I thought you and Leo were--" + +"No, no. I'd rather go with you and mamma, Louis." + +Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation, +politely uttered, had said so plainly, "Are we two never to be alone, +your mother and I?" + +Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all the +delayed fervor of first youth. + +There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of her +mother that made Alma want to cry. + +He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but at +the wonder that she was his. + +"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie," he told her +once in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little mother +there couldn't ever be another--and now you!" + +At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up, +her eyes dewy. + +"And I felt that way about one good husband," she said, "and now I see +there could be two." + +Alma tiptoed out. + +The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his two +evenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan car +which Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauve +drawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in their +friends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving the +young people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight. +Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back, +and the curving voice of innuendo. + +"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!" + +"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feign +that she did not understand. + +"Loo, don't tease," said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes as +if to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass. + +But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on the +edge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine, +pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke cold +drubbings with Turkish towels. + +And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelings +for nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to the +patent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like a +polished floor. + +In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man, +too." He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturing +business--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his advent +from high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almost +doubled its volume of business. + +The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even to +himself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitality +to match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her may +have heightened his sense of prowess. + +His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid loveliness. "White +honeysuckle," he called her, and the names of all the beautiful white +flowers he knew. And then one night, to the rattle of poker chips from +the remote dining room, he jerked her to him without preamble, kissing +her mouth down tightly against her teeth. + +"My sweetheart! My little white carnation sweetheart! I won't be held +off any longer. I'm going to carry you away for my little moonflower +wife." + +She sprang back prettier than he had ever seen her in the dishevelment +from where his embrace had dragged at her hair. + +"You mustn't," she cried, but there was enough of the conquering male in +him to read easily into this a mere plating over her desire. + +"You can't hold me at arm's length any longer. You've maddened me for +months. I love you. You love me. You do. You do," and crushed her to +him, but this time his pain and his surprise genuine as she sprang back, +quivering. + +"No, I tell you. No! No! No!" and sat down trembling. + +"Why, Alma!" And he sat down, too, rather palely, at the remote end of +the divan. + +"You--I--mustn't!" she said, frantic to keep her lips from twisting, her +little lacy fribble of a handkerchief a mere string from winding. + +"Mustn't what?" + +"Mustn't," was all she could repeat and not weep her words. + +"Won't--I--do?" + +"It's--mamma." + +"What?" + +"Her." + +"Her what, my little white buttonhole carnation?" + +"You see--I--She's all alone." + +"You adorable, she's got a brand-new husky husband." + +"No--you don't--understand." + +Then, on a thunderclap of inspiration, hitting his knee: + +"I have it. Mamma-baby! That's it. My girlie is a cry-baby, mamma-baby!" +And made to slide along the divan toward her, but up flew her two small +hands, like fans. + +"No," she said, with the little bang back in her voice which steadied +him again. "I mustn't! You see, we're so close. Sometimes it's more as +if I were the mother and she my little girl." + +"Alma, that's beautiful, but it's silly, too. But tell me first of all, +mamma-baby, that you do care. Tell me that first, dearest, and then we +can talk." + +The kerchief was all screwed up now, so tightly that it could stiffly +unwind of itself. + +"She's not well, Leo. That terrible neuralgia--that's why she needs me +so." + +"Nonsense! She hasn't had a spell for weeks. That's Louis' great brag, +that he's curing her. Oh, Alma, Alma, that's not a reason; that's an +excuse!" + +"Leo--you don't understand." + +"I'm afraid I--don't," he said, looking at her with a sudden intensity +that startled her with a quick suspicion of his suspicions, but then he +smiled. + +"Alma!" he said, "Alma!" + +Misery made her dumb. + +"Why, don't you know, dear, that your mother is better able to take care +of herself than you are? She's bigger and stronger. You--you're a little +white flower, that I want to wear on my heart." + +"Leo--give me time. Let me think." + +"A thousand thinks, Alma, but I love you. I love you and want so +terribly for you to love me back." + +"I--do." + +"Then tell me with kisses." + +Again she pressed him to arm's length. + +"Please, Leo! Not yet. Let me think. Just one day. To-morrow." + +"No, no! Now!" + +"To-morrow." + +"When?" + +"Evening." + +"No, morning." + +"All right, Leo--to-morrow morning--" + +"I'll sit up all night and count every second in every minute and every +minute in every hour." + +She put up her soft little fingers to his lips. + +"Dear boy," she said. + +And then they kissed, and after a little swoon to his nearness she +struggled like a caught bird and a guilty one. + +"Please go, Leo," she said. "Leave me alone--" + +"Little mamma-baby sweetheart," he said. "I'll build you a nest right +next to hers. Good night, little white flower. I'll be waiting, and +remember, counting every second of every minute and every minute of +every hour." + +For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pink +divan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer for +the prayers that she sent up. + + * * * * * + +At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, and +with such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet, +Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire horses, sprang out of +sleep. + +It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white-tiled +Roman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneath +her eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-length +mirrors--snickering. + +There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right forearm. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes in the weeks that followed a sense of the miracle of what was +happening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear. + +Louis did not know. + +That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes. +Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent, +were taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one who +had worked such wonders on his mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs, +reassuringly foremost in his mind. + +But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four-hour +sieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned, with a +male's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and, +with no great understanding of pain, to condone. + +And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there was +something pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal for +his well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace his +shoes and even shine them--would have, in fact, except for his fierce +catching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching as +he kissed her. + +Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and, +kissing them piece by piece, put them back again, and he found her so, +and they cried together, he of happiness. + +In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to grow +but slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him rather +fiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almost +rudely, but, at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from the +darkened room, backed out shamefacedly, and apologized next day in the +conciliatory language of a tiny wrist watch. + +But a break came, as she knew and feared it must. + +One evening during one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie had +not appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal was +almost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her mother's place +opposite her stepfather. + +He had reached the stage when that little unconscious usurpation in +itself could annoy him. + +"How's your mother?" he asked, dourly for him. + +"She's asleep." + +"Funny. This is the third attack this month, and each time it lasts +longer. Confound that neuralgia!" + +"She's easier now." + +He pushed back his plate. + +"Then I'll go in and sit with her while she sleeps." + +She, who was so fastidiously dainty of manner, half rose, spilling her +soup. + +"No," she said, "you mustn't! Not now!" And sat down again hurriedly, +wanting not to appear perturbed. + +A curious thing happened then to Louis. His lower lip came pursing +out like a little shelf and a hitherto unsuspected look of pigginess +fattened over his rather plump face. + +"You quit butting into me and my wife's affairs, you, or get the hell +out of here," he said, without raising his voice or his manner. + +She placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart. + +"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!" + +"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you! +There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between me +and her or--get out." + +"I--She's sick." + +"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knows +why, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind. +Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're married +to keep us apart. Shame!" + +"I--She--" + +"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you out +long ago. Haven't you got any pride?" + +"I have. I have," she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up there +and swooned her humiliation. + +"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are! +Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is it +you want?" + +"Louis--I don't--" + +"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don't +come to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever is +eating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that ever +lived. Shame! Shame!" + +"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony, +"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous trying +to pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That's +all, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why, +Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn't +she dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been the +best friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis." + +He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon going +into the room. + +"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped open +his newspaper for a lonely evening. + +The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the +dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish +and more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets. + +The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back +in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more +and more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs. + +Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeur +of collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage. + +"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's hearing, of course. "Who's +running this shebang, anyway?" + +Again, after Alma had guarded her well for days, scarcely leaving her +side, Carrie laughed sardonically up into her daughter's face, her eyes +as glassy and without swimming fluid as a doll's. + +"I get it! But wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma's +horror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hour +the sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on her face. + +One night in what had become the horrible sanctity of that +bedchamber--But let this sum it up. When Alma was nineteen years old a +little colony of gray hairs was creeping in on each temple. + +And then one day, after a long period of quiet, when Carrie had lavished +her really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, +spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery, +somehow to express her grateful adoration of her, paying her husband the +secret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, +Alma, returning from a trip taken reluctantly and at her mother's +bidding down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modish +black-lace hat and the sable coat missing from the closet. + +It was early afternoon, sunlit and pleasantly cold. + +The first rush of panic and the impulse to dash after stayed, she forced +herself down into a chair, striving with the utmost difficulty for +coherence of procedure. + +Where in the half hour of her absence had her mother gone? Matinée? +Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen, +neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With a +hand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Car +and chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more than +one occasion, had lately been obliged to remind her mother that she +was becoming careless of the old pointedly rosy hands. Manicurist? She +telephoned the Bon Ton Beauty Parlors. No. Where? O God! Where? Which +way to begin? That was what troubled her most. To start right so as not +to lose a precious second. + +Suddenly, and for no particular reason, Alma began a hurried search +through her mother's dresser drawers of lovely personal appointments. +Turning over whole mounds of fresh white gloves, delving into nests of +sheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while she +stood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed about +her throat. + +"Please, God, where?" + +A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from the +sheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of the +gold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read. + +It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equipped +narcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medically +administer to the pathological cravings of addicts. + +Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and, +with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run. + +At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat and +the black-lace hat, coming toward her. + +Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought better +of it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able to +slow down to a casual walk. + +Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of her +attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy, +stares followed her. + +Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say a +brief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill of +lading. He hesitated, laughed, and went on. + +Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with a sense of being +followed, because constantly as she walked she jerked a step, to look +back, and then again, over her shoulder. + +A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of a +woman without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's basted +waistcoats, evidently for home work in some tenement. She looked and +muttered her un-understanding at whatever Carrie had to say, and +shambled on. + +Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or any +particular recognition. + +"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? I mean Alma." + +"Mamma, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had this +appointment? Come, dear." + +"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis! I was fooling. +I went up to him in the clinic" (snicker) "and I said to him, 'Give you +five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' That's all I said to him, +or any of them. He's in a white carnation, Louis. You can find him by +the--it on his coat lapel. He's coming! Quick--" + +"Mamma, there's no one following. Wait, I'll call a taxi!" + +"No, you don't! He tried to put me in a taxi, too. No, you don't!" + +"Then the Subway, dearest. You'll sit quietly beside Alma in the Subway, +won't you, Carrie? Alma's so tired." + +Suddenly Carrie began to whimper. + +"My baby! Don't let her see me. My baby! What am I good for? I've ruined +her life. My precious sweetheart's life. I hit her once--Louis--in the +mouth. It bled. God won't forgive me for that." + +"Yes, He will, dear, if you come." + +"It bled. Alma, tell him in the white carnation that mamma lost +her doctor's certificate. That's all I said to him. Saw him in the +clinic--new clinic--'give you five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' +He had a white carnation--right lapel. Stingy. Quick!--following!" + +"Sweetheart, please, there's no one coming." + +"Don't tell! Oh, Alma darling--mamma's ruined your life! Her sweetheart +baby's life." + +"No, darling, you haven't. She loves you if you'll come home with her, +dear, to bed, before Louis gets home and--" + +"No. No. He mustn't see. Never this bad--was I, darling? Oh! Oh!" + +"No, mamma--never--this bad. That's why we must hurry." + +"Best man that ever lived. Best baby. Ruin. Ruin." + +"Mamma, you--you're making Alma tremble so that she can scarcely walk if +you drag her so. There's no one following, dear. I won't let anyone harm +you. Please, sweetheart--a taxicab." + +"No. I tell you he's following. He tried to put me into a taxicab. +Followed me. Said he knew me." + +"Then, mamma, listen. Do you hear? Alma wants you to listen. If you +don't--she'll faint. People are looking. Now I want you to turn square +around and look. No, look again. You see now, there's no one following. +Now I want you to cross the street over there to the Subway. Just with +Alma who loves you. There's nobody following. Just with Alma who loves +you." + +And then Carrie, whose lace hat was quite on the back of her head, +relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic of +trucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, her daughter could wind +their way. + +"My baby! My poor Louis!" she kept saying. "The worst I've ever been. +Oh--Alma--Louis--waiting--before we get there--Louis!" + +It was in the tightest tangle of the crossing and apparently on this +conjuring of her husband that Carrie jerked suddenly free of Alma's +frailer hold. + +"No--no--not home--now. Him. Alma!" And darted back against the breast +of the down side of the traffic. + +There was scarcely more than the quick rotation of her arm around with +the spoke of a truck wheel, so quickly she went down. + +It was almost a miracle, her kind of death, because out of all that jam +of tonnage she carried only one bruise, a faint one, near the brow. + +And the wonder was that Louis Latz, in his grief, was so proud. + +"To think," he kept saying over and over again and unabashed at the way +his face twisted--"to think they should have happened to me. Two such +women in one lifetime as my little mother--and her. Fat little old Louis +to have had those two. Why, just the memory of my Carrie--is almost +enough. To think old me should have a memory like that--it is almost +enough--isn't it, Alma?" + +She kissed his hand. + +That very same, that dreadful night, almost without her knowing it, +her throat-tearing sobs broke loose, her face to the waistcoat of Leo +Friedlander. + +He held her close--very, very close. "Why, sweetheart," he said, "I +could cut out my heart to help you! Why, sweetheart! Shh-h-h! Remember +what Louis says. Just the beautiful memory--of--her--is--wonderful--" + +"Just--the b-beautiful--memory--you'll always have it, too--of her--my +mamma--won't you, Leo? Won't you?" + +"Always," he said when the tight grip in his throat had eased enough. + +"Say--it again--Leo." + +"Always." + +She could not know how dear she became to him then, because not ten +minutes before, from the very lapel against which her cheek lay pressed, +he had unpinned a white carnation. + + + + +BACK PAY + + +I set out to write a love story, and for the purpose sharpened a +bright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end. + +Something sweet. Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all the +bitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, if +need be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud, +and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects where +they wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the world +told newly. No wear out to it. Editors know. It's as staple as eggs +or printed lawn or ipecac. The good old-fashioned love story with the +above-mentioned miss, kiss, and, if need be for the sake of timeliness, +the bit of khaki, pressed. + +Just my luck that, with one of these modish tales at the tip of my pink +pencil, Hester Bevins should come pounding and clamoring at the door of +my mental reservation, quite drowning out the rather high, the lipsy, +and, if I do say it myself, distinctly musical patter of Arline. That +was to have been her name. Arline Kildane. Sweet, don't you think, and +with just a bit of wild Irish rose in it? + +But Hester Bevins would not let herself be gainsaid, sobbing a little, +elbowing her way through the group of mental unborns, and leaving me to +blow my pitch pipe for a minor key. + +Not that Hester's isn't one of the oldest stories in the world, too. No +matter how newly told, she is as old as sin, and sin is but a few weeks +younger than love--and how often the two are interchangeable! + +If it be a fact that the true lady is, in theory, either a virgin or +a lawful wife, then Hester Bevins stands immediately convicted on two +charges. + +She was neither. The most that can be said for her is that she was +honestly what she was. + +"If the wages of sin is death," she said to a roadhouse party of +roysterers one dawn, "then I've quite a bit of back pay coming to me." +And joined in the shout that rose off the table. + +I can sketch her in for you rather simply because of the hackneyed +lines of her very, very old story. Whose pasts so quickly mold and +disintegrate as those of women of Hester's stripe? Their yesterdays are +entirely soluble in the easy waters of their to-days. + +For the first seventeen years of her life she lived in what we might +call Any American Town of, say, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. +Her particular one was in Ohio. Demopolis, I think. One of those +change-engine-and-take-on-water stops with a stucco art-nouveau station, +a roof drooping all round it, as if it needed to be shaved off like +edges of a pie, and the name of the town writ in conch shells on a +green slant of terrace. You know--the kind that first establishes a +ten-o'clock curfew for its young, its dance halls and motion-picture +theaters, and then sends in a hurry call for a social-service expert +from one of the large Eastern cities to come and diagnose its malignant +vice undergrowth. + +Hester Bevins, of a mother who died bearing her and one of those +disappearing fathers who can speed away after the accident without even +stopping to pick up the child or leave a license number, was reared--no, +grew up, is better--in the home of an aunt. A blond aunt with many gold +teeth and many pink and blue wrappers. + +Whatever Hester knew of the kind of home that fostered her, it left +apparently no welt across her sensibilities. It was a rather poor house, +an unpainted frame in a poor street, but there was never a lack of +gayety or, for that matter, any pinching lack of funds. It was an actual +fact that, at thirteen, cotton or lisle stockings brought out a +little irritated rash on Hester's slim young legs, and she wore silk. +Abominations, it is true, at three pair for a dollar, that sprang runs +and would not hold a darn, but, just the same, they were silk. There was +an air of easy _camaraderie_ and easy money about that house. It was +not unusual for her to come home from school at high noon and find a +front-room group of one, two, three, or four guests, almost invariably +men. Frequently these guests handed her out as much as half a dollar +for candy money, and not another child in school reckoned in more than +pennies. + +Once a guest, for reasons of odd change, I suppose, handed her out +thirteen cents. Outraged, at the meanness of the sum, and with an early +and deep-dyed superstition of thirteen, she dashed the coins out of his +hand and to the four corners of the room, escaping in the guffaw of +laughter that went up. + +Often her childish sleep in a small top room with slanting sides would +be broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never by +word, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any of +its sordid significance. + +Literally, Hester Bevins was left to feather her own nest. There were +no demands made upon her. Once, in the little atrocious front parlor of +horsehair and chromo, one of the guests, the town baggage-master, to +be exact, made to embrace her, receiving from the left rear a sounding +smack across cheek and ear from the aunt. + +"Cut that! Hester, go out and play! Whatever she's got to learn from +life, she can't say she learned it in my house." + +There were even two years of high school, and at sixteen, when she went, +at her own volition, to clerk in Finley's two-story department store on +High Street, she was still innocent, although she and Gerald Fishback +were openly sweethearts. + +Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but if +ever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald was +in his image. A wide streak of the Scandinavian ran through his make-up, +although he had been born in Middletown, and from there had come +recently to the Finley Dry Goods Company as an accountant. + +He was so the viking in his bigness that once, on a picnic, he had +carried two girls, screaming their fun, across twenty feet of stream. +Hester was one of them. + +It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then +seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler +rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little +gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway +stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore +a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent +silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with points +to them. + +They were in the very heart of Wallach's Grove, under a natural +cathedral of trees, the noises of the revelers and the small explosions +of soda-water and beer bottles almost remote enough for perfect quiet. +He was stretched his full and splendid length at the picknickers' +immemorial business of plucking and sucking grass blades, and she seated +very trimly, her little blue-serge skirt crawling up ever so slightly to +reveal the silken ankle, on a rock beside him. + +"Tickle-tickle!" she cried, with some of that irrepressible animal +spirit of hers, and leaning to brush his ear with a twig. + +He caught at her hand. + +"Hester," he said, "marry me." + +She felt a foaming through her until her finger tips sang. + +"Well, I like that!" was what she said, though, and flung up a pointed +profile that was like that same gazelle's smelling the moon. + +He was very darkly red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about the +waist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling her +fingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But she did not. + +"You're too poor," she said. + +He sat back without speaking for a long minute. + +"Money isn't everything," he said, finally, and with something gone from +his voice. + +"I know," she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen to +want it more than anything else in the world." + +"Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, I +want it, too, more than anything else in the world." + +"There's no future in bookkeeping." + +"I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man. +Hester? Dear?" + +"A week?" + +"Why, of course not, dear--a month!" + +"Faugh!" she said, still looking off. + +He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again. + +"Hester," he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, the +most maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world! +You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--your +environment and your dangerousness, if you don't settle down--quick, +with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you. +That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you. +I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you the +bigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?" + +She would not let her hand relax to his. + +"I hate this town," she said. + +"There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there." + +"Faugh!" + +"Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis." + +"No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even little +metropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spenders +and mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, and +machine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!" + +"And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester. +You're beautiful." + +"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've +got a pink-crêpe-de-Chine soul. Pink crêpe de Chine--you hear?" + +He sat back on his heels. + +"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that +salesman from New York?" + +"Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High +Street, evenings!" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?" + +"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?" + +"Well, of all the nerve!" + +But it was. + + * * * * * + +The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped +soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the +story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or +whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer. + +Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic, +manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel +of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island, +vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but +of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations. + +You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was an +apartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated on +the windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type from +the pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine, +mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, to +the pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with a +small mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded with +paper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom with +a sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales, +and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles, +sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negro +maid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a private +telephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb that +turned on automatically to the opening of the door. + +There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponent +of that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker," a roll of money in +his pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in for +light checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across his +waistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in a +large corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent and +expensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters; +wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public, +white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-year +scale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and three +children, and, like all men of his code, his ethics were strictly double +decked. He would not permit his nineteen-year-old daughter Marion so +much as a shopping tour to the city without the chaperonage of her +mother or a friend, forbade in his wife, a comely enough woman with a +white unmarcelled coiffure and upper arms a bit baggy with withering +flesh, even the slightest of shirtwaist V's unless filled in with +net, and kept up, at an expense of no less than fifteen thousand a +year--thirty the war year that tractors jumped into the war-industry +class--the very high-priced, -tempered, -handed, and -stepping Hester of +wild-gazelle charm. + +Not that Hester stepped much. There were a long underslung roadster +and a great tan limousine with yellow-silk curtains at the call of her +private telephone. + +The Wheeler family used, not without complaint, a large open car of very +early vintage, which in winter was shut in with flapping curtains with +isinglass peepers, and leaked cold air badly. + +On more than one occasion they passed on the road--these cars. The +long tan limousine with the shock absorbers, foot warmers, two brown +Pomeranian dogs, little case of enamel-top bottles, fresh flowers, and +outside this little jewel-case interior, smartly exposed, so that the +blast hit him from all sides, a chauffeur in uniform that harmonized +nicely with the tans and yellows. And then the grotesque caravan of the +Azoic motor age, with its flapping curtains and ununiformed youth in +visored cap at the wheel. + +There is undoubtedly an unsavory aspect to this story. For purpose of +fiction, it is neither fragrant nor easily digested. But it is not so +unsavory as the social scheme which made it possible for those two cars +to pass thus on the road, and, at the same time, Charles G. Wheeler to +remain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations, +and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on the +left side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plate +at the end of a front pew. + +No one but God and Mrs. Wheeler knew what was in her heart. It is +possible that she did not know what the world knew, but hardly. That she +endured it is not admirable, but then there were the three children, +and, besides, she lived in a world that let it go at that. And so she +continued to hold up her head in her rather poor, mute way, rode beside +her husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement of +their son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little in +private, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul. + +But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but it +was Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told. + +As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. There +was no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, as +the corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. The +white-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers of +her masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray, +and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, was +unfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and, +of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out more +than ever. + +As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more than +once without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before her +face like an overtone; it was an invisible caul. The wells of her eyes +were muddy with it. + +But withal, she commanded something of a manner, even from Wheeler. He +had no key to the apartment. He never entered her room without knocking. +There were certain of his friends she would not tolerate, from one or +another aversion, to be party to their not infrequent carousals. Men +did not always rise from their chairs when she entered a room, but she +suffered few liberties from them. She was absolutely indomitable in her +demands. + +"Lord!" ventured Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, +lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in +orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, +pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these +Yvette bills pretty steep? + + "One midnight-blue-and-silver gown . . . . . . . . . $485.00 + One blue-and-silver head bandeau . . . . . . . . . . 50.00 + One serge-and-satin trotteur gown . . . . . . . . . 275.00 + One ciel-blue tea gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280.00 + +"Is that the cheapest you can drink tea? Whew!" + +She put down her coffee cup, which she usually held with one little +finger poised elegantly outward as if for flight. + +"You've got a nerve!" she said, rising and pushing back her chair. "Over +whose ticker are you getting quotations that I come cheap?" + +He was immediately conciliatory, rising also to enfold her in an embrace +that easily held her slightness. + +"Go on," he said. "You could work me for the Woolworth Building in +diamonds if you wanted it badly enough." + +"Funny way of showing it! I may be a lot of things, Wheeler, but I'm not +cheap. You're darn lucky that the war is on and I'm not asking for a +French car." + +He crushed his lips to hers. + +"You devil!" he said. + +There were frequent parties. Dancing at Broadway cabarets, all-night joy +rides, punctuated with road-house stop-overs, and not infrequently, in +groups of three or four couples, ten-day pilgrimages to showy American +spas. + +"Getting boiled out," they called it. It was part of Hester's scheme for +keeping her sveltness. + +Her friendships were necessarily rather confined to a definite +circle--within her own apartment house, in fact. On the floor above, +also in large, bright rooms of high rental, and so that they were +exchanging visits frequently during the day, often _en déshabillé_, +using the stairway that wound up round the elevator shaft, lived a +certain Mrs. Kitty Drew, I believe she called herself. She was plump and +blond, and so very scented that her aroma lay on a hallway for an hour +after she had scurried through it. She was well known and chiefly +distinguished by a large court-plaster crescent which she wore on her +left shoulder blade. She enjoyed the bounty of a Wall Street broker +who for one day had attained the conspicuousness of cornering the egg +market. + +There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, half +French, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester were +intimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usually +lazy and lacy with negligée, lounging about on the mounds of lingerie +pillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always the +headache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of: +"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about a +dark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails last +night," through their conversation. + +KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day." + +HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring." + +KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks." + +HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!" + +KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball." + +HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat." + +There were the two years of high school, you see. + +"Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him he +could not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not." + +"Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town." + +"Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner of +Forty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth." + +"Demopolis, Ohio." + +"What is that--a skin disease?" + +"My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt. +Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of this +stiffness out of my joints." + +"Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babe +can always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let's +motor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks about +ready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left little +toe. You on?" + +"I am, if he is." + +"If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in his +nose if you wanted it." + +And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-season +evening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into the +solid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled, +veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers, +and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar, +furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows, +robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourteen wardrobe trunks sent by express. + +They took the "cure." Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at the +casino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for the +smarter European idea, with a special _à la carte_ menu for each meal. +Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates of +the "cure," appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on were +reported by the more conservative hotel guests, and the privacy of their +circle was allowed full integrity by the little veranda groups of gouty +ladies or middle-aged husbands with liver spots on their faces. The bath +attendants reveled in the largest tips of the season. When Hester walked +down the large dining room evenings, she was a signal for the craning of +necks for the newest shock of her newest extreme toilette. The kinds of +toilettes that shocked the women into envy and mental notes of how the +underarm was cut, and the men into covert delight. Wheeler liked to sit +back and put her through her paces like a high-strung filly. + +"Make 'em sit up, girl! You got them all looking like dimes around +here." + +One night she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown so +daringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegant +thing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter of +dishes pausing. + +There was a gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over one +shoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied with +it as she walked. + +"Take it from me," said Kitty, who felt fat in lavender that night, +"she's going it one too strong." + +Another evening she descended, always last, in a cloth of silver with a +tiny, an absurd, an impeccably tight silver turban dipped down over one +eye, and absolutely devoid of jewels except the pear-shaped diamond on +her left forefinger. + +They were a noisy, a spending, a cosmopolitan crowd of too-well-fed men +and too-well-groomed women, ignored by the veranda groups of wives and +mothers, openly dazzling and arousing a tremendous curiosity in the +younger set, and quite obviously sought after by their own kind. + +But Hester's world, too, is all run through with sharply defined social +schisms. + +"I wish that Irwin woman wouldn't always hang round our crowd," she +said, one morning, as she and Kitty lay side by side in the cooling room +after their baths, massages, manicures, and shampoos. "I don't want to +be seen running with her." + +"Did you see the square emerald she wore last night?" + +"Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made up +for her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybody +standing back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes to +Tessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap." + +Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and her +little mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow. + +"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard as +nails." + +"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones who +aren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've got +to play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as well +have the game." + +"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one more +wife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if I +had to play it on a South Dakota farm." + +"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in a +copy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything is +worth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin. +I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stock +of myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her arms +in a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There's +not been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd have +married me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow, +too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future to +ladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was a +pretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been pretty +lucky in the long run, I guess." + +"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette +in the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you a +piece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair? +I've been married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven't +you ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walked +into the room?" + +"Once." + +"Once what?" + +"I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I always +think to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes under +heaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs." + +"Thanks, dearie." + +"I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're out +here. Poor old Gerald Fishback!" + +"Sweet name--'Fishback.' No wonder you went wrong, dearie." + +"Oh, I'm not getting soft. I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft and +comfy, and I'm lying on it without a whimper." + +"You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy! You've the right +idea; I have to hand that to you. You command respect from them. Lord! +Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not. But, with me, it pays. The +last one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle." + +"Wouldn't wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond." + +"Superstitious, dearie?" + +"Unlucky. Never knew it to fail." + +"Not a superstition in my bones. I don't believe in walking under +ladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down with +thirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you! Thought you'd have +the hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day out +at the races." + +"Br-r-r! I hated it." + +"Lay easy, dearie. Nothing can touch you the way he's raking in the war +contracts." + +"Great--isn't it?" + +"Play for a country home, dearie. I always say real estate and jewelry +are something in the hand. Look ahead in this game, I always say." + +"You just bet I've looked ahead." + +"So have I, but not enough." + +"Somehow, I never feel afraid. I could get a job to-morrow if I had to." + +"Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there's +not a chorus I couldn't land back in." + +"I worked once, you know, in Lichtig's import shop." + +"Fifth Avenue?" + +"Yes. It was in between the salesman and Al. I sold two thousand five +hundred dollars' worth of gowns the first week." + +"Sure enough?" + +"'Girl,' old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit--'girl,' he said, 'if +ever you need this job again, comeback; it's waiting.'" + +"Fine chance!" + +"I've got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minute +in the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work. I paid for +that suit with my first month's savings. A little dark-blue Norfolk, +Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty." + +"Were they giving them away with a pound of tea?" + +"Honest, Kitty, it was neat. Little white shirt waist, tan shoes, and +one of those slick little five-dollar sailors, and every cent paid out +of my salary. I could step into that outfit to-morrow, look the part, +and land back that job or any other. I had a way with the trade, even +back at Finley's." + +"Here, hold my jewel bag, honey; I'm going to die of cold-cream +suffocation if she don't soon come back and unsmear me." + +"Opal beetle in it?" + +"Yes, dearie; but it won't bite. It's muzzled with my diamond +horseshoe." + +"Nothing doing, Kit. Put it under your pillow." + +"You better watch out. There's a thirteenth letter in the alphabet; you +might accidentally use it some day. You're going to have a sweet time +to-night, you are!" + +"Why?" + +"The boys have engaged De Butera to come up to the rooms." + +"You mean the fortune teller over at the Stag Hotel?" + +"She's not a fortune teller, you poor nervous wreck. She's the +highest-priced spiritualist in the world. Moving tables--spooks--woof!" + +"Faugh!" said Hester, rising from her couch and feeling with her little +bare feet for the daintiest of pink-silk mules. "I could make tables +move, too, at forty dollars an hour. Where's my attendant? I want an +alcohol rub." + +They did hold séance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddled +together in the _de-luxe_ sitting room of one of their suites, and +little half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ribaldry under cover +of darkness. + +Madame de Butera was of a distinctly fat and earthy blondness, with a +coarse-lace waist over pink, and short hands covered with turquoise +rings of many shapes and blues. + +Tables moved. A dead sister of Wheeler's spoke in thin, high voice. Why +is it the dead are always so vocally thin and high? + +A chair tilted itself on hind legs, eliciting squeals from the women. +Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty with +a deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sips +of highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowed +herself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, and +Kitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed a +hundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or to +the legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened, +May, amid riots of laughter, claiming for herself the hundred-dollar +bill, and Kitty, quite resuscitated, jumping up for a table cancan, her +yellow hair tumbling, and her china-blue eyes with the dregs in them +inclined to water. + +All but Hester. She sat off by herself in a peacock-colored gown that +wrapped her body suavity as if the fabric were soaking wet, a band of +smoky-blue about her forehead. Never intoxicated, a slight amount of +alcohol had a tendency to make her morose. + +"What's the matter, Cleo?" asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her and +lifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remote +analogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen. +"What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?" + +She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenly +wind-blown. + +"God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm. +"Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?" + +But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, and +the following morning there they were, the eight of them, light with +laughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, off +for a day's motoring through the springtime countryside. + +"Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat in +the first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind. + +"I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last of +the cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil. + +"Crystal Cave it is, then." + +"Is that through Demopolis?" + +Followed a scanning of maps. + +"Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. Crystal +Cave." + +"Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?" + +"It's my home town," she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had is +buried there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-house +steps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get there +ever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town you +haven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?" + +He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her. + +She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually found +irresistible. + +"Honey," she said, "what do you think?" + +"What?" + +"Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom's +window the day before we left." + +"The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediately +covering his. + +"She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it for +her." + +"Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at the +beautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look at +those hills over there! Great--isn't it?" + +"I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landing +one big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself in +that chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I could +telegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hate +it, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it. So would you. What's +fifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundred +thousands? Honey?" + +"Wire," he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers. + + * * * * * + +They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but with +pleasantry and gibe. + +"Give my love to the town pump." + +"Rush the old oaken growler for me." + +"So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at six +sharp." + +She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, but +otherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store, +and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made a +foray down into the little side street where she had spent those queerly +remote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! The +little unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on the +site. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower and +dirtier than she recalled it. + +She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. It +was a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door opened +directly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly used +instead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie was +married and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine--a master mechanic, and there +were twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, and +halfway she changed her mind. + +Maggie Simms married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What a +world! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on her +way back to the court-house steps. Stupid to have made it six! + +And then, of course, and quite as you would have it, Gerald Fishback +came along. She recognized his blondness long before he saw her. He was +bigger and more tanned, and, as of old, carried his hat in his hand. She +noticed that there were no creases down the front of his trousers, but +the tweed was good and he gave off that intangible aroma of well-being. + +She was surprised at the old thrill racing over her. Seeing him was like +a stab of quick steel through the very pit of her being. She reached +out, touching him, before he saw her. + +"Gerald," she said, soft and teasingly. + +It was actually as if he had been waiting for that touch, because before +he could possibly have perceived her her name was on his lips. + +"Hester!" he said, the blueness of his eyes flashing between blinks. +"Not Hester?" + +"Yes, Hester," she said, smiling up at him. + +He grasped both her hands, stammering for words that wanted to come +quicker than he could articulate. + +"Hester!" he kept repeating. "Hester!" + +"To think you knew me, Gerald!" + +"Know you! I'd know you blindfolded. And how--I--You're beautiful, +Hester! I think you've grown five years younger." + +"You've got on, Gerald. You look it." + +"Yes; I'm general manager now at Finley's." + +"I'm so glad. Married?" + +"Not while there's a Hester Bevins on earth." + +She started at her own name. + +"How do you know I'm not married?" + +"I--I know--" he said, reddening up. + +"Isn't there some place we can talk, Gerald? I've thirty minutes before +my friends call for me." + +"'Thirty minutes?'" + +"Your rooms? Haven't you rooms or a room where we could go and sit +down?" + +"Why--why, no, Hester," he said, still red. "I'd rather you didn't +go there. But here. Let's stop in at the St. James Hotel. There's a +parlor." + +To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly conscious +of her finger tips. + +"You darling!" She smiled up at him. + +They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry, +Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel. + +"Hester," he said, "you're like a vision come to earth." + +"I'm a bad durl," she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew. + +"You're a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in my +dreams." + +She placed her forefinger over his mouth. + +"Sh-h!" she said. "I'm not a saint, Gerald; you know that." + +"Yes," he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, "I do +know it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who can +sometimes come out--new. It was your early environment." + +"My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard. I could have saved her all +that if I had only known. She was cheap, aunt was. Poor soul! She never +looked ahead." + +"It was your early environment, Hester. I've explained that often enough +to them here. I'd bank on you, Hester--swear by you." + +She patted him. + +"I'm a pretty bad egg, Gerald. According to the standards of a town +like this, I'm rotten, and they're about right. For five years, Gerald, +I've--" + +"The real _you_ is ahead of--and not behind you, Hester." + +"How wonderful," she said, "for you to feel that way, but--" + +"Hester," he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond head +nearing hers, "I don't care about anything that's past; I only know +that, for me, you are the--" + +"Gerald," she said, "for God's sake!" + +"I'm a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester. I want to build you the +prettiest, the whitest little house in this town. Out in the Briarwood +section. I'll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I--" + +"Why," she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, "you +couldn't keep me in stockings, Gerald! The aigrettes on this hat cost +more than one month of your salary." + +"Good God!" he said. + +"You're a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I told +you about my crêpe-de-Chine soul." + +"Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists you +used to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats. You remember +that day at Finleys' picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you--you--" + +"You dear boy!" + +"But it--your mistake--it--it's all over. You work now, don't you, +Hester?" + +Somehow, looking into the blueness of his eyes and their entreaty for +her affirmative, she did what you or I might have done. She half lied, +regretting it while the words still smoked on her lips. + +"Why, yes, Gerald; I've held a fine position in Lichtig Brothers, New +York importers. Those places sometimes pay as high as seventy-five a +week. But I don't make any bones, Gerald; I've not been an angel." + +"The--the salesman, Hester?"--his lips quivering with a nausea for the +question. + +"I haven't seen him in four years," she answered, truthfully. + +He laid his cheek on her hand. + +"I knew you'd come through. It was your environment. I'll marry you +to-morrow--to-day, Hester. I love you." + +"You darling boy!" she said, her lips back tight against her teeth. "You +darling, darling boy!" + +"Please, Hester! We'll forget what has been." + +"Let me go," she said, rising and pinning on her hat; "let me go--or--or +I'll cry, and--and I don't want to cry." + +"Hester," he called, rushing after her and wanting to fold her back into +his arms, "let me prove my trust--my love--" + +"Don't! Let me go! Let me go!" + +At slightly after six the ultra cavalcade drew up at the court-house +steps. She was greeted with the pleasantries and the gibes. + +"Have a good time, sweetness?" asked Wheeler, arranging her rugs. + +"Yes," she said, lying back and letting her lids droop; "but +tired--very, very tired." + +At the hotel, she stopped a moment to write a telegram before going up +for the vapor bath, nap, and massage that were to precede dinner. + +"Meyerbloom & Co., Furriers. Fifth Avenue, New York," it was addressed. + + * * * * * + +This is not a war story except that it has to do with profiteering, +parlor patriots, and the return of Gerald Fishback. + +While Hester was living this tale, and the chinchilla coat was +enveloping her like an ineffably tender caress, three hundred thousand +of her country's youths were at strangle hold across three thousand +miles of sea, and on a notorious night when Hester walked, fully dressed +in a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the electric fountain of +a seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in a +sable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, and +his eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gas +cloud rolling at him across the vast bombarded dawn. + + * * * * * + +Hester read of him one morning, sitting up in bed against a mound of +lace-over-pink pillows, a masseuse at the pink soles of her feet. It was +as if his name catapulted at her from a column she never troubled to +read. She remained quite still, looking at the name for a full five +minutes after it had pierced her full consciousness. Then, suddenly, she +swung out of bed, tilting over the masseuse. + +"Tessie," she said, evenly enough, "that will do. I have to hurry to +Long Island to a base hospital. Go to that little telephone in the +hall--will you?--and call my car." + +But the visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of red +tape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seaside +hospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had been +the resort hotel of more than one dancing orgy. + +She thought she would faint when she saw him, jerking herself back with +a straining of all her faculties. The blood seemed to drain away +from her body, leaving her ready to sink, and only the watchful and +threatening eye of a man nurse sustained her. He was sitting up in bed, +and she would never have recognized in him anything of Gerald except +for the shining Scandinavian quality of his hair. His eyes were not +bandaged, but their sockets were dry and bare like the beds of old lakes +long since drained. She had only seen the like in eyeless marble busts. +There were unsuspected cheek bones, pitched now very high in his face, +and his neck, rising above the army nightshirt, seemed cruelly long, +possibly from thinness. + +"Are you Hester?" whispered the man nurse. + +She nodded, her tonsils squeezed together in an absolute knot. + +"He called for you all through his delirium," he said, and went out. She +stood at the bedside, trying to keep down the screams from her speech +when it should come. But he was too quick for her. + +"Hester," he said, feeling out. + +And in their embrace, her agony melted to tears that choked and seared, +beat and scalded her, and all the time it was he who held her with rigid +arm, whispered to her, soothed down the sobs which tore through her like +the rip of silk, seeming to split her being. + +"Now--now! Why, Hester! Now--now--now! Sh-h! It will be over in a +minute. You mustn't feel badly. Come now, is this the way to greet a +fellow that's so darn glad to see you that nothing matters? Why I can +see you, Hester. Plain as day in your little crispy waist. Now, now! +You'll get used to it in a minute. Now--now--" + +"I can't stand it, Gerald! I can't! Can't! Kill me, Gerald, but don't +ask me to stand it!" + +He stroked down the side of her, lingering at her cheek. + +"Sh-h! Take your time, dear," he said, with the first furry note in his +voice. "I know it's hard, but take your time. You'll get used to me. +It's the shock, that's all. Sh-h!" + +She covered his neck with kisses and scalding tears, her compassion for +him racing through her in chills. + +"I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tear +out my heart and give it to you. I'm bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!" + +There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of what +her own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly have +opened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Her +compassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything, +wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on the +agonized crest of the moment. + +"There's a girl! Why, I'm going to get well, Hester, and do what +thousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful, +and a busy life." + +"It's not fair! It's not fair!" + +"I'm ready now, except for this old left lung. It's burnt a bit, you +see--gas." + +"God! God!" + +"It's pretty bad, I admit. But there's another way of looking at it. +There's a glory in being chosen to bear your country's wounds." + +"Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does it +all mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know, +scot-free and Gerald chosen. God! God! where are you?" + +"He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, He +is closer than ever." + +"I'll never leave you, Gerald," she said, crying down into his sleeve +again. "Don't be afraid of the dark, dear; I'll never leave you." + +"Nonsense!" he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen away +from. + +"Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawl +on my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave you, Gerald--never!" + +"My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!" + +But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged to +leave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow's +return, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, a +closeted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tape +and filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse was +called finally to help her through the corridors to her car. + +Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeks +to live. + +All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, +she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down her +uncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in her +mind. + + * * * * * + +That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive +apartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinum +chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the +sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been +talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he +had fallen quite still. + +"And--and that's all, Wheeler," she ended up. "I've told you everything. +We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take my +word for it, because I swear it before God." + +"I take your word, Hester," he said, huskily. + +"And there he lies, Wheeler, without--without any eyes in his head. Just +as if they'd been burned out by irons. And he--he smiles when he talks. +That's the awful part. Smiles like--well, I guess like the angel he--he +almost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of his +country. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he lies +there!" + +"Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!" + +"Gerald's like that. So--so full of faith. And, Wheeler, he thinks he's +going to get well and lead a useful life like they teach the blind to +do. He reminds me of one of those Greek statues down at the Athens Café. +You know--broken. That's it; he's a broken statue." + +"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! Do something for him. Buy the finest fruit in +the town for him. Send a case of wine. Two." + +"I--I think I must be torn to pieces inside, Wheeler, the way I've +cried." + +"Poor little girl!" + +"Wheeler?" + +"Now, now," he said; "taking it so to heart won't do no good. It's +rotten, I know, but worrying won't help. Got me right upset, too. Come, +get it off your mind. Let's take a ride. Doll up; you look a bit peaked. +Come now, and to-morrow we'll buy out the town for him." + +"Wheeler?" she said. "Wheeler?" + +"What?" + +"Don't look, Wheeler. I've something else to ask of you--something +queer." + +"Now, now," he said, his voice hardening but trying to maintain a +chiding note; "you know what you promised after the chinchilla--no more +this year until--" + +"No, no; for God's sake, not that! It's still about Gerald." + +"Well?" + +"Wheeler, he's only got four weeks to live. Five at the outside." + +"Now, now, girl; we've been all over that." + +"He loves me, Wheeler, Gerald does." + +"Yes?" dryly. + +"It would be like doing something decent--the only decent thing I've +done in all my life, Wheeler, almost like doing something for the war, +the way these women in the pretty white caps have done, and you know +we--we haven't turned a finger for it except to--to gain--if I was +to--to marry Gerald for those few weeks, Wheeler. I know it's a--rotten +sacrifice, but I guess that's the only kind I'm capable of making." + +He sat squat, with his knees spread. + +"You crazy?" he said. + +"It would mean, Wheeler, his dying happy. He doesn't know it's all up +with him. He'd be made happy for the poor little rest of his life. He +loves me. You see, Wheeler, I was his first--his only sweetheart. I'm on +a pedestal, he says, in his dreams. I never told you--but that boy was +willing to marry me, Wheeler, knowing--some--of the things I am. He's +always carried round a dream of me, you see--no, you wouldn't see, but +I've been--well, I guess sort of a medallion that won't tarnish in his +heart. Wheeler, for the boy's few weeks he has left? Wheeler?" + +"Well, I'll be hanged!" + +"I'm not turning holy, Wheeler. I am what I am. But that boy lying +out there--I can't bear it! It wouldn't make any difference with +us--afterward. You know where you stand with me and for always, but it +would mean the dying happy of a boy who fought for us. Let me marry +that boy, Wheeler. Let his light go out in happiness. Wheeler? Please, +Wheeler?" He would not meet her eyes. "Wheeler?" + +"Go to it, Hester," he said, coughing about in his throat and rising to +walk away. "Bring him here and give him the fat of the land. You can +count on me to keep out of the way. Go to it," he repeated. + +And so they were married, Hester holding his hand beside the hospital +cot, the man nurse and doctor standing by, and the chaplain incanting +the immemorial words. A bar of sunshine lay across the bed, and Gerald +pronounced each "I will" in a lifted voice that carried to the four +corners of the little room. She was allowed to stay that night past +hospital hours, and they talked with the dusk flowing over them. + +"Hester, Hester," he said, "I should have had the strength to hold out +against your making this terrible sacrifice." + +"It's the happiest hour of my life," she said, kissing him. + +"I feel well enough to get up now, sweetheart." + +"Gerald, don't force. You've weeks ahead before you are ready for that." + +"But to-morrow, dear, home! In whose car are you calling for me +to-morrow to take me _home_?" + +"In a friend's, dearest." + +"Won't I be crowding up our little apartment? Describe it again to me, +dearest--our _home_." + +"It's so little, Gerald. Three rooms and the littlest, babiest kitchen. +When you're once up, I'll teach its every corner to you." + +Tears seeped through the line where his lids had been, and it was almost +more than she could bear. + +"I'll make it up to you, though, Hester. I know I should have been +strong enough to hold out against your marrying me, but I'll make it up. +I've a great scheme; a sort of braille system of accountancy--" + +"Please, Gerald--not now!" + +"If only, Hester, I felt easier about the finances. Will your savings +stand the strain? Your staying at home from your work this way--and then +me--" + +"Gerald dear, I've told you so often--I've saved more than we need." + +"My girl!" + +"My dear, my dear!" she said. + + * * * * * + +They moved him with hardly a jar in an army ambulance, and with the +yellow limousine riding alongside to be of possible aid, and she had the +bed stripped of its laces and cool with linen for him, and he sighed out +when they placed him on it and would not let go her hand. + +"What a feeling of space for so little a room!" + +"It's the open windows, love." + +He lay back tiredly. + +"What sweet linen!" + +"I shopped it for you." + +"You, too--you're in linen, Hester?" + +"A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too." + +"Give me your hand," he said, and pressed a string of close kisses into +its palm. + +The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She held +hothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate them +through a smile. + +"Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said. + +"I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist." + +"Never mind; I'll make it up to you." + +Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward her +as he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung. + +"If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctor +says it's too soon." + +"I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start the +pot boiling." + +She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly. + +Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, and +the day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled his +bed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window, +where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboat +whistles shoot up like rockets. + +She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemed +easier and less blackly futile to give him up. + +Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, one +day, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, and +she, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wanting +even their fragrance released. + +With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside the +apartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of awe +seemed to wrap the Drew woman. + +"I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, in +another way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this." + +"Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive." + +"Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have a +look at him. He wouldn't know." + +"No! No!" + +"God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing the +bills!" + +"Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!" + +"All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here's +some chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's." + +But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewed +some fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out and +purchase. + +She slept on a cot at the foot of his bed, so sensitive to his waking +that almost before he came up to consciousness she was at his side. All +day she wore the little white shirt waists, a starchy one fresh each +morning, and at night scratchy little unlacy nightgowns with long +sleeves and high yokes. He liked to run his hand along the crispness of +the fabric. + +"I love you in cool stuff, Hester. You're so cool yourself, I always +think of you in the little white waist and blue skirt. You remember, +dear--Finleys' annual?" + +"I--I'm going to dress like that for you always, Gerald." + +"I won't let you be going back to work for long, sweetheart. I've some +plans up my sleeve, I have." + +"Yes! Yes!" + +But when the end did come, it was with as much of a shock as if she had +not been for days expecting it. The doctor had just left, puncturing his +arm and squirting into his poor tired system a panacea for the pain. But +he would not react to it, fighting down the drowsiness. + +"Hester," he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, "lean down, +sweetheart, and kiss me--long--long--" + +She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died. + + * * * * * + +It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back. She was on +the _chaise-longue_ that had been dragged out into the parlor, in the +webbiest of white negligées, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, but +sweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of lifting +the brows. + +"Hel-lo, Wheeler!" she said, raising her cheek to be kissed. + +He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down rather +awkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had. + +"Well, girl--you all right?" + +"You helped," she said. + +"It gave me a jolt, too. I made over twenty-five thousand to the Red +Cross on the strength of it." + +"Thank you, Wheeler." + +"Lord!" he said, rising and rubbing his hands together. "Give us a +couple of fingers to drink, honey; I'm cotton-mouthed." + +She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with her +arms dangling and her smile out. Then, as if realizing that the occasion +must be lifted, turned her face to him. + +"Old bummer!" she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him and +two-thirds closing her eyes. Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly on +the lips. + + * * * * * + +For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally +dipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for the +linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Or +maybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history would help. + +In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinous +dancing, Hester awoke at four o'clock the next morning out of an hour of +sound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, her +gesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling. + +"Gerald!" she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and her +arms cutting through the room's blackness. "Gerald!" Suddenly the room +was not black. It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald, +the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of her +dressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his sockets +were deep with eyes. Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerly +sharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as if +bayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing. + +"Gerald!" she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and sat +up in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until her +lips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked window +shades. + +"Gerald!" And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out, +and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased and +flattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with the +addition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light and +went back to bed. + +The next morning Hester carried about what she called "a head," and, +since it was Wheeler's day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until three +o'clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of the +forenoon. + +"It was the rotten night did me up. Dreams! Ugh! dreams!" + +"No wonder," diagnosed Kitty, sweetly. "Indigestion from having your +cake and eating it." + +At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the Ivy +Funeral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs up +her sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right in +the heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and a +quick-lunch room. Gerald had been buried from there with simple +flag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from the +view and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows. There +was a check in Hester's purse made out for an amount that corresponded +to the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And right +here again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least for +the neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--with +one foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tilted +toward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she saw +there her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom as +if against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, she +rushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of every +speed regulation, homeward. + +That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell on +Hester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair, +which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of her +coiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain. + +Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be called +upon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hester +wasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frank +about it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. More +than nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truth +was known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off +holiday iridescence. There were limits! + +"You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up." + +"It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. I +can't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? He +doesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only I +could get rid of this head!" + +"You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get out +and get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will send +your spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good." + +She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her most +bizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process of +dyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, a +long, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginning +down around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in a +burst of crimson. + +He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggy +device of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimson +slipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame she +none too subtly purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softly +across the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadily +enough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mock +sting. + +But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of four +sleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the night +light burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stiletto +might have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and into +her mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees, +her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open, +accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they were +terrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. It +was only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried the +device there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the still +unpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bed +with her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in the +pillow. + +"Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!" + +"Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've been +through it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the sober +horrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child. +I's holdin'." + +You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. A +bird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eye +view can sometimes be very, very close. + +And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into the +mattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up in +bed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at the +pain in her head. + +"God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!" + +The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she would +do. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest. +Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hanging +in the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and two +ten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little blue +sailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She looked +smaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note, +dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, looking +about rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There was +nothing; so she went out quite bare and simply, with all her lovely +jewels in the leather case on the upper shelf of the bedroom closet, as +she had explained to Wheeler in the note. + +That afternoon she presented herself to Lichtig. He was again as you +would expect--round-bellied, and wore his cigar up obliquely from one +corner of his mouth. He engaged her immediately at an increase of five +dollars a week, and as she was leaving with the promise to report at +eight-thirty the next morning he pinched her cheek, she pulling away +angrily. + +"None of that!" + +"My mistake," he apologized. + +She considered it promiscuous and cheap, and you know her aversion for +cheapness. + +Then she obtained, after a few forays in and out of brownstone houses +in West Forty-fifth Street, one of those hall bedrooms so familiar to +human-interest stories--the iron-bed, washstand, and slop-jar kind. +There was a five-dollar advance required. That left her twenty dollars. + +She shopped a bit then in an Eighth Avenue department store, and, with +the day well on the wane, took a street car up to the Ivy Funeral Rooms. +This time she entered, but the proprietor did not recognize her until +she explained. As you know, she looked smaller and younger, and there +was no tan car at the curb. + +"I want to pay this off by the week," she said, handing him out +the statement and a much-folded ten-dollar bill. He looked at her, +surprised. "Yes," she said, her teeth biting off the word in a click. + +"Certainly," he replied, handing her out a receipt for the ten. + +"I will pay five dollars a week hereafter." + +"That will stretch it out to twenty-eight weeks," he said, still +doubtfully. + +"I can't help it; I must." + +"Certainly," he said, "that will be all right," but looked puzzled. + +That night she slept in the hall bedroom in the Eighth Avenue, +machine-stitched nightgown. She dropped off about midnight, praying not +to awaken at four. But she did--with a slight start, sitting up in bed, +her eyes where the wall and ceiling joined. + +Gerald's face was there, and his blue eyes were open, but the steel +points were gone. They were smiling eyes. They seemed to embrace her, to +wash her in their fluid. + +All her fear and the pain in her head were gone. She sat up, looking at +him, the tears streaming down over her smile and her lips moving. + +Then, sighing out like a child, she lay back on the pillow, turned over, +and went to sleep. + + * * * * * + +And this is the story of Hester which so insisted to be told. I think +she must have wanted you to know. And wanted Gerald to know that you +know, and, in the end, I rather think she wanted God to know. + + + + +THE VERTICAL CITY + + +In the most vertical city in the world men have run up their dreams +and their ambitions into slim skyscrapers that seem to exclaim at the +audacity of the mere mortar that sustains them. + +Minarets appear almost to tamper with the stars; towers to impale +the moon. There is one fifty-six-story rococo castle, built from the +five-and-ten-cent-store earnings of a merchant prince, that shoots +upward with the beautiful rush of a Roman candle. + +Any Manhattan sunset, against a sky that looks as if it might give to +the poke of a finger, like a dainty woman's pink flesh, there marches a +silhouetted caravan of tower, dome, and the astonished crests of office +buildings. + +All who would see the sky must gaze upward between these rockets of +frenzied architecture, which are as beautiful as the terrific can ever +be beautiful. + +In the vertical city there are no horizons of infinitude to rest the +eyes; rather little breakfast napkins of it showing between walls and +up through areaways. Sometimes even a lunchcloth of five, six, or maybe +sixty hundred stars or a bit of daylight-blue with a caul of sunshine +across, hoisted there as if run up a flagpole. + +It is well in the vertical city if the eyes and the heart have a lift +to them, because, after all, these bits of cut-up infinitude, as +many-shaped as cookies, even when seen from a tenement window and to the +accompaniment of crick in the neck, are as full of mysterious alchemy +over men's hearts as the desert sky or the sea sky. That is why, up +through the wells of men's walls, one glimpse of sky can twist the soul +with--oh, the bitter, the sweet ache that lies somewhere within the +heart's own heart, curled up there like a little protozoa. That is, if +the heart and the eyes have a lift to them. Marylin's had. + + * * * * * + +Marylin! How to convey to you the dance of her! The silver scheherazade +of poplar leaves when the breeze is playful? No. She was far nimbler +than a leaf tugging at its stem. A young faun on the brink of a pool, +startled at himself? Yes, a little. Because Marylin's head always had a +listening look to it, as if for a message that never quite came through +to her. From where? Marylin didn't know and didn't know that she didn't +know. Probably that accounted for a little pucker that could sometimes +alight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of a +shadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music, +not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caught +Marylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn't +necessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding both +his sides? + +How Marylin, had she understood it, would have kicked the high hat off +of such Miltonic phrasing. Ah, she was like--herself! + +And yet, if there must be found a way to convey her to you more quickly, +let it be one to which Marylin herself would have dipped a bow. + +She was like nothing so much as unto a whole two dollars' worth of +little five-cent toy balloons held captive in a sea breeze and tugging +toward some ozonic beyond in which they had never swum, yet strained so +naturally toward. + +That was it! A whole two dollars' worth of tugging balloons. +Red--blue--orange--green--silver, jerking in hollow-sided collisions, +and one fat-faced pink one for ten cents, with a smile painted on one +side and a tear on the other. + +And what if I were to tell you that this phantom of a delight of a +Marylin, whose hair was a sieve for sun and whose laughter a streamer of +it, had had a father who had been shot to death on the underslinging +of a freight car in one of the most notorious prison getaways ever +recorded, and whose mother--but never mind right here; it doesn't matter +to the opening of this story, because Marylin, with all her tantalizing +capacity for paradox, while every inch a part of it all, was not at all +a part of it. + +For five years, she who had known from infancy the furtive Bradstreet of +some of the vertical city's most notorious aliases and gang names, and +who knew, almost by baptism of fire, that there were short cuts to an +easier and weightier wage envelope, had made buttonholes from eight +until five on the blue-denim pleat before it was stitched down the front +of men's blue-denim shirts. + +At sweet sixteen she, whose mother had borne her out of wed--well, +anyway, at sweet sixteen, like the maiden in the saying, she had never +been kissed, nor at seventeen, but at eighteen-- + +It was this way. Steve Turner--"Getaway," as the quick lingo of the +street had him--liked her. Too well. I firmly believe, though, that +if in the lurid heat lightning of so stormy a career as Getaway's the +beauty of peace and the peace of beauty ever found moment, Marylin +nestled in that brief breathing space somewhere deep down within the +noisy cabaret of Getaway's being. His eyes, which had never done +anything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which he +ate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at the +thought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, and +which he could not translate, he became facetious--idiotically so. + +Slim and supine as the bamboo cane he invariably affected, he would wait +for her, sometimes all of the six work-a-evenings of the week, until +she came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where she +worked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, in +his further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously at +a vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing at +where a mustache might have been. + +"Getaway!" she would invariably admonish, with her reproach all in the +inflection and with the bluest blue in her eyes he had ever seen outside +of a bisque doll's. + +The peculiar joy, then, of linking her sweetly resisting arm into his; +of folding over each little finger, so! until there were ten tendrils +at the crotch of his elbow and his heart. Of tilting his straw "katy" +forward, with his importance of this possession, so that the back of his +head came out in a bulge and his hip, and then of walking off with her, +so! Ah yes, so! + +MARYLIN _(who had the mysterious little jerk in her laugh of a very +young child_): "Getaway, you're the biggest case!" + +GETAWAY _(wild to amuse her further_): "Hocus pocus, Salamagundi! I +smell the blood of an ice-cream sundae!" + +MARYLIN _(hands to her hips and her laughter full of the jerks_): +"Getaway, stop your monkeyshines. The cop has his eye on you!" + +GETAWAY _(sobered):_ "C'm on!" + +Therein lay some of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because to +Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, +designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night +stick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short, +wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dread +brother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days of +her childhood. + +Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with the +inside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerest +of baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a whole +bolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until it +hung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through the +fire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace. + +Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her father +in a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingers +peeping over each of his shoulders! + +A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freight +car. Her mother had died with the phantom of one marching across her +delirium. Even opposite the long, narrow, and exceedingly respectable +rooming house in which she now dwelt a uniform had stood for several +days lately, contemplatively. + +There was a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, so +close they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh when +Getaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up into +exaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his approach, focused. + +"Getaway," said Marylin, hop-skipping to keep up with him now, "why has +old Deady got his eye on you nowadays?" + +Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing +inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed +to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be. + +"You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapping granny's +wrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!" + +But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway," she +said, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face must +be almost level with hers--"you're up to something again." + +"I'm up to snuff," he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped a +circle. + +She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood, +her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away." And pushed him aside that she might +walk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustling +that was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one of +those moments when she could make his eyes smart. + +But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?" + +"Me, in here," she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsy +blouse where her heart beat under it. + +"Whadda you mean, dead?" + +"Just dead, sometimes--as if something inside of me that can't get out +had--had just curled up and croaked." + +The walk from the shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, lean +house in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidious +bedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed even +high-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, with +aërial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked and +sweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there on +these sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming with +enormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certain +fox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feel +the bite of his elaborately manicured finger nails. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, "and you'll wear diamonds." + +In spite of herself, his bay-rummed nearness was not unpleasant to her. +"Cut it out--here, Getaway," she said through a blush. + +He hooked her very close to him by the elbow, and together they crossed +through the crash of a street bifurcated by elevated tracks. + +"You hear, Marylin," he shouted above the din. "Marry me and you'll wear +diamonds." + +"Getaway, you're up to something again!" + +"Whadda you mean?" + +"Diamonds on your twenty a week! It can't be done." + +His gaze lit up with the pointiness. "I tell you, Marylin, I can promise +you headlights!" + +"How?" + +"Never you bother your little head how; O.K., though." + +"_How_, Getaway?" + +"Oh--clean--if that's what's worrying you. Clean-cut." + +"It _is_ worrying me." + +"Saw one on a little Jane yesterday out to Belmont race track. A +fist-load for a little trick like her. And sparkle! Say, every time that +little Jane daubed some whitewash on her little nosie she gave that +grand stand the squints. That's what I'm going to do. Sparkle you up! +With a diamond engagement ring. Oh boy! How's that? A diamond engagement +ring!" + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, with her hand on the flutter of her throat and +closing her eyes as if to imprison the vision against her lids. "A pure +white one with lots of fire dancing around it." And little Marylin, who +didn't want to want it, actually kissed the bare dot on her left ring +finger where she could feel the burn of it, and there in the crowded +street, where he knew he was surest of his privacy with her, he stole a +kiss off that selfsame finger, too. + +"I'll make their eyes hang out on their cheeks like grapes when they see +you coming along, Marylin." + +"I love them because they're so clear--and clean! Mountain water that's +been filtered through pebbles." + +"Pebbles is right! I'm going to dike you out in one as big as a pebble. +And poils! Sa-y, they're what cost the spondulicks. A guy showed me a +string of little ones no bigger than pimples. Know what? That little +string could knock the three spots out of a thousand-dollar bond--I mean +bill!" + +It was then that something flashed out of Marylin's face. A shade might +have been lowered; a candle blown out. + +"Getaway," she said, with a quick little dig of fingers into his +forearm, "you're up to something!" + +"Snuff, I said." + +"What did you mean by that word, 'bond'?" + +"Who built a high fence around the word 'bond'?" + +"Bonds! All that stuff in the newspapers about those messengers +disappearing out of Wall Street with--bonds! Getaway, are you mixed up +in that? Getaway!" + +"Well, well! I like that! I had you doped out for fair and warmer +to-day. The weather prophet didn't predict no brainstorm." + +"That's not answering." + +"Well, whadda you know! Miss Sherlock Holmes finds a corkscrew in the +wine cellar and is sore because it's crooked!" + +"Getaway--answer." + +"Whadda you want me to answer, Fairylin? That I'm the master mind behind +the--" + +"It worries me so! You up in Monkey's room so much lately. You think I +don't know it? I do! All the comings and goings up there. Muggs Towers +sneaking up to Monkey's room in that messenger boy's suit he keeps +wearing all the time now. He's no more messenger boy than I am. Getaway, +tell me, you and Muggs up in Monkey's room so often? Footsteps up there! +Yours!" + +"Gawalmighty! Now it's my footsteps!" + +"I know them! Up in Monkey's room, right over mine. I know how you sneak +up there evenings after you leave me. It don't look nice your going into +the same house where I live, Getaway, even if it isn't to see me. It +don't look right from the outside!" + +"Nobody can ever say I wanted to harm a hair of your little head. I even +look the other way when I pass your door. That's the kind of a modest +violet I am." + +"It's not that, but the looks. That's the reason, I'll bet, if the +truth's known, why Monkey squirmed himself into that room over mine--to +hide your comings and goings as if they was to see me." + +"Nothing of the kind!" + +"Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine. +My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. I +know your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. The +ball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!" + +"Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!" + +"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps +that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented +a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel +young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. +Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he +calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, for +all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time +I met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal." + +"You would, like hell." + +"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectable +house, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there, +it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that and +hatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in that +room--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?" + +"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like +'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets for +honest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirt +factory and dike her out in--" + +"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!" + +"Well, if that's all you think of me--" + +"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. How +could a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--you +see, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirts +and now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with your +twenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery." + +Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I +tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her, +and me thinking I did." + +"What, Getaway, what?" + +"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have +pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket +used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just +because I--" + +"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of +the newspaper!" + +"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like +vaccination, they take or they don't." + +"They never take with you, Getaway." + +"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--" + +"A job?" + +"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on. +If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solid +gold." + +"What is it, then, the proposition?" + +"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through? +Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a good +thing." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets." + +"What kind of money?" + +"Real money." + +"_Honest_ money?" + +"Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea. +Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one of +them hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a lace +umbrella and--" + +"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers on +a hat." + +"Red-white-and-blue ones!" + +"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket." + +"And slippers with real diamond buckles." + +"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoe +buckles--" + +"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new business +proposition?" + +"I do, only you've had so many--" + +"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!" + +"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you're +cornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh, +Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--" + +"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she has +to rub her fingers in old soot to do it." + +"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it's +in me so to suspect." + +"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!" + +"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it's +been so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it. +Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me not +getting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on the +beat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep. +Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You're +finger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt if +there was one. Don't--Getaway!" + +"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome." + +"Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything else +wasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unless +it's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in you +I--can't trust." + +"Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up to +your door in a six-cylinder--" + +"I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the same +old job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money. +Too easy--" + +"Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days, +when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal, +if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up beside +you with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just like +that! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you. +Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!" + +"Getaway, why did you turn down this street so all of a sudden? This +isn't my way home." + +"It's only a block out of the way. Come on! Don't stand gassing." + +"You-thought-that-fellow-on-the-corner-of-Dock-Street-might-be-a-plain +-clothes-man!" + +"What if I did? Want me to go up and kiss him?" + +"Why-should-you-care, Getaway?" + +"Don't." + +"But--" + +"Don't believe in hugging the law, though. It's enough when it hugs +you." + +"I want to go home, Getaway." + +"Come on. I'll buy some supper. Steak and French frieds and some French +pastry with a cherry on top for your little sweet tooth. That's the kind +of a regular guy I am." + +"No. I want to go home." + +"All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?" + +"Straight." + +"Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home." + +They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouth +wilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flower +in the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenly +and so whitely that almost a second could blight her. + +"Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quickly +conciliatory and trying to make his voice grate. + +"No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad." + +She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and +as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the +riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole +jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one with +gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed +ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can. + +"I'm going in now, Getaway." + +"Gowann! Get into your blue dress and I'll blow you to supper." + +"Not to-night." + +"Mad?" + +"No. I said only--" + +"Sad?" + +"No--tired--I guess." + +"Please, Marylin." + +"No. Some other time." + +"When? To-morrow? It's Saturday! Coney?" + +"Oh!" + +He thought he detected the flash of a dimple. He did. Remember, she was +very young and, being fanciful enough to find the witch in the face of +her rooming house, the waves at Coney Island, peanut cluttered as they +were apt to be, told her things. Silly, unrepeatable things. Nonsense +things. Little secret goosefleshing things. Prettinesses. And then the +shoot the chutes! That ecstatic leap of heart to lips and the feeling +of folly down at the very pit of her. Marylin did like the shoot the +chutes! + +"All right, Getaway--to-morrow--Coney!" + +He did not conceal his surge of pleasure, grasping her small hand in +both his. "Good girlie!" + +"Good night, Getaway," she said, but with the inflection of something +left unsaid. + +He felt the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped +its stick, and started up the steps after her. + +"What is it, Marylin?" + +"Nothing," she said and ran in. + +The window in her little rear room with the zigzag of fire escape across +it was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with a +little pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left a +red rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a city +bouquet of frying foods; from a pool of old water near a drain pipe; +from the rear of a butcher shop. Slops. Noises, too. Babies, traffic, +whistles, oaths, barterings, women, strife, life. On her very +own ceiling the whisper of footsteps--of restless comings and +goings--stealthy comings and goings--and then after an hour, +suddenly and ever so softly, the ball-of-a-foot--squeak! +The-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! + +Marylin knew that step. + +And yet she sat, quiet. A star had come out. Looking up at the napkin of +sky let in through the walls of the vertical city, Marylin had learned +to greet it almost every clear evening. It did something for her. It +was a little voice. A little kiss. A little upside down pool of light +without a spill. A little of herself up there in that beyond--that +little napkin of beyond that her eyes had the lift to see. + + * * * * * + +Who are you, whose neck has never ached from nine hours a day, six days +a week, of bending over the blue-denim pleat that goes down the front +of men's shirts, to quiver a supersensitive, supercilious, and superior +nose over what, I grant you, may appear on the surface to be the omelet +of vulgarities fried up for you on the gladdest, maddest strip of +carnival in the world? + +But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than to +remain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if little +red dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tight +heartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longer +plong. + +To Marylin, whose neck very often ached clear down into her shoulder +blade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city walls +were sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, her +enjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by any +awarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple, +unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, half +ashamed of being amused. She _was_ Coney Island! Her heart a shoot the +chutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, the +surf creaming no higher than her vitality. + +And it was so the evening following, as she came dancing down the +kicked-up sand of the beach, in a little bright-blue frock, mercerized +silk, if you please, with very brief sleeves that ended right up in the +jolliest part of her arm, with a half moon of vaccination winking out +roguishly beneath a finish of ribbon bow, and a white-canvas sport hat +with a jockey rosette to cap the little climax of her, and by no means +least, a metal coin purse, with springy insides designed to hold exactly +fifty cents in nickels. + +Once on the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, her +spirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. The +window, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week, +faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint. +Coney Island faced a world of sky. So that when she pinched Getaway's +nose in between the lips of her coin purse and he, turning a double +somersault right in his checked suit, landed seated in a sprawl of mock +daze, off she went into peals of laughter only too ready to be released. + +He bought her a wooden whirring machine, an instrument of noise that, +because it was not utilitarian, became a toy of delicious sound. + +They rode imitation ocean waves at five cents a voyage, their only _mal +de mer_, regret when it was over. He bought her salt-water taffy, and +when the little red cave of her mouth became too ludicrously full of the +pully stuff he tried to kiss its state of candy paralysis, and instantly +she became sober and would have no more of his nonsense. + +"Getaway," she cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go in +bathing!" + +"I'll say we will!" + +No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if you +will, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a little +blue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her head +flowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew bound +her up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribable +softiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he looked +at them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit in +his cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees and +hairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, down +the sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker. + +Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak of +seaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever, +pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only less +skillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water, +he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almost +reverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keep +intact. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean about +them. + +She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it. + +"That's you," he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't." + +"I wish," she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!" + +"What do you wish?" + +She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don't +know! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there is +what I wish." + +"Out where?" + +"There." + +"I don't see--" + +"You--wouldn't." + +And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing her +through shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merriment +they emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearms +lashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of her +chin. + +Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, her +hair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on his +stomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. And +the crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon, +almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quiet +now with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilled +little rills of sand from one fist into the other. + +"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!" + +"Are I, Getaway?" + +"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the other +blind." + +"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so." + +"You've had enough fellows tell you so." + +"Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ mean +by pretty." + +"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty." + +"What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?" + +"Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holes +in your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty. +Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?" + +"Yes--and no--" + +"Well, what the--" + +"It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--not +enough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guess +pretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean." + +"All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty." + +"The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurt +and want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something you +understand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly." + +"Well, then, whistle it!" + +"It has to be _felt_." + +"Peel me," he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep. "Some little +gladiator, eh? Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take you +away from me." + +She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him. The beach +was all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost in +her eyes, too. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, on a sigh, and again, "Getaway!" + +His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel, +went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almost +sinking his teeth. The curve of her chin down into her throat, as she +turned her head, had maddened him. + +"Quit," she said. + +"Never you mind. You'll wear diamonds," he said, in his sole phraseology +of promise. "Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?" + +"What?" + +"Want one now?" + +"Want what?" + +"A diamond." + +"No," she said. "When I'm out here I quit wanting things like that." + +"Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!" + +"Getaway!" + +"What?" + +"What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?" + +"When?" + +"You know when." + +"Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!" + +"Please, Getaway--" + +"Home, Fairy." + +"You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think, +Getaway!" + +"Aw now--" + +"You were." + +"Aw now--" + +"Nobody can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth, +but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your +foot--squeak!" + +"Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, but +only for a minute--" + +"Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings and +goings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were so +noisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey the +friend you got the deal on with, Getaway?" + +"We just sat up there talking old times--" + +"And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressed +like the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door to +see who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, for God's sake--" + +He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bony +face, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitched +close, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now, +because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in that +dip of bang which frightened her. + +"What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell you +that after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will be +over. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. But +first I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to make +this old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going to +carry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren't +so touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want one +now?" + +"Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs are +tied up with those Wall Street bond getaways." + +"For the luvagod, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have me +in a brainstorm too." + +"Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead of +delivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them. +Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkey +are working with him under cover on something. You can't pass a cop any +more without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You've +got that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it. +My--mother--too. Getaway!" + +"By gad! you can't beat a woman!" + +"You don't deny it." + +"I do!" + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!" + +"Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minute +I'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I got +to be afraid of." + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!" + +"Well, then, lay off--" + +"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only a +kid popping a paper bag." + +"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting! +The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look here +now, you got to get the hell out of my business." + +She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violent +nervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away from +him, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted. + +After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg some +ways, but when it comes to you, I'm there." + +"I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him. +"Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full of +rest." + +He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands and +dredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line of +her chin to her throat still teased him. + +Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit was +playing a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth and +hand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouette +of him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might be +cloven. + +What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood of +Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, +a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the new +day yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ. + +"Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That's +what I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on the +mouth organ!" + +"It?" + +"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just like +I do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen." + +"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?" + +"All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward the +bathhouse. + +He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence. + +"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?" + +"No, Getaway--not mad." + +"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've had +something to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off." + +"What is it?" she said, tiptoe. + +His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know." + +"No, I don't." + +"Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handful +of sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?" + +"Why--nothing." + +"Want to know?" + +But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stooping +down at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him. + +"No," she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carrying +her laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea. + +On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred the +puzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness. + +In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart of +the most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasure +seekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellow +with a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off his +right brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wide +apart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles with +little lakes shining at the ends of them. + +"Thank you," said Marylin, the infinitesimal second while his hat and +cowlick lifted, her own gaze seeming to run down those avenues of his +eyes for a look into the pools at the back. + +"That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that I +couldn't say. He said it--with his eyes." + +"Who?" + +"That fellow who gave me this seat." + +"I'll break his face if he goo-goos you," said Getaway, who by this time +had a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patent +leather. + +But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of the +stoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. His +first of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly she +was so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested by +the smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat. + +The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine to +him and as truly an intoxicant. + +"Marylin," he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off much +longer. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too." + +"Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe." + +"I'm crazy for you!" + +"Go home now, Getaway." + +"Yes--but just one more--" + +"Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed." + +"I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--" + +"No, no--not now. Go--" + +Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something down +Marylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scraped +the flesh. + +"That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you? +Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?" + +In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazed +into a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head, +and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you! +Now will you!" + +"Getaway," she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did you +get this?" + +"It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat and +a half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going to +have one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Now +you've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!" + +"Getaway," she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to her +mouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "where +did you get this?" + +"There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips. + +Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its light +as it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylin +was up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through her +own door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and half +crying over her left third finger where the flash had been. + +She was frightened, because for all of an hour she sat on the end of the +cot in her little room trembling and with her palms pressed into her +eyes so tightly that the darkness spun. There was quick connection in +Marylin between what was emotional and what was merely sensory. She +knew, from the sickness at the very pit of her, how sick were her heart +and her soul--and how afraid. + +She undressed in the dark--a pale darkness relieved by a lighted window +across the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, +covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into +careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes +closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And +then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird +machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct +footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallway +outside her door, where the stairs led up still another flight, +the-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! The sharp crack of a voice. Running. + +"Getaway!" cried Marylin's heart, almost suffocating her with a dreadful +spasm of intuition. + +It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her head +in its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double over +the upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a white +terribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an arm +suddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him. + +There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, with +an immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairs +backward, face up. + +Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the second +figure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at the +already-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over the +banister with the smoking pistol. + +By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected that +perfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, then +stayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision with +another. + +So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched across +Marylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from the +underslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had stepped +in from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; her +mother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier. +Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those four +fingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom. +Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair. +Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help-- + +When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down the +third-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and merciful +faint. Marylin had not reached out. + + * * * * * + +Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that were +often groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. And +then, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lighter +tears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears. + +Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hung +unworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill of +lace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the last +of her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reason +began to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not faded +it. + +These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ceiling agitation +had long ago ceased since the shame of the raided room above, and Muggs, +in his absurd messenger's suit, and Monkey marching down the three +flights to the clanking of steel at the wrists. + +There were new footsteps now. Steps that she had also learned to know, +but pleasantly. They marched out so regularly of mornings, invariably +just as she was about to hook her skirtband or pull on her stockings. +They came home so patly again at seven, about as she sat herself down to +a bit of sewing or washing-out. They went to bed so pleasantly. Thud, +on the floor, and then, after the expectant interval of unlacing, thud +again. They were companionable, those footsteps, almost like reverential +marching on the grave of her heart. + +Marylin reversed the rosette, and as the light began to go sat down +beside her window, idly, looking up. There was the star point in her +patch of sky, eating its way right through the purple like a diamond, +and her ache over it was so tangible that it seemed to her she could +almost lift the hurt out of her heart, as if it were a little imprisoned +bird. And as it grew darker there came two stars, and three, and nine, +and finally the sixty hundred. + +Then from the zig of the fire escape above, before it twisted down into +the zag of hers, there came to Marylin, through the medley of city +silences and the tears in her heart, this melody, on a jew's-harp: + +If it had any key at all, it was in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in D +flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beauty +of that death, and the throb of an ecstasy for the new day not yet born. + +Looking up against the sheer wall of the vertical city, on the ledge of +fire escape above hers, and in the yellow patch of light thrown out from +the room behind, a youth, with his knees hunched up under his chin, and +his mouth and hand moving at cross purposes, was playing the harmonica. + +Wide apart were his eyes, and blue, so that while she gazed up, smiling, +as he gazed down, smiling, it was almost as if she ran up the fire +escape through the long clear lanes of those eyes, for a dip into the +little twin lakes at the back of them. + +And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the right +side of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, that +was exactly the shape of an apostrophe! + + + + +THE SMUDGE + + +In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves, +and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sag +and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel. + +That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is a +tender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that still +aches with threads of life. + +Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug with +the fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet. +It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles. + +Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where there +have been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among the +headstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Just +drearily. + +There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. But +it, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth with +receding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. They +had. + +Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids +now. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat of +kettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet. + +She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedy +black." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster! +Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week and +no road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" had +been especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedy +relief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept the +audience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whose +heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly. + +And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love, +but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, could +kiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly. + +Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivory +fan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke her +tongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy: + +It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, for +instance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck of +Marcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume. + +Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown Cold +Cream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had come +Marcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet set; the Steinway +grand piano; the yearly and by no means light tuition toll at Miss +Harperly's Select Day School for Girls. + +You get the whimsy of it? For everything fair that was Marcia, Hattie +had brownly paid for. Liltingly, and with the rill of the song of +thanksgiving in her heart. + +That was how Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody of +Marcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. +Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. +Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into the +look of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of red +meat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of a +cocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and caking +the breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed. +The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Men +in undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddy +bears you're puttin' on." Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor's +overtone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait in +the wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jaws +etched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eat +you. Faces swimming in the stage ozone and wolfish for cue. The purple +lips-- + +Almost like a frieze stuck on to the border of each day was Hattie's +life in the theater. Passementerie. + +That was how Hattie treated it. Especially during those placid years of +the phenomenal New York run of "Love Me Long." The outer edge of her +reality. The heart of her reality? Why, the heart of it was the long +morning hours in her own fragrant kitchen over doughnuts boiled in oil +and snowed under in powdered sugar! Cookies that bit with a snap. Filet +of sole boned with fingers deft at it and served with a merest fluff of +tartar sauce. Marcia ate like that. Preciously. Pecksniffily. An egg at +breakfast a gag to the sensibilities! So Hattie ate hers in the kitchen, +standing, and tucked the shell out of sight, wrapped in a lettuce leaf. +Beefsteak, for instance, sickened Marcia, because there was blood in the +ooze of its juices. But Hattie had a sly way of camouflage. Filet +mignon (so strengthening, you see) crushed under a little millinery of +mushrooms and served under glass. Then when Marcia's neat little row of +neat little teeth bit in and the munch began behind clean and careful +lips, Hattie's heart, a regular old bandit for cunning, beat hoppity, +skippity, jump! + +Those were her realities. Home. The new sandwich cutters. Heart shape. +Diamond shape. Spade. The strip of hall carpet newly discovered to scour +like new with brush and soap and warm water. Epstein's meat market +throws in free suet. The lamp with the opal-silk shade for Marcia's +piano. White oilcloth is cleaner than shelf paper. Dotted Swiss +curtains, the ones in Marcia's room looped back with pink bows. Old +sashes, pressed out and fringed at the edges. + +And if you think that Hattie's six rooms and bath and sunny, full-sized +kitchen, on Morningside Heights, were trumped-up ones of the press agent +for the Sunday Supplement, look in. + +Any afternoon. Tuesday, say, and Marcia just home from school. On +Tuesday afternoon of every other week Hattie made her cream, in a large +copper pot that hung under the sink. Six dozen half-pint jars waiting +to be filled with Brown Cold Cream. One hundred and forty-four jars +a month. Guaranteed Color-fast. Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate. Labeled. +Sealed. Sold. And demand exceeding the supply. An ingratiating, expert +cream, known the black-faced world over. It slid into the skin, not +sootily, but illuminating it to winking, African copper. For instance, +Hattie's make-up cream for Linda in "Love Me Long" was labeled +"Chocolate." But it worked in even a truer brown, as if it had come out +of the pigment instead of gone into the pores. + +Four hours of stirring it took, adding with exact minutiae the +mysteriously proper proportions of spermacetti, oil of sweet almonds, +white wax--But never mind. Hattie's dark secret was her own. + +Fourteen years of her black art as Broadway's maid _de luxe_ had been +her laboratory. It was almost her boast now--remember the sunken +headstones--that she had handled spotlessly every fair young star of the +theaters' last ten years. + +It was as mysterious as pigment, her cream, and as true, and netted +her, with occasional extra batches, an average of two hundred dollars a +month. She enjoyed making it. Singing as she stirred or rather stirring +as she sang, the plenitude of her figure enveloped in a blue-and-white +bungalow apron with rickrack trimming. + +Often Marcia, home from day school, watched. Propped up in the window +frame with her pet cat, a Persian, with eyes like swimming pools with +painted green bottoms, seated in a perfect circle in her quiet lap, +for all the world in the attitude of a sardel except for the toothpick +through. + +Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sit +like that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie that +stare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little suns +were having their high noon. + +Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's back +could ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into her +face when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at her +nerves. + +"Momie, I'll stir for a while." + +Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as precise +as a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and her +teeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word, +biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had never +grown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was something +about them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes that +she had saved. Little innocences. + +"I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired." + +"But your face is all twisted." + +Hattie's twisted face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor that +the egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there. + +"Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon." + +"Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep." + +As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could +keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a +little arch of sweat came out in a mustache. + +The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of it +into her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so was +the bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been a +prettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkled +and were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But the +red of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars were +just freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing above +the ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheeks +hung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's arms +and thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckled +granite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hips +were like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it. +Mab smacking the Himalayas. + +After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There +was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her +kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. +The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from +Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat +as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. The +seventy-two jars were untopped now, in a row on a board over the built-in +washtub. Seventy-two yawning for content. Squnch! Her enormous spoon +into the copper kettle and flop, gurgle, gooze, softly into the jars. +One--two--three--At the sixty-eighth, Marcia, without stirring or +lifting her lids, spoke into the sucky silence. + +"Momie?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"You'll be glad." + +Hattie, pausing at the sixty-eighth, "Why, dear?" + +"I came home in Nonie Grosbeck's automobile. I'm invited to a dinner +dance October the seventeenth. At their house in Gramercy Park." + +The words must have gone to Hattie's knees, because, dropping a spat of +mulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchen +chair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal set +on the shelf above it. + +"Marcy!" + +"And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I'm to +be her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invited +except Edwina Nelson, because her father's on nearly all the same boards +of directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and--" + +"Marcia! Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing had +happened! Child, sometimes I think you're made of ice." + +"Why, I'm glad, momie." + +But that's what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfaction +in Marcia's eyes. + +"Glad," said Hattie, the word full of tears. "Why, honey, you don't +realize it, but this is the beginning! This is the meaning of my +struggle to get you into Miss Harperly's school. It wasn't easy. I've +never told you the--strings I had to pull. Conservative people, you see. +That's what the Grosbecks are, too. Home people. The kind who can afford +to wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirty +years." + +"Nome's mother was born in the house they live in." + +"Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges. +Taxpayers. Policyholders. Church members. Oh, Marcia, those are the safe +people!" + +"There's a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church." + +"I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to the +make-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear for +you! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotel +room, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for just +throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's because +I'm too tired, Marcy. Too lonesome for home. On the road I always used +to think of all the families in the audience. The husbands and wives. +Brides and grooms. Sweethearts. After the performance they all went to +homes. To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks'. To cottages. To flats. +With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-room +table. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turned +back. And then--me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the dark +downtown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. The +dingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reach +over that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell of +disinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you." + +"Ugh!" + +"Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia! The unexciting people, maybe, but +the safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones." + +"Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy." + +"Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia." + +"Nonie goes to riding academy." + +"So shall you." + +"It's six dollars an hour." + +"I don't care." + +"Her father's retired except for being director in banks. And, +momie--they don't mind, dear--about us. Nonie knows that my--father +is--is separated and never lived at home with us. She's broad-minded. +She says just so there's no scandal, a divorce, or anything like that. +She said it's vulgar to cultivate only rich friends. She says she'd go +with me even if she's forbidden to." + +"Why, Marcy darling, why should she be forbidden?" + +"Oh, Nonie's broadminded. She says if two people are unsuited they +should separate, quietly, like you and my father. She knows we're one of +the first old Southern families on my father's side. I--I'm not trying +to make you talk about it, dear, but--but we are--aren't we?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"He--he was just--irresponsible. That's not being--not nice people, is +it?" + +"No, Marcy." + +"Nonie's not forbidden. She just meant in case, momie. You see, with +some old families like hers--the stage--but Nonie says her father +couldn't even say anything to that if he wanted to. His own sister went +on the stage once, and they had to hush it up in the papers." + +"Did you explain to her, Marcy, that stage life at its best can be full +of fine ideals and truth? Did you make her see how regular your own +little life has been? How little you know about--my work? How away I've +kept you? How I won't even play out-of-town engagements so we can always +be together in our little home? You must explain all those things to +your friends at Miss Harperly's. It helps--with steady people." + +"I have, momie, and she's going to bring me home every afternoon in +their automobile after we've called for her brother Archie at Columbia +Law School." + +"Marcy! the Grosbeck automobile bringing you home every day!" + +"And it's going to call for me the night of the party. Nonie's getting a +lemon taffeta." + +"I'll get you ivory, with a bit of real lace!" + +"Oh, momie, momie, I can scarcely wait!" + +"What did she say, Marcy, when she asked--invited you?" + +"She?" + +"Nonie." + +"Why--she--didn't invite me, momie." + +"But you just said--" + +"It was her brother Archie invited me. We called for him at Columbia Law +School, you see. It was he invited me. Of course Nonie wants me and said +'Yes' right after him--but it's he--who wants Nonie and me to be chums. +I--He--I thought--I--told--you--momie." + +Suddenly Marcia's eyes, almost with the perpendicular slits of her +kitten's in them, seemed to swish together like portières, shutting +Hattie behind them with her. + +"Oh--my Marcy!" said Hattie, dimly, after a while, as if from their +depths. "Marcy, dearest!" + +"At--at Harperly's, momie, almost all the popular upper-class girls +wear--a--a boy's fraternity pin." + +"Fraternity pin?" + +"It's the--the beginning of being engaged." + +"But, Marcy--" + +"Archie's a Pi Phi!" + +"A--what?" + +"A Pi Phi." + +"Phi--pie--Marcy--dear--" + + * * * * * + +On October 17th "Love Me Long" celebrated its two-hundredth performance. +Souvenir programs. A few appropriate words by the management. +A flashlight of the cast. A round of wine passed in the +after-the-performance gloom of the wings. Aqueous figures fading off in +the orderly back-stage fashion of a well-established success. + +Hattie kissed the star. They liked each other with the unenvy of their +divergent roles. Miss Robinson even humored some of Hattie's laughs. She +liked to feel the flame of her own fairness as she stood there waiting +for the audience to guffaw its fill of Hattie's drolleries; a narcissus +swaying reedily beside a black crocodile. + +She was a new star and her beauty the color of cloth of gold, and Hattie +in her lowly comedian way not an undistinguished veteran. So they could +kiss in the key of a cat cannot unseat a king. + +But, just the same, Miss Robinson's hand flew up automatically against +the dark of Hattie's lips. + +"I don't fade off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. +I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never so +much as a speck or a spot on her. My cream don't fade." + +"Of course not, dear! How silly of me! Kiss me again." + +That was kind enough of her. Oh yes, they got on. But sometimes Hattie, +seated among her sagging headstones, would ache with the dry sob of the +black crocodile who yearned toward the narcissus.... + +Quite without precedent, there was a man waiting for her in the wings. + +The gloom of back-stage was as high as trees and Hattie had not seen +him in sixteen years. But she knew. With the stunned consciousness of a +stabbed person that glinting instant before the blood begins to flow. + +It was Morton Sebree--Marcia's father. + +"Morton!" + +"Hattie." + +"Come up to my dressing room," she said, as matter-of-factly as if her +brain were a clock ticking off the words. + +They walked up an iron staircase of unreality. Fantastic stairs. Wisps +of gloom. Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit very +hard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to her +pain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant little +ideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now. +Terribly. Morton was back. + +His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister. +It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of a +hand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again. +Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesque +show. + +Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in a +wire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks of +grease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end. +Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with the +gesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinks +seeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around her +lips. It made of her mouth a comedy blubber, her own rather firm lips +sliding about somewhere in the lightish swamp. That was all of Hattie +that looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with popping +whites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the irises +were in their pools, inviolate. + +"Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black." + +"I thought you were in Rio." + +"Got to hankering after the States, Hattie." + +"I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to think +maybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one." + +"No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while." + +"Where?" + +"Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?" + +"No." + +"Cancer." + +It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowly +soluble in it. Gurgling down. + +"O-oh!" + +"Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin' +behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night. +You looked right natural. Little heavier." + +"What do you want?" + +"Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular, +as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey." + +"Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking in +a box of echoes. + +"Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into the +theater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey." + +She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of the +foment of torture. + +"What's my looks to you?" + +"You've filled out." + +"You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven't +aged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. A +wall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone." + +"I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin' +streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had a +different way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn in +me." + +"Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!" + +"But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I ever +really cared for, too. You and m' mother." + +Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him. + +"Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuate +me only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathe +now. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eats +out the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from a +distance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine big +house with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were the +sickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! If +she and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that there +aren't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that a +Morris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good! +You're no good!" + +She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice. + +"Why, Hattie," he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!" + +"I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten apple +that can speck every one it touches." + +"That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong." + +"Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The very +sound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had. +I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is you +might as well go. I'm cured!" + +He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He was +dressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There was +still a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But his +hands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowly +stained, like meerschaum darkening. + +"Grantin' everything you say, Hattie--and I'm holdin' no brief for +myself--_I've_ been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been down +sick with hookworm." + +"With devilishness." + +"No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick man +all my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knocked +it out of me." + +"Faugh!" + +"I'm a new man since I'm well of it." + +"Hookworm! That's an easy word for ingrained no-'countness, deviltry, +and deceit. It wasn't hookworm came into the New Orleans stock company +where I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play big +things. It wasn't hookworm put me in a position where I had to take +anything I could get! So that instead of finding me playing leads +you find me here--black-face! It was a devil! A liar! A spendthrift, +no-'count son out of a family that deserved better. I've cried more +tears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry. +Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in New +Orleans! Peach Tree Street! I remember how beautiful even the name of +it was when you took me there--lying--and how horrible it became to me. +Those months when I used to see your mother's carriage drive by the +house twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains. That's +what I've never forgiven myself for. She was a woman who stood for +fine things in New Orleans. A good woman whom the whole town pitied! A +no-'count son squandering her fortune and dragging down the family name. +If only I had known all that then! She would have helped me if I had +appealed to her. She wouldn't have let things turn out secretly--the way +they did. She would have helped me. I--You--Why have you come here +to jerk knives out of my heart after it's got healed with the points +sticking in? You're nothing to me. You're skulking for a reason. You've +been hanging around, getting pointers about me. My life is my own! You +get out!" + +"The girl. She well?" + +It was a quiet question, spoken in the key of being casual, and Hattie, +whose heart skipped a beat, tried to corral the fear in her eyes to take +it casually, except that her eyelids seemed to grow old even as they +drooped. Squeezed grape skins. + +"You get out, Morton," she said. "You've got to get out." + +He made a cigarette in an old, indolent way he had of wetting it with +his smile. He was handsome enough after his fashion, for those who like +the rather tropical combination of dark-ivory skin, and hair a lighter +shade of tan. It did a curious thing to his eyes. Behind their allotment +of tan lashes they became neutralized. Straw colored. + +"She's about sixteen now. Little over, I reckon." + +"What's that to you?" + +"Blood, Hattie. Thick." + +"What thickened it, Morton--after sixteen years?" + +"Used to be an artist chap down in Rio. On his uppers. One night, +according to my description of what I imagined she looked like, he drew +her. Yellow hair, I reckoned, and sure enough--" + +"You're not worthy of the resemblance. It wouldn't be there if I had the +saying." + +"You haven't," he said, suddenly, his teeth snapping together as if +biting off a thread. + +"Nor you!" something that was the whiteness of fear lightening behind +her mask. She rose then, lifting her chair out of the path toward the +door and flinging her arm out toward it, very much after the manner of +Miss Robinson in Act II. + +"You get out, Morton," she said, "before I have you put out. They're +closing the theater now. Get out!" + +"Hattie," his calm enormous, "don't be hasty. A man that has come to his +senses has come back to you humble and sincere. A man that's been sick. +Take me back, Hattie, and see if--" + +"Back!" she said, lifting her lips scornfully away from touching the +word. "You remember that night in that little room on Peach Tree Street +when I prayed on my knees and kissed--your--shoes and crawled for your +mercy to stay for Marcia to be born? Well, if you were to lie on this +floor and kiss my shoes and crawl for my mercy I'd walk out on you the +way you walked out on me. If you don't go, I'll call a stage hand and +make you go. There's one coming down the corridor now and locking the +house. You go--or I'll call!" + +His eyes, with their peculiar trick of solubility in his color scheme, +seemed all tan. + +"I'll go," he said, looking slim and Southern, his imperturbability ever +so slightly unfrocked--"I'll go, but you're making a mistake, Hattie." + +Fear kept clanging in her. Fire bells of it. + +"Oh, but that's like you, Morton! Threats! But, thank God, nothing you +can do can harm me any more." + +"I reckon she's considerable over sixteen now. Let's see--" + +Fire bells. Fire bells. + +"Come out with what you want, Morton, like a man! You're feeling +for something. Money? Now that your mother is dead and her fortune +squandered, you've come to harass me? That's it! I know you, like a +person who has been disfigured for life by burns knows fire. Well, I +won't pay!" + +"Pay? Why, Hattie--I want you--back--" + +She could have cried because, as she sat there blackly, she was sick +with his lie. + +"I'd save a dog from you." + +"Then save--her--from me." + +The terrible had happened so quietly. Morton had not raised his voice; +scarcely his lips. + +She closed the door then and sat down once more, but that which had +crouched out of their talk was unleashed now. + +"That's just exactly what I intend to do." + +"How?" + +"By saving her sight or sound of you." + +"You can't, Hattie." + +"Why?" + +"I've come back." There was a curve to his words that hooked into her +heart like forceps about a block of ice. But she outstared him, holding +her lips in the center of the comedy rim so that he could see how firm +their bite. + +"Not to me." + +"To her, then." + +"Even you wouldn't be low enough to let her know--" + +"Know what?" + +"Facts." + +"You mean she doesn't know?" + +"Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I've +kept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband and +wife--who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her--" And +suddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayed +her. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leap +of her error into her consciousness. + +"Oh," he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely as +sorghum in the pouring. + +"You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!" + +"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected. +Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it." + +"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you are +and what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you going +to do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips were +taking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device. + +"Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of great +pink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!" + +"Wouldn't tell what?" + +He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying to +fasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyes +there. Only the neutral, tricky tan. + +"You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more important +than anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared like +her to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little school +friends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton. +For God's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care so +terribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'll +tell her then. But for God's sake, Morton, let us live--now!" + +"Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to one +of these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lie +to her won't be a lie any more." + +"Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?" + +"I'll marry you." + +"You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gotten +on a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over the +jar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're so +easy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can get +the coward words out. Marry you! You fool!" + +It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, sucking +back her lower lip, then hurling. + +"Well, Hattie," he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that's +pretty plain." + +"I reckon it is, Morton." + +"All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to the +grave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something to +know I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out of +here for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it." + +"I'd advise you to." + +"No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Entitled to a +little natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. The +girl. No harm." + +"You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn't +tell--that--child!" + +"Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well, +you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'." + +"You can't put your foot--" + +"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Course +there's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. I +wouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I even +know where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, +Miss Harperly's." + +"You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her +tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. +They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she +could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God! +Marcia! + +That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately she +could manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! She +must keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black. + +"Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab." + +"How do you know it's--up?" + +"Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural to +put it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate." + +"So--you _have_--been watching." + +"Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got to +town--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's a +mighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl brings +your--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a family +of Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon." + +"O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rolling +suddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake! +Please!" + +He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheek +and its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid's +dress. + +"By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream if +you handle it right, honey." + +"My way is the right way for me." + +"But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on the +job. Promote it!" + +"Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of your +mother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of your +wildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you in +South America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way you +squandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. The +alfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't get +your hands on my affairs. My way suits me!" + +The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in the +circular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the door +and the hairy voice that came through. + +"All out!" + +"Yes," she said, without knowing it. + +"You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman like +you, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something with +a fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regard +for the girl. Black-face!" + +"What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kept +her like a lily!" + +"Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eating +humble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart, +I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwich +to-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years is +the truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's done +every day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there cream +will--" + +She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leaves +scuttling ahead of wind. + +"The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, piece +by piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to you +again is, 'Get out!'" + +"All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin' +to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!" + +"No. It's late. She's--" + +"Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another. +If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'd +let me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but if +I were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me." + +"Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer without +trying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Would +a hundred--two hundred--" + +"I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--" + +"You see, Morton, she's such a little thing. A little thing with big +eyes. All her life those eyes have looked right down into me, believing +everything I ever told her. About you too, Morton. Good things. Not that +I'm ashamed of anything I ever told her. My only wrong was ignorance. +And innocence. Innocence of the kind of lesson I was to learn from you." + +"Nothin' was ever righted by harping on it, Hattie." + +"But I want you to understand--O God, make him understand--she's such a +sensitive little thing. And as things stand now--glad I'm her mother. +Yes, glad--black-face and all! Why, many's the time I've gone home from +the theater, too tired to take off my make-up until I got into my own +rocker with my ankles soaking in warm water. They swell so terribly +sometimes. Rheumatism, I guess. Well, many a time when I kissed her in +her sleep she's opened her eyes on me--black-face and all. Her arms up +and around me. I was there underneath the black! She knows that! And +that's what she'll always know about me, no matter what you tell her. +I'm there--her mother--underneath the black! You hear, Morton! That's +why you must let us--live--" + +"My proposition is the mighty decent one of a gentleman." + +"She's only a little baby, Morton. And just at that age where being +like all the other boys and girls is the whole of her little life. It's +killing--all her airiness and fads and fancies. Such a proper little +young lady. You know, the way they clip and trim them at finishing +school. Sweet-sixteen nonsense that she'll outgrow. To-night, Morton, +she's at a party. A boy's. Her first. That fine-looking yellow-haired +young fellow and his sister that bring her home every afternoon. At +their house. Gramercy Park. A fine young fellow--Phi Pi--" + +"Looka here, Hattie, are you talking against time?" + +"She's home asleep by now. I told her she had to be in bed by eleven. +She minds me, Morton. I wouldn't--couldn't--wake her. Morton, Morton, +she's yours as much as mine. That's God's law, no matter how much man's +law may have let you shirk your responsibility. Don't hurt your own +flesh and blood by coming back to us--now. I remember once when you cut +your hand it made you ill. Blood! Blood is warm. Red. Sacred stuff. +She's your blood, Morton. You let us alone when we needed you. Leave us +alone, now that we don't!" + +"But you do, Hattie girl. That's just it. You're running things a +woman's way. Why, a man with the right promoting ideas--" + +There was a fusillade of bangs on the door now, and a shout as if the +hair on the voice were rising in anger. + +"All out or the doors 'll be locked on yuh! Fine doings!" + +She grasped her light wrap from its hook, and her hat with its whirl of +dark veil, fitting it down with difficulty over the fizz of wig. + +"Come, Morton," she said, suddenly. "I'm ready. You're right, now or +never." + +"Your face!" + +"No time now. Later--at home! She'll know that I'm there--under the +black!" + +"So do I, Hattie. That's why I--" + +"I'm not one of the ready-made heroines you read about. That's not my +idea of sacrifice! I'd let my child hang her head of my shame sooner +than stand up and marry you to save her from it. Marcia wouldn't want me +to! She's got your face--but my character! She'll fight! She'll glory +that I had the courage to let you tell her the--truth! Yes, she will," +she cried, her voice pleading for the truth of what her words exclaimed. +"She'll glory in having saved me--from you! You can come! Now, too, +while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't want +you skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head--or hers! You +can tell her to-night--but in my presence! Come!" + +"Yes, sir," he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!" +Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click. +"Yes--sir!" + +They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat of +rain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timbers +taxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did something +horrid to her. + +It was as if the skull of her, set in torment, were looking through a +transparent black mask, but, because there were not lips, forced to +grin. + +And yet, do you know that while she rode with him Hattie's heart was +high? So high that when she left him finally, seated in her little +lamplit living room, it was he whose unease began to develop. + +"I--If she's asleep, Hattie--" + +Her head looked so sure. Thrust back and sunk a little between the +shoulders. + +"If she's asleep, I'll wake her. It's better this way. I'm glad, now. I +want her to see me save myself. She would want me to. You banked on mock +heroics from me, Morton. You lost." + +Marcia was asleep, in her narrow, pretty bed with little bowknots +painted on the pale wood. About the room all the tired and happy muss of +after-the-party. A white-taffeta dress with a whisper of real lace at +the neck, almost stiffishly seated, as if with Marcia's trimness, on +a chair. A steam of white tulle on the dressing table. A buttonhole +gardenia in a tumbler of water. One long white-kid glove on the table +beside the night light. A naked cherub in a high hat, holding a pink +umbrella for the lamp shade. + +"Dear me! Dear me!" screamed Hattie to herself, fighting to keep her +mind on the plane of casual things. "She's lost a glove again. Dear me! +Dear me! I hope it's a left one to match up with the right one she saved +from the last pair. Dear me!" + +She picked up a white film of stocking, turning and exploring with +spread fingers in the foot part for holes. There was one! Marcia's big +toe had danced right through. "Dear me!" + +Marcia sleeping. Very quietly and very deeply. She slept like that. +Whitely and straightly and with the covers scarcely raised for the ridge +of her slim body. + +Sometimes Marcia asleep could frighten Hattie. There was something about +her white stilliness. Lilies are too fair and so must live briefly. +That thought could clutch so that she would kiss Marcia awake. Kiss her +soundly because Marcia's sleep could be so terrifyingly deep. + +"Marcia," said Hattie, and stood over her bed. Then again, "Mar-cia!" On +more voice than she thought her dry throat could yield her. + +There was the merest flip of black on the lacy bosom of Marcia's +nightgown, and Hattie leaned down to fleck it. No. It was a pin--a small +black-enameled pin edged in pearls. Automatically Hattie knew. + +"Pi Phi!" + +"Marcia," cried Hattie, and shook her a little. She hated so to waken +her. Always had. Especially for school on rainy days. Sometimes didn't. +Couldn't. Marcia came up out of sleep so reluctantly. A little dazed. A +little secretive. As if a white bull in a dream had galloped off with +her like Persephone's. + +Only Hattie did not know of Persephone. She only knew that Marcia slept +beautifully and almost breathlessly. Sweet and low. It seemed silly, +sleeping beautifully. But just the same, Marcia did. + +Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marcia +should know. Now, too, while her heart was so high. + +Sometimes it took as many as three kisses to awaken Marcia. Hattie bent +for the first one, a sound one on the tip of her lip. + +"Marcia!" she cried. "Marcy, wake up!" and drew back. + +Something had happened! Darkly. A smudge the size of a quarter and +the color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly on +Marcia's whiteness. + +Hattie had smudged Marcia! _Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_ + +There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge. + + * * * * * + +It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat dangling +from soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else. +Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent about +it. + +"We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married," he +said. + +"Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia." + +"Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her. + +"Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without noting +that his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--" + +"To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour for +Greenwich." + +He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur. + +"Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now." + +"Of course," he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strapped +me--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help." + +She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehow +her fingers were not flexible enough to open it. + +His were. + +There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactly +as he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence. + +Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, banging +shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck by +lightning. + +And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder. + + + + +GUILTY + + +To the swift hiss of rain down soot-greasy window panes and through a +medley of the smells of steam off wet overcoats and a pale stench +of fish, a judge turned rather tired Friday-afternoon eyes upon the +prisoner at the bar, a smallish man in a decent-enough salt-and-pepper +suit and more salt than pepper in his hair and mustache. + +"You have heard the charge against you," intoned the judge in the holy +and righteous key of justice about to be administered. "Do you plead +guilty or not guilty?" + +"I--I plead guilty of not having told her facts that would have helped +her to struggle against the--the thing--her inheritance." + +"You must answer the Court directly. Do you--" + +"You see, Your Honor--my little girl--so little--my promise. Yes, yes, +I--I plead guilty of keeping her in ignorance of what she should have +known, but you see, Your Honor, my little gi--" + +"Order! Answer to the point. Do you," began the judge again, "plead +guilty or not guilty?" his tongue chiming the repetition into the +waiting silence like a clapper into a bell. + +The prisoner at the bar thumbed his derby hat after the immemorial +dry-fingered fashion of the hunted meek, his mouth like an open wound +puckering to close. + +"Guilty or not guilty, my man? Out with it." + +Actually it was not more than a minute or two before the prisoner found +reply, but it was long enough for his tortured eye to flash inward and +backward with terrible focus.... + + * * * * * + +On its long cross-town block, Mrs. Plush's boarding house repeated +itself no less than thirty-odd times. Every front hall of them smelled +like cold boiled potato, and the gilt chair in the parlor like banana. +At dinner hour thirty-odd basement dining rooms reverberated, not +uncheerfully, to the ironstone clatter of the canary-bird bathtub of +succotash, the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, and +on Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, +oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-down +high shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pints +of water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle with old +broom runts. + +If Mrs. Plush's house broke rank at all, it did so by praiseworthy +omission. In that row of the fly-by-night and the van-by-day, the moving +or the express wagon seldom backed up before No. 28, except immediately +preceding a wedding or following a funeral. And never, in twenty-two +years of respectable tenancy, had the furtive lodger oozed, under +darkness, through the Plush front door by night, or a huddle of +sidewalk trunks and trappings staged the drab domestic tragedy of the +dispossessed. + +The Kellers (second-story back) had eaten their satisfied way through +fourteen years of the breakfasts of apple sauce or cereal; choice of ham +and eggs any style or country sausage and buckwheat cakes. + +Jeanette Peopping, born in the back parlor, was married out of the +front. + +On the night that marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Dangs into +the third-floor alcove room there was frozen pudding with hot fudge +sauce for dessert, and a red-paper bell ringing silently from the +dining-room chandelier. + +For the eight years of their placid connubiality Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jett +had occupied the second-story front. + +Stability, that was the word. Why, Mrs. Plush had dealt with her corner +butcher for so long that on crowded Saturday mornings it was her custom +to step without challenge into the icy zone of the huge refrigerator, +herself pinching and tearing back the cold-storage-bitten wings of +fowls, weighing them with a fidelity to the ounce, except for a few +extra giblets (Mr. Keller loved them), hers, anyhow, most of the time, +for the asking. + +Even the nearest drug store, wary of that row of the transient +hat-on-the-peg, off-the-peg, would deliver to No. 28 a mustard plaster +or a deck of cards and charge without question. + +To the Jett Fish Company, "Steamers, Hotels, and Restaurants +Supplied--If It Swims We Have It," Mrs. Plush paid her bill quarterly +only, then Mr. Jett deducting the sum delicately from his board. + +So it may be seen that Mrs. Plush's boarding house offered scanty palate +to the dauber in local color. + +On each of the three floors was a bathroom, spotlessly clean, with a +neat hand-lettered sign over each tin tub: + + DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU + + PLEASE WASH OUT THE TUB AFTER YOU + +Upon the outstanding occasion of the fly in the soup and Mr. Keller's +subsequent deathly illness, the regrettable immersion had been directly +traceable, not to the kitchen, but to the dining-room ceiling. It was +November, a season of heavy dipterous mortality. Besides, Mrs. Peopping +had seen it fall. + +Nor entered here the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffy +stacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. +Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea and +half an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to settle it. + +The Jetts, with whom we have really to do, drank two cups apiece at +breakfast. Mrs. Jett, to the slight aid and abetment of one of her two +rolls, stopped right there; Mr. Jett plunging on into choice-of-- + +The second roll Mrs. Jett usually carried away with her from the table. +Along about ten o'clock she was apt to feel faint rather than hungry. + +"Gone," she called it. "Feeling a little gone." + +Not that there was a suggestion of frailty about Mrs. Jett. Anything but +that. On the contrary, in all the eight years in the boarding house, +she held the clean record of not a day in bed, and although her history +previous to that time showed as many as fifteen hours a day on duty in +the little fancy-goods store of her own proprietorship, those years +showed her guilty of only two incapacitated days, and then because she +ran an embroidery needle under her finger nail and suffered a slight +infection. + +Yet there was something about Emma Jett--eight years of married life +had not dissipated it--that was not eupeptic; something of the sear and +yellow leaf of perpetual spinsterhood. She was a wintry little body +whose wide marriage band always hung loosely on her finger with an air +of not belonging; wore an invariable knitted shawl iced with beads +across her round shoulders, and frizzed her graying bangs, which, +although fruit of her scalp, had a set-on look. Even the softness to her +kind gray eyes was cozy rather than warm. + +She could look out tabbily from above a lap of handiwork, but in her +boudoir wrapper of gray flannelette scalloped in black she was scrawny, +almost rangy, like a horse whose ribs show. + +"I can no more imagine those two courting," Mrs. Keller, a proud twin +herself and proud mother of twins, remarked one afternoon to a euchre +group. "They must have sat company by correspondence. Why, they won't +even kiss when he comes home if there's anybody in the room!" + +"They kiss, all right," volunteered Mrs. Dang of the bay-window alcove +room, "and she waves him good-by every morning clear down the block." + +"You can't tell about anybody nowadays," vouchsafed some one, +tremendously. + +But in the end the consensus of opinion, unanimous to the vote, was: +Lovely woman, Mrs. Jett. + +Nice couple; so unassuming. The goodness looks out of her face; and so +reserved! + +But it was this aura of reserve that kept Mrs. Jett, not without a bit +of secret heartache about it, as remote from the little world about her +as the yolk of an egg is remote from the white. Surrounded, yet no part +of those surroundings. No osmosis took place. + +Almost daily, in some one or another's room, over Honiton lace or the +making of steel-bead chatelaine bags, then so much in vogue, those +immediate, plushy-voiced gatherings of the members of the plain gold +circle took place. Delicious hours of confidence, confab, and the +exchanges of the connubially loquacious. + +The supreme _lèse majesté_ of the married woman who wears her state of +wedlock like a crown of blessed thorns; bleeds ecstatically and swaps +afternoon-long intimacies, made nasty by the plush in her voice, with +her sisters of the matrimonial dynasty. + +Mrs. Jett was also bidden, by her divine right, to those conclaves of +the wives, and faithfully she attended, but on the rim, as it were. +Bitterly silent she sat to the swap of: + +"That's nothing. After Jeanette was born my hair began to fall out just +as if I had had typhoid"; or, "Both of mine, I am proud to say, were +bottle babies"; and once, as she listened, her heart might have been a +persimmon, puckering: "The idea for a woman of forty-five to have her +first! It's not fair to the child." + +They could not, of course, articulate it, but the fact of the matter was +not alone that Mrs. Jett was childless (so was Mrs. Dang, who somehow +belonged), it was that they sensed, with all the antennae of their busy +little intuitions, the ascetic odor of spinsterhood which clung to Mrs. +Jett. She was a little "too nice." Would flush at some of the innuendoes +of the _contes intimes_, tales of no luster and dulled by soot, but in +spite of an inner shrinkage would loop up her mouth to smile, because +not to do so was to linger even more remotely outside the privileged rim +of the wedding band. + +Evenings, after these gatherings, Mrs. Jett was invariably even a bit +gentler than her wont in her greetings to Mr. Jett. + +Of course, they kissed upon his arrival home, comment to the contrary +notwithstanding, in a taken-for-granted fashion, perhaps, but there was +something sweet about their utter unexcitement; and had the afternoon +session twisted her heart more than usual, Mrs. Jett was apt to place a +second kiss lightly upon the black and ever so slightly white mustache, +or lay her cheek momentarily to his, as if to atone by thus yearning +over him for the one aching and silent void between them. + +But in the main Henry Jett was a contented and happy man. + +His wife, whom he had met at a church social and wooed in the front of +the embroidery and fancy-goods store, fitted him like the proverbial +glove--a suede one. In the eight years since, his fish business had +almost doubled, and his expenses, if anything, decreased, because more +and more it became pleasanter to join in the evening game of no-stakes +euchre down in the front parlor or to remain quietly upstairs, a +gas lamp on the table between them, Mr. Jett in a dressing gown of +hand-embroidered Persian design and a newspaper which he read from first +to last; Mrs. Jett at her tranquil process of fine needlework. + +Their room abounded in specimens of it. Centerpieces of rose design. +Mounds of cushions stamped in bulldog's head and pipe and appropriately +etched in colored floss. A poker hand, upheld by realistic five fingers +embroidered to the life, and the cuff button denoted by a blue-glass +jewel. Across their bed, making it a dais of incongruous splendor, was +flung a great counterpane of embroidered linen, in design as narrative +as a battle-surging tapestry and every thread in it woven out of these +long, quiet evenings by the lamp side. + +He was exceedingly proud of her cunning with a needle, so fine that its +stab through the cloth was too slight to be seen, and would lose no +occasion to show off the many evidences of her delicate workmanship that +were everywhere about the room. + +"It's like being able to create a book or a piece of music, Em, to say +all that on a piece of cloth with nothing but a needle." + +"It's a good thing I am able to create something, Henry," placing her +thimbled hand on his shoulder and smiling down. She was slightly the +taller. + +It was remarkable how quick and how tender his intuitions could be. +An innuendo from her, faint as the brush of a wing, and he would +immediately cluck with his tongue and throw out quite a bravado of +chest. + +"You're all right, Em. You suit me." + +"And you suit me, Henry," stroking his hand. + +This he withdrew. It was apt to smell of fish and he thought that once +or twice he had noticed her draw back from it, and, anyway, he was +exceedingly delicate about the cling of the rottenly pungent fish odor +of his workadays. + +Not that he minded personally. He had long ago ceased to have any +consciousness of the vapors that poured from the bins and the incoming +catches into his little partitioned-off office. But occasionally he +noticed that in street cars noses would begin to crinkle around him, +and every once in a while, even in a crowded conveyance he would find +himself the center of a little oasis of vacant seats which he had +created around himself. + +Immediately upon his arrival home, although his hands seldom touched the +fish, he would wash them in a solution of warm water and carbolic +acid, and most of the time he changed his suit before dinner, from a +salt-and-pepper to a pepper-and-salt, the only sartorial variety in +which he ever indulged. + +His wife was invariably touched by this little nicety of his, and +sometimes bravely forced his hand to her cheek to prove her lack of +repugnance. + +Boarding-house lore had it correctly. They were an exceedingly nice +couple, the Jetts. + +One day in autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhaven +oyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one of +the afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back +parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jetts +loved to borrow Sunday mornings, while she was still in her little +nightdress, playing paper dolls in the background. + +Her embroidery hoop, with a large shaded pink rose in the working, had, +contrary to her custom, fallen from idle hands, and instead of following +the dart of the infinitesimal needle, Mrs. Jett's eyes were burningly +upon Mrs. Peopping, following, with almost lip-reading intensity, that +worthy lady's somewhat voluptuous mouthings. + +She was a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked as +if at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets and +a characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to an +explosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it would hold. + +It had been a long tale of obstetrical fact and fancy, told plushily, +of course, against the dangerous little ears of Jeanette, and at its +conclusion Mrs. Peopping's steel-bead bag, half finished, lay in a +huddle at her feet, her pink and flabby face turned reminiscently toward +the fire. + +"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanette +until the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis, +you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmas +present to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn't +have gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women go +through--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselves +they would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall and +turn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I've +been a great sufferer in my day." + +"Thu, thu, thu," and, "I could tell tales," and, "I've been through my +share"--from various points of vantage around the speaker. + +It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straight +chair, and put her question. + +There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if an +intruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only the +most negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping. + +"Forty-three." + +Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in point +that had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital. + +"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on +_ad infinitum, ad lib._, and _ad nauseaum_. + +That night Mrs. Jett did an unprecedented thing. She crept into the +crevice of her husband's arm from behind as he stood in his waistcoat, +washing his hands in the carbolic solution at the bowl and washstand. +He turned, surprised, unconsciously placing himself between her and the +reeky water. + +"Henry," she said, rubbing up against the alpaca back to his vest like +an ingratiating Maltese tabby, "Hen-ery." + +"In a minute, Em," he said, rather puzzled and wishing she would wait. + +Suddenly, swinging herself back from him by his waistcoat lapel, easily, +because of his tenseness to keep her clear of the bowl of water, she +directed her eyes straight into his. + +"Hen-ery--Hen-ery," each pronouncement of his name surging higher in her +throat. + +"Why, Em?" + +"Hen-ery, I haven't words sweet enough to tell you." + +"Em, tell what?" And stopped. He could see suddenly that her eyes were +full of new pins of light and his lightening intuition performed a +miracle of understanding. + +"Emmy!" he cried, jerking her so that her breath jumped, and at the +sudden drench of tears down her face sat her down, supporting her +roundish back with his wet hands, although he himself felt weak. + +"I--can't say--what I feel, Henry--only--God is good and--I'm not +afraid." + +He held her to his shoulder and let her tears rain down into his watch +pocket, so shaken that he found himself mouthing silent words. + +"God is good, Henry, isn't He?" + +"Yes, Emmy, yes. Oh, my Emmy!" + +"It must have been our prayers, Henry." + +"Well," sheepishly, "not exactly mine, Emmy; you're the saint of this +family. But I--I've wished." + +"Henry. I'm so happy--Mrs. Peopping had Jeanette at forty-three. Three +years older than me. I'm not afraid." + +It was then he looked down at her graying head there, prone against his +chest, and a dart of fear smote him. + +"Emmy," he cried, dragging her tear-happy face up to his, "if you're +afraid--not for anything in the world! You're _first_, Em." + +She looked at him with her eyes two lamps. + +"Afraid? That's the beautiful _part_, Henry. I'm not. Only happy. Why +afraid, Henry--if others dare it at--forty-three--You mean because it +was her second?" + +He faced her with a scorch of embarrassment in his face. + +"You--We--Well, we're not spring chickens any more, Em. If you are sure +it's not too--" + +She hugged him, laughing her tears. + +"I'm all right, Henry--we've been too happy not to--to--perpetuate--it." + +This time he did not answer. His cheek was against the crochet of her +yoke and she could hear his sobs with her heart. + + * * * * * + +Miraculously, like an amoeba reaching out to inclose unto itself, the +circle opened with a gasp of astonishment that filled Mrs. Peopping's O +to its final stretch and took unto its innermost Emma Jett. + +Nor did she wear her initiation lightly. There was a new tint out in her +long cheeks, and now her chair, a rocker, was but one removed from Mrs. +Peopping's. + +Oh, the long, sweet afternoons over garments that made needlework +sublime. No longer the padded rose on the centerpiece or the futile +doily, but absurd little dresses with sleeves that she measured to the +length of her hand, and yokes cut out to the pattern of a playing card, +and all fretted over with feather-stitching that was frailer than +maidenhair fern and must have cost many an eye-ache, which, because of +its source, was easy to bear. + +And there happened to Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimes +comes to men and women in middle life. She who had enjoyed no particular +youth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before her +birth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquire +comeliness which her youth had never boasted. + +The round-shouldered, long-cheeked girl had matured gingerly to rather +sparse womanhood that now at forty relented back to a fulsome thirty. + +Perhaps it was the tint of light out in her face, perhaps the splendor +of the vision; but at any rate, in those precious months to come, Mrs. +Jett came to look herself as she should have looked ten years back. + +They were timid and really very beautiful together, she and Henry Jett. +He came to regard her as a vase of porcelain, and, in his ignorance, +regarded the doctor's mandates harsh; would not permit her to walk, but +ordered a hansom cab every day from three to four, Mrs. Jett alternating +punctiliously with each of the boarding-house ladies for driving +companion. + +Every noon, for her delectation at luncheon, he sent a boy from the +store with a carton of her special favorites--Blue Point oysters. She +suddenly liked them small because, as she put it, they went down easier, +and he thought that charming. Lynnhavens for mortals of tougher growth. + +Long evenings they spent at names, exercising their pre-determination +as to sex. "Ann" was her choice, and he was all for canceling his +preference for "Elizabeth," until one morning she awakened to the white +light of inspiration. + +"I have it! Why not Ann Elizabeth?" + +"Great!" And whistled so through his shaving that his mouth was rayed +with a dark sunburst of beard where the razor had not found surface. + +They talked of housekeeping, reluctantly, it is true, because Mrs. Plush +herself was fitting up, of hard-to-spare evenings, a basinette of pink +and white. They even talked of schools. + +Then came the inevitable time when Mrs. Jett lost interest. Quite out of +a clear sky even the Blue Points were taboo, and instead of joining this +or that card or sewing circle, there were long afternoons of stitching +away alone, sometimes the smile out on her face, sometimes not. + +"Em, is it all right with you?" Henry asked her once or twice, +anxiously. + +"Of course it is! If I weren't this way--now--it wouldn't be natural. +You don't understand." + +He didn't, so could only be vaguely and futilely sorry. + +Then one day something quite horrible, in a small way, happened to Mrs. +Jett. Sitting sewing, suddenly it seemed to her that through the very +fluid of her eyeballs, as it were, floated a school of fish. Small +ones--young smelts, perhaps--with oval lips, fillips to their tails, and +sides that glisted. + +She laid down her bit of linen lawn, fingers to her lids as if to +squeeze out their tiredness. She was trembling from the unpleasantness, +and for a frightened moment could not swallow. Then she rose, shook out +her skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up to +Mrs. Dang's, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroit +questions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous state +in her "condition" was highly normal. + +She felt easier, but there was the same horrid recurrence three times +that week. Once during an evening of lotto down in the front parlor she +pushed back from the table suddenly, hand flashing up to her throat. + +"Em!" said Mr. Jett, who was calling the numbers. + +"It's nothing," she faltered, and then, regaining herself more fully, +"nothing," she repeated, the roundness out in her voice this time. + +The women exchanged knowing glances. + +"She's all right," said Mrs. Peopping, omnipotently. "Those things +pass." + +Going upstairs that evening, alone in the hallway, they flung an arm +each across the other's shoulder, crowding playfully up the narrow +flight. + +"Emmy," he said, "poor Em, everything will be all right." + +She restrained an impulse to cry. "Poor nothing," she said. + +But neither the next evening, which was Friday, nor for Fridays +thereafter, would she venture down for fish dinner, dining cozily up +in her room off milk toast and a fluffy meringue dessert prepared +especially by Mrs. Plush. It was floating-island night downstairs. + +Henry puzzled a bit over the Fridays. It was his heaviest day at the +business, and it was upsetting to come home tired and feel her place +beside him at the basement dinner table vacant. + +But the women's nods were more knowing than ever, the reassuring +insinuations more and more delicate. + +But one night, out of one of those stilly cisterns of darkness that +between two and four are deepest with sleep, Henry was awakened on the +crest of such a blow and yell that he swam up to consciousness in a +ready-made armor of high-napped gooseflesh. + +A regrettable thing had happened. Awakened, too, on the high tide of +what must have been a disturbing dream, Mrs. Jett flung out her arm as +if to ward off something. That arm encountered Henry, snoring lightly in +his sleep at her side. But, unfortunately, to that frightened fling of +her arm Henry did not translate himself to her as Henry. + +That was a fish lying there beside her! A man-sized fish with its mouth +jerked open to the shape of a gasp and the fillip still through its +enormous body, as if its flanks were uncomfortably dry. A fish! + +With a shriek that tore a jagged rent through the darkness Mrs. Jett +began pounding at the slippery flanks, her hands sliding off its +shininess. + +"Out! Out! Henry, where are you? Help me! O God, don't let him get me. +Take him away, Henry! Where are you? My hands--slippery! Where are +you--" + +Stunned, feeling for her in the darkness, he wanted to take her +shuddering form into his arms and waken her out of this horror, but with +each groping move of his her hurtling shrieks came faster, and finally, +dragging the bedclothing with her, she was down on the floor at the +bedside, blobbering. That is the only word for it--blobbering. + +He found a light, and by this time there were already other lights +flashing up in the startled household. When he saw her there in the ague +of a huddle on the floor beside the bed, a cold sweat broke out over him +so that he could almost feel each little explosion from the pores. + +"Why, Emmy--Emmy--my Emmy--my Emmy--" + +She saw him now and knew him, and tried in her poor and already +burningly ashamed way to force her chattering jaws together. + +"Hen-ery--dream--bad--fish--Hen-ery--" + +He drew her up to the side of the bed, covering her shivering knees as +she sat there, and throwing a blanket across her shoulders. Fortunately +he was aware that the soothing note in his voice helped, and so he sat +down beside her, stroking her hand, stroking, almost as if to hypnotize +her into quiet. + +"Henry," she said, closing her fingers into his wrists, "I must have +dreamed--a horrible dream. Get back to bed, dear. I--I don't know what +ails me, waking up like that. That--fish! O God! Henry, hold me, hold +me." + +He did, lulling her with a thousand repetitions of his limited store of +endearments, and he could feel the jerk of sobs in her breathing subside +and she seemed almost to doze, sitting there with her far hand across +her body and up against his cheek. + +Then came knocks at the door, and hurried explanations through the slit +that he opened, and Mrs. Peopping's eye close to the crack. + +"Everything is all right.... Just a little bad dream the missus had.... +All right now.... To be expected, of course.... No, nothing anyone can +do.... Good night. Sorry.... No, thank you. Everything is all right." + +The remainder of the night the Jetts kept a small light burning, after a +while Henry dropping off into exhausted and heavy sleep. For hours Mrs. +Jett lay staring at the small bud of light, no larger than a human eye. +It seemed to stare back at her, warning, Now don't you go dropping off +to sleep and misbehave again. + +And holding herself tense against a growing drowsiness, she didn't--for +fear-- + + * * * * * + +The morning broke clear, and for Mrs. Jett full of small reassurances. +It was good to hear the clatter of milk deliveries, and the first bar +of sunshine came in through the hand-embroidered window curtains like a +smile, and she could smile back. Later she ventured down shamefacedly +for the two cups of coffee, which she drank bravely, facing the +inevitable potpourri of comment from this one and that one. + +"That was a fine scare you gave us last night, Mrs. Jett." + +"I woke up stiff with fright. Didn't I, Will? Gracious! That first yell +was a curdler!" + +"Just before Jeanette was born I used to have bad dreams, too, but +nothing like that. My!" + +"My mother had a friend whose sister-in-law walked in her sleep right +out of a third-story window and was dashed to--" + +"Shh-h-h!" + +"It's natural, Mrs. Jett. Don't you worry." + +She really tried not to, and after some subsequent and private +reassurance from Mrs. Peopping and Mrs. Keller, went for her hansom ride +with a pleasant anticipation of the Park in red leaf, Mrs. Plush, in a +brocade cape with ball fringe, sitting erect beside her. + +One day, in the presence of Mrs. Peopping, Mrs. Jett jumped to her feet +with a violent shaking of her right hand, as if to dash off something +that had crawled across its back. + +"Ugh!" she cried. "It flopped right on my hand. A minnow! Ugh!" + +"A what?" cried Mrs. Peopping, jumping to her feet and her flesh seeming +to crawl up. + +"A minnow. I mean a bug--a June bug. It was a bug, Mrs. Peopping." + +There ensued a mock search for the thing, the two women, on all-fours, +peering beneath the chairs. In that position they met levelly, eye to +eye. Then without more ado rose, brushing their knees and reseating +themselves. + +"Maybe if you would read books you would feel better," said Mrs. +Peopping, scooping up a needleful of steel beads. "I know a woman who +made it her business to read all the poetry books she could lay hands +on, and went to all the bandstand concerts in the Park the whole time, +and now her daughter sings in the choir out in Saginaw, Michigan." + +"I know some believe in that," said Mrs. Jett, trying to force a smile +through her pallor. "I must try it." + +But the infinitesimal stitching kept her so busy. + + * * * * * + +It was inevitable, though, that in time Henry should begin to shoulder +more than a normal share of unease. + +One evening she leaned across the little lamplit table between them as +he sat reading in the Persian-design dressing gown and said, as rapidly +as her lips could form the dreadful repetition, "The fish, the fish, the +fish, the fish." And then, almost impudently for her, disclaimed having +said it. + +He urged her to visit her doctor and she would not, and so, secretly, he +did, and came away better satisfied, and with directions for keeping her +diverted, which punctiliously he tried to observe. + +He began by committing sly acts of discretion on his own accord. Was +careful not to handle the fish. Changed his suit now before coming +home, behind a screen in his office, and, feeling foolish, went out and +purchased a bottle of violet eau de Cologne, which he rubbed into his +palms and for some inexplicable reason on his half-bald spot. + +Of course that was futile, because the indescribably and faintly rotten +smell of the sea came through, none the less, and to Henry he was +himself heinous with scent. + +One Sunday morning, as was his wont, Mr. Jett climbed into his dressing +gown and padded downstairs for the loan of little Jeanette Peopping, +with whom he returned, the delicious nub of her goldilocks head showing +just above the blanket which enveloped her, eyes and all. + +He deposited her in bed beside Mrs. Jett, the little pink feet peeping +out from her nightdress and her baby teeth showing in a smile that Mr. +Jett loved to pinch together with thumb and forefinger. + +"Cover her up quick, Em, it's chilly this morning." + +Quite without precedent, Jeanette puckered up to cry, holding herself +rigidly to Mr. Jett's dressing gown. + +"Why, Jeanette baby, don't you want to go to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No!" Trying to ingratiate herself back into Mr. Jett's arms. + +"Baby, you'll take cold. Come under covers with Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! Take me back." + +"Oh, Jeanette, that isn't nice! What ails the child? She's always so +eager to come to me. Shame on Jeanette! Come, baby, to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! My mamma says you're crazy. Take me back--take me." + +For a frozen moment Henry regarded his wife above the glittering fluff +of little-girl curls. It seemed to him he could almost see her face +become smaller, like a bit of ice under sun. + +"Naughty little Jeanette," he said, shouldering her and carrying her +down the stairs; "naughty little girl." + +When he returned his wife was sitting locked in the attitude in which he +had left her. + +"Henry!" she whispered, reaching out and closing her hand over his so +that the nails bit in. "Not that, Henry! Tell me not that!" + +"Why, Em," he said, sitting down and trembling, "I'm surprised at you, +listening to baby talk! Why, Em, I'm surprised at you!" + +She leaned over, shaking him by the shoulder. + +"I know. They're saying it about me. I'm not that, Henry. I swear I'm +not that! Always protect me against their saying that, Henry. Not +crazy--not that! It's natural for me to feel queer at times--now. +Every woman in this house who says--that--about me has had her nervous +feelings. It's not quite so easy for me, as if I were a bit younger. +That's all. The doctor said that. But nothing to worry about. Mrs. +Peopping had Jeanette--Oh, Henry promise me you'll always protect me +against their saying that! I'm not that--I swear to you, Henry--not +that!" + +"I know you're not, Emmy. It's too horrible and too ridiculous to talk +about. Pshaw--pshaw!" + +"You do know I'm not, don't you? Tell me again you do know." + +"I do. Do." + +"And you'll always protect me against anyone saying it? They'll believe +you, Henry, not me. Promise me to protect me against them, Henry. +Promise to protect me against our little Ann Elizabeth ever thinking +that of--of her mother." + +"Why, Emmy!" he said. "Why, Emmy! I just promise a thousand times--" and +could not go on, working his mouth rather foolishly as if he had not +teeth and were rubbing empty gums together. + +But through her hot gaze of tears she saw and understood and, satisfied, +rubbed her cheek against his arm. + +The rest is cataclysmic. + +Returning home one evening in a nice glow from a January out-of-doors, +his mustache glistening with little frozen drops and his hands (he never +wore gloves) unbending of cold, Mrs. Jett rose at her husband's entrance +from her low chair beside the lamp. + +"Well, well!" he said, exhaling heartily, the scent of violet denying +the pungency of fish and the pungency of fish denying the scent of +violet. "How's the busy bee this evening?" + +For answer Mrs. Jett met him with the crescendo yell of a gale sweeping +around a chimney. + +"Ya-a-ah! Keep out--you! Fish! Fish!" she cried, springing toward him; +and in the struggle that ensued the tubing wrenched off the gas lamp and +plunged them into darkness. "Fish! I'll fix you! Ya-a-ah!" + +"Emmy! For God's sake, it's Henry! Em!" + +"Ya-a-ah! I'll fix you! Fish! Fish!" + + * * * * * + +Two days later Ann Elizabeth was born, beautiful, but premature by two +weeks. + +Emma Jett died holding her tight against her newly rich breasts, for a +few of the most precious and most fleeting moments of her life. + +All her absurd fears washed away, her free hand could lie without spasm +in Henry's, and it was as if she found in her last words a secret +euphony that delighted her. + +"Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful." + +Later in his bewildered and almost ludicrous widowerhood tears would +sometimes galumph down on his daughter's face as Henry rocked her of +evenings and Sunday mornings. + +"Sweet-beautiful," came so absurdly from under his swiftly graying +mustache, but often, when sure he was quite alone, he would say it over +and over again. + +"Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth." + + * * * * * + +Of course the years puttied in and healed and softened, until for Henry +almost a Turner haze hung between him and some of the stark facts of +Emma Jett's death, turping out horror, which is always the first to fade +from memory, and leaving a dear sepia outline of the woman who had been +his. + +At seventeen, Ann Elizabeth was the sun, the sky, the west wind, and the +shimmer of spring--all gone into the making of her a rosebud off the +stock of his being. + +His way of putting it was, "You're my all, Annie, closer to me than I am +to myself." + +She hated the voweling of her name, and because she was so nimble with +youth could dance away from these moods of his rather than plumb them. + +"I won't be 'Annie.' Please, daddy, I'm your Ann Elizabeth." + +"Ann Elizabeth, then. My Ann Elizabeth," an inner rhythm in him echoing: +Sweet-Beautiful. Sweet-Beautiful. + +There was actually something of the lark about her. She awoke with a +song, sometimes kneeling up in bed, with her pretty brown hair tousling +down over her shoulders and chirruping softly to herself into the little +bird's-eye-maple dressing-table mirror, before she flung her feet over +the side of the bed. + +And then, innate little housekeeper that she was, it was to the +preparing of breakfast with a song, her early morning full of antics. +Tiptoeing in to awaken her father to the tickle of a broom straw. +Spreading his breakfast piping hot, and then concealing herself behind a +screen, that he might marvel at the magic of it. And once she put salt +in his coffee, a fresh cup concealed behind the toast rack, and knee to +knee they rocked in merriment at his grimace. + +She loved thus to tease him, probably because he was so stolid that each +new adventure came to him with something of a shock. He was forever +being taken unawares, as if he could never become entirely accustomed to +the wonder of her, and that delighted her. Even the obviousness of his +slippers stuffed out with carrots could catch him napping. To her dance +of glee behind him, he kept poking and poking to get into them, only +the peck of her kiss upon his neck finally initiating him into the +absurdity. + +There was a little apartment of five rooms, twenty minutes removed by +Subway from the fish store; her bedroom, all pink and yellow maple; his; +a kitchen, parlor, and dining room worked out happily in white-muslin +curtains, spindle-legged parlor chairs, Henry's newfangled chifferobe +and bed with a fine depth of mattress, and a kitchen with eight shining +pots above the sink and a border of geese, cut out to the snip of Ann's +own scissors, waddling across the wall. + +It was two and a half years since Mrs. Plush had died, and the boarders, +as if spilled from an ark on rough seas, had struck out for diverse +shores. The marvel to them now was that they had delayed so long. + +"A home of our own, Ann. Pretty sweet, isn't it?" + +"Oh, daddy, it is!" + +"You mustn't overdo, though, baby. Sometimes we're not so strong as we +think we are. A little hired girl would be best." The fish business had +more than held its own. + +"But I love doing it alone, dad. It--it's the next best thing to a home +of--my own." + +He looked startled into her dreaming eyes. + +"Your own? Why, Annie, isn't this--your own?" + +She laid fingers against his eyes so that he could not see the pinkiness +of her. + +"You know what I mean, daddy--my--very--own." + +At that timid phrasing of hers Henry felt that his heart was actually +strangling, as if some one were holding it back on its systolic swing, +like a caught pendulum. + +"Why, Annie," he said, "I never thought--" + +But inevitably and of course it had happened. + +The young man's name was Willis--Fred E. Willis--already credit man in +a large wholesale grocery firm and two feet well on the road to +advancement. A square-faced, clean-faced fellow, with a clean love of +life and of Ann Elizabeth in his heart. + +Henry liked him. + +Ann Elizabeth loved him. + +And yet, what must have been a long-smoldering flame of fear shot up +through the very core of Henry's being, excoriating. + +"Why, Ann Elizabeth," he kept repeating, in his slow and always +inarticulate manner, "I--You--Mine--I just never thought." + +She wound the softest of arms about his neck. + +"I know, daddy-darlums, and I'll never leave you. Never. Fred has +promised we will always be together. We'll live right here with you, or +you with us." + +"Annie," he cried, "you mustn't ever--marry. I mean, leave daddy--that +way--anyway. You hear me? You're daddy's own. Just his by himself. +Nobody is good enough for my girl." + +"But, daddy," clouding up for tears, "I thought you liked Fred so much!" + +"I do, but it's you I'm talking about. Nobody can have you." + +"But I love him, daddy. This is terrible. I love him." + +"Oh, Ann, Ann! daddy hasn't done right, perhaps, but he meant well. +There are _reasons_ why he wants to keep his little girl with him +always--alone--his." + +"But, daddy dear, I promise you we'll never let you be lonely. Why, I +couldn't stand leaving you any more than you could--" + +"Not those reasons alone, Ann." + +"Then what?" + +"You're so young," he tried to procrastinate. + +"I'll be eighteen. A woman." + +All his faculties were cornered. + +"You're--so--Oh, I don't know--I--" + +"You haven't any reasons, dad, except dear silly ones. You can't keep me +a little girl all the time, dear. I love Fred. It's all planned. Don't +ruin my life, daddy--don't ruin my life." + +She was lovely in her tears and surprisingly resolute in her mind, and +he was more helpless than ever with her. + +"Ann--you're not strong." + +"Strong!" she cried, flinging back her curls and out her chest. "That is +a fine excuse. I'm stronger than most. All youngsters have measles and +scarlet fever and Fred says his sister Lucile out in Des Moines had St. +Vitus' dance when she was eleven, just like I did. I'm stronger than you +are, dad. I didn't get the flu and you did." + +"You're nervous, Annie. That's why I want always to keep you at +home--quiet--with me." + +She sat back, her pretty eyes troubled-up lakes. + +"You mean the dreams and the scared feeling, once in a while, that I +can't swallow. That's nothing. I know now why I was so frightened in my +sleep the other night. I told Fred, and he said it was the peach sundae +on top of the crazy old movie we saw that evening. Why, Jeanette +Peopping had to take a rest cure the year before she was married. Girls +are always more nervous than fellows. Daddy--you--you frighten me when +you look at me like that! I don't know what you mean! What-do-you-mean?" + +He was helpless and at bay and took her in his arms and kissed her hair. + +"I guess your old daddy is a jealous pig and can't bear to share his +girl with anyone. Can't bear to--to give her up." + +"You won't be giving up, daddums. I couldn't stand that, either. It +will be three of us then. You'll see. Look up and smile at your Ann +Elizabeth. Smile, now, smile." + +And of course he did. + +It was typical of her that she should be the busiest of brides-to-be, +her complete little trousseau, every piece down to the dishcloths, +monogrammed by her--A.E.W. + +Skillful with her needle and thrifty in her purchases, the outfit when +completed might have represented twice the outlay that Henry expended +on it. Then there were "showers,"--linen, stocking, and even a tin one; +gifts from her girl friends--cup, face, bath and guest towels; all the +tremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-loving +heart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile school +friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a +silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an +apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week +with her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt of +pink and white sateen. + +"Jeanette," said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in +a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel that +time when you had the nerv--the breakdown?" + +Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still bright +hair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharp +white teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills. + +"I was just about gone, that's what I was. Let anybody so much as look +at me twice and, pop! I'd want to cry about it." + +"And?" + +"For six weeks I didn't even have enough interest to ask after Truman, +who was courting me then. Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, that +nervous breakdown of mine!" + +"What--else?" + +"Isn't that enough?" + +"Did it--was it--was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?" + +"To swallow?" + +"Yes. I mean--did you ever dream or--think--or feel so frightened you +couldn't swallow?" + +"I felt lots of ways, but that wasn't one of them. Swallow! Who ever +heard of not swallowing?" + +"But didn't you ever dream, Jeanette--terrible things--such terrible +things--and get to thinking and couldn't stop yourself? Silly, +ghostly--things." + +Jeanette put down her sewing. + +"Ann, are you quizzing me about--your mother?" + +"My mother? Why my mother? Jeanette, what do you mean? Why do you ask me +a thing like that? What has my mother got to do with it? Jeanette!" + +Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back. + +"Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddie +how your mamma used to--to imagine all sorts of things just to pass the +time away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces. You're like her, +mamma used to say--a handy little body. Poor mamma, to think she had to +be taken before Truman, junior, was born! Ah me!" + +That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the little +parlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock saved +from the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbell +with a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying it +with eager, fumbling fingers, her father laying aside his newspaper to +venture three guesses as to its contents. + +"Another one of those syrup pitchers." + +"Oh dear!"--plucking the twine--"I hope not!" + +"Some more nut picks." + +"Daddy, stop calamity howling. Here's the card. Des Moines, Iowa. 'From +Lucile Willis, with love to her new sister.' Isn't that the sweetest! +It's something with a pearl handle." + +"I know. Another one of those pie-spade things." + +"Wrong! Wrong! It's two pieces. Oh!" + +It was a fish set of silver and mother-of-pearl. A large-bowled spoon +and a sort of Neptune's fork, set up in a white-sateen bed. + +"Say now, that _is_ neat," said Henry, appraising each piece with a show +of critical appreciation not really his. All this spread of the gewgaws +of approaching nuptials seemed meaningless to him; bored him. Butter +knives. Berry spoons. An embarrassment of nut picks and silver pitchers. +A sliver of silver paper cutter with a hilt and a dog's-head handle. And +now, for Fred's delectation this evening, the newly added fish set, so +appropriately inscribed from his sister. + +Tilting it against the lamp in the place of honor, Ann Elizabeth turned +away suddenly, looking up at her father in a sudden dumb panic of which +he knew nothing, her two hands at her fair, bare throat. It was so hard +again to swallow. Impossible. + +But finally, as was always the case, she did swallow, with a great surge +of relief. A little later, seated on her father's knee and plucking at +his tie in a futile fashion that he loved, she asked him: + +"Daddy--about mother--" + +They seldom talked of her, but always during these rare moments a +beautiful mood shaped itself between them. It was as if the mere breath +of his daughter's sweetly lipped use of "mother" swayed the bitter-sweet +memory of the woman he carried so faithfully in the cradle of his heart. + +"Yes, baby--about mother?" + +"Daddy"--still fingering at the tie--"was mother--was everything all +right with her up--to the very--end? I mean--no nerv--no pain? Just all +of a sudden the end--quietly. Or have you told me that just to--spare +me?" + +She could feel him stiffen, but when his voice came it was even. + +"Why, Ann, what a--question! Haven't I told you so often how mother just +peacefully passed on, holding a little pink you." + +Sweet-Beautiful--his heart was tolling through a sense of +panic--Sweet-Beautiful. + +"I know, daddy, but before--wasn't there any nerv--any sickness?" + +"No," he said, rather harshly for him. "No. No. What put such ideas into +your head?" + +You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of her +words was raging through his head: + +"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying--that. Promise me." + +And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protecting +her with her own daughter. + +"Then, daddy, just one more thing," and her underlip caught while she +waited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear silly +one of loneliness--why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?" + +"No, baby," he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if his +body were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?" + +Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happy +self again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly bald +head, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne. + +"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he held +suddenly very still and far from her reach. + +Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived. All the evening, +long after Henry lay on his deep-mattressed bed, staring, the little +apartment trilled to her laughter and the basso of Fred's. + + * * * * * + +A few weeks later there occurred a strike of the delivery men and truck +drivers of the city, and Henry, especially hard hit because of the +perishable nature of his product, worked early and late, oftentimes +loading the wagons himself and riding alongside of the precariously +driving "scab." + +Frequently he was as much as an hour or two late to dinner, and upon one +or two occasions had tiptoed out of the house before the usual hour +when Ann opened her eyes to the consciousness of his breakfast to be +prepared. + +They were trying days, the scheme of his universe broken into, and Henry +thrived on routine. + +The third week of the strike there were street riots, some of them +directly in front of the fish store, and Henry came home after a day of +the unaccustomed labor of loading and unloading hampers of fish, really +quite shaken. + +When he arrived Ann Elizabeth was cutting around the scalloped edge of +a doily with embroidery scissors, the litter of cut glass and silver +things out on the table and throwing up quite a brilliance under the +electric lamp, and from the kitchen the slow sizzle of waiting chops. + +"Whew!" he said, as he entered, both from the whiff he emanated as he +shook out of his overcoat, and from a great sense of his weariness. +Loading the hampers, you understand. "Whew!" + +Ann Elizabeth started violently, first at the whiff which preceded him +and at his approach into the room; then sat forward, her hand closing +into the arm of the chair, body thrust forward and her eyes widening +like two flowers opening. + +Then she rose slowly and slyly, and edged behind the table, her two +hands up about her throat. + +"Don't you come in here," she said, lowly and evenly. "I know you, but +I'm not afraid. I'm only afraid of you at night, but not by light. You +let me swallow, you hear! Get out! Get out!" + +Rooted, Henry stood. + +"Why, Annie!" he said in the soothing voice from out of his long ago, +"Annie--it's daddy!" + +"No, you don't," she cried, springing back as he took the step forward. +"My daddy'll kill you if he finds you here. He'll slit you up from your +tail right up to your gill. He knows how. I'm going to tell him and Fred +on you. You won't let me swallow. You're slippery. I can't stand it. +Don't you come near me! Don't!" + +"Annie!" he cried. "Good God! Annie, it's daddy who loves you!" Poor +Henry, her voice was still under a whisper and in his agony he committed +the error of rushing at her. "Annie, it's daddy! See, your own dear +daddy!" + +But she was too quick. Her head thrown back so that the neck muscles +strained out like an outraged deer's cornered in the hunt and her +eyes rolled up, Ann felt for and grasped the paper knife off the +trinket-littered table. + +"Don't you touch me--slit you up from tail to your gills." + +"Annie, it's daddy! Papa! For God's sake look at daddy--Ann! God!" And +caught her wrist in the very act of its plumb-line rush for his heart. + +He was sweating in his struggle with her, and most of all her strength +appalled him, she was so little for her terrible unaccountable power. + +"Don't touch me! You can't! You haven't any arms! Horrible gills!" + +She was talking as she struggled, still under the hoarse and frantic +whisper, but her breath coming in long soughs. "Slit-you-up-from-tail. +Slit--you--up--from--tail--to--gills." + +"Annie! Annie!" still obsessed by his anguished desire to reassure +her with the normality of his touch. "See, Annie, it's daddy. Ann +Elizabeth's daddy." With a flash her arm and the glint of the paper +cutter eluded him again and again, but finally he caught her by the +waist, struggling, in his dreadful mistake, to calm her down into the +chair again. + +"Now I've got you, darling. Now--sit--down--" + +"No, you haven't," she said, a sort of wild joy coming out in her +whisper, and cunningly twisting the upper half of her body back from +his, the hand still held high. "You'll never get me--you fish!" + +And plunged with her high hand in a straight line down into her throat. + +It was only when the coroner withdrew the sliver of paper knife from its +whiteness, that, coagulated, the dead and waiting blood began to ooze. + + * * * * * + +"Do you," intoned the judge for the third and slightly more impatient +time, "plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of murder against you?" + +This time the lips of the prisoner's wound of a mouth moved stiffly +together: + +"Guilty." + + + + +ROULETTE + + +I + +Snow in the village of Vodna can have the quality of hot white plush +of enormous nap, so dryly thick it packs into the angles where fences +cross, sealing up the windward sides of houses, rippling in great seas +across open places, flaming in brilliancy against the boles of ever so +occasional trees, and tucking in the houses up to the sills and down +over the eaves. + +Out in the wide places it is like a smile on a dead face, this snow +hush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broody +God, and out of that frozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills and +down to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangs +of childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, +twin sons were born. + +Sturdy sons, with something even in their first crescendo wails that +bespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a mother's +life-of-love. + +No Sicilian sunrise was ever more glossy with the patina of hope +than the iced one that crept in for a look at the wide-faced, +high-cheek-boned beauty of Sara Turkletaub as she lay with her sons to +the miracle of her full breasts, her hair still rumpled with the agony +of deliverance. So sweetly moist her eyes that Mosher Turkletaub, his +own brow damp from sweat of her writhings, was full of heartbeat, even +to his temples. + +Long before moontime, as if by magic of the brittle air, the tidings had +spread through the village, and that night, until the hand-hewn rafters +rang, the house of Turkletaub heralded with twofold and world-old fervor +the advent of the man-child. And through it all--the steaming warmth, +the laughter through bushy beards, the ministering of women wise and +foolish with the memory of their own pangs, the shouts of vodka-stirred +men, sheepish that they, too, were part custodians of the miracle of +life--through it all Sara Turkletaub lay back against her coarse bed, so +rich--so rich that the coves of her arms trembled each of its burden and +held tighter for fear somehow God might repent of his prodigality. + +That year the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to the +plow, and Mosher started heavy with his peddler's pack and returned +light. It was no trick now for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring in +the door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, +undertake household chores of water lugging, furniture heaving, +marketing with baskets that strained her arms from the sockets as she +carted them from the open square to their house on the outskirts, her +massive silhouette moving as solemnly as a caravan against the sky line. + +Rich months these were and easy to bear because they were backed by a +dream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer to +reality. + +"America!" + +The long evenings full of the smell of tallow; maps that curled under +the fingers; the well-thumbed letters from Aaron Turkletaub, older +brother to Mosher and already a successful pieceworker on skirts in +Brooklyn. The picture postcards from him of the Statue of Liberty! Of +the three of them, Aaron, Gussie, his wife, and little Leo, with donkey +bodies sporting down a beach labeled "Coney." A horrific tintype of +little Leo in tiny velveteen knickerbockers that fastened with large, +ruble-sized, mother-of-pearl buttons up to an embroidered sailor blouse. + +It was those mother-of-pearl buttons that captured Sara's imagination +so that she loved and wept over the tintype until little Leo quite +disappeared under the rust of her tears. Long after young Mosher, who +loved his Talmud, had retired to sway over it, Sara could yearn at this +tintype. + +Her sons in little knickerbockers that fastened to the waistband with +large pearl buttons! + +Her black-eyed Nikolai with the strong black hair and the virile little +profile that hooked against the pillow as he slept. + +Her red-headed Schmulka with the tight curls, golden eyes, and even +more thrusting profile. So different of feature her twins and yet so +temperamentally of a key. Flaming to the same childish passions, often +too bitter, she thought, and, trembling with an unnamed fear, would tear +them apart. + +Pull of the cruelties and the horrible torture complex of the young +male, they had once burned a cat alive, and the passion of their father +and their cries under flaying had beat about in her brain for weeks +after. Jealousies, each of the other, burned fiercely, and, aged three, +they scratched blood from one another over the favor of the shoemaker's +tot of a girl. And once, to her soul-sickness, Nikolai, the black one, +had found out the vodka and drunk of it until she discovered him in a +little stupor beside the cupboard. + +Yet--and Sara would recount with her eyes full of more tears than they +could hold the often-told tale of how Schmulka, who could bear no +injustice, championed the cause of little Mottke, the butcher's son, +against the onslaught of his drunken father, beating back the lumbering +attack with small fists tight with rage; of little Nikolai, who fell +down the jagged wall of a quarry and endured a broken arm for the six +hours until his father came home rather than burden his mother with what +he knew would be the agony of his pain. + +Red and black were Sara's sons in pigment. But by the time they were +four, almost identical in passion, inflammable both to the same angers, +the impulsive and the judiciary cunningly distributed in them. + +And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and the +wide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons, +so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pulling +power of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tight +as fists. And from the bookkeeping one snow-smelling night, to the +drip-drip of tallow, there came the decisive moment when America looked +exactly four months off! + +Then one starlit hour before dawn the pogrom broke. Redly, from the very +start, because from the first bang of a bayonet upon a door blood began +to flow and smell. + +There had been rumors. For days old Genendel, the ragpicker, had +prophetically been showing about the village the rising knobs of his +knotting rheumatic knuckles, ill omen of storm or havoc. A star had shot +down one night, as white and sardonic as a Cossack's grin and almost +with a hiss behind it. Mosher, returning from a peddling tour to a +neighboring village, had worn a furrow between his eyes. Headache, he +called it. Somehow Sara vaguely sensed it to be the ache of a fear. + +One night there was a furious pink tint on the distant horizon, and +borne on miles of the stiffly thin air came the pungency of burning +wood and flesh across the snowlight. Flesh! The red sky lay off in the +direction of Kishinef. What was it? The straw roof of a burning barn? +The precious flesh of an ox? What? Reb Baruch, with a married daughter +and eleven children in Kishinef, sat up all night and prayed and swayed +and trembled. + +Packed in airtight against the bite of the steely out-of-doors, most of +the village of Vodna--except the children and the half-witted Shimsha, +the _ganef_--huddled under its none-too-plentiful coverings that night +and prayed and trembled. + +At five o'clock that red dawn, almost as if a bayonet had crashed into +her dream, Sara, her face smeared with pallor, awoke to the smell of +her own hair singeing. A bayonet _had_ crashed, but through the door, +terribly! + +The rest is an anguished war frieze of fleeing figures; of running +hither and thither in the wildness of fear; of mothers running with +babes at breasts; of men, their twisted faces steaming sweat, locked in +the Laocoön embrace of death. Banners of flame. The exultant belch of +iridescent smoke. Cries the shape of steel rapiers. A mouth torn back to +an ear. Prayers being moaned. The sticky stench of coagulating blood. +Pillage. Outrage. Old men dragging household chattels. Figures crumpling +up in the outlandish attitudes of death. The enormous braying of +frightened cattle. A spurred heel over a face in that horrible moment +when nothing can stay its descent. The shriek of a round-bosomed girl +to the smear of wet lips across hers. The superb daring of her lover to +kill her. A babe in arms. Two. The black billowing of fireless smoke. + +A child in the horse trough, knocked there from its mother's arms by the +butt end of a bayonet, its red curls quite sticky in a circle of its +little blood. A half-crazed mother with a singed eyebrow, blatting over +it and groveling on her breasts toward the stiffening figure for the +warmth they could not give; the father, a black-haired child in his +arms, tearing her by force out of the zone of buckshot, plunging back +into it himself to cover up decently, with his coat, what the horse +trough held. + +Dawn. A huddle of fugitives. Footsteps of blood across the wide open +places of snow. A mother, whose eyes are terrible with what she has left +in the horse trough, fighting to turn back. A husband who literally +carries her, screaming, farther and farther across the cruel open +places. A town. A ship. The crucified eyes of the mother always looking +back. Back. + +And so it was that Sara and Mosher Turkletaub sailed for America with +only one twin--Nikolai, the black. + + * * * * * + +The Turkletaubs prospered. Turkletaub Brothers, Skirts, the year after +the war, paying a six-figure excess-profit tax. + +Aaron dwelt in a three-story, American-basement house in West 120th +Street, near Lenox Avenue, with his son Leo, office manager of the +Turkletaub Skirt Company, and who had recently married the eldest +daughter of an exceedingly well-to-do Maiden Lane jewelry merchant. + +The Mosher Turkletaubs occupied an eight-room-and-two-baths apartment +near by. Sara, with much of the fleetness gone from her face and a smile +tempered by a look of unshed tears, marketing now by white-enameled desk +telephone or, on days when the limp from an old burn down her thigh was +not too troublesome, walked up to a plate-glass butcher shop on 125th +Street, where there was not so much as a drop of blood on the marble +counter and the fowl hung in white, plucked window display with +garnitures of pink tissue paper about the ankles and even the dangling +heads wrapped so that the dead eyes might not give offense. + +It was a widely different Sara from the water lugger of those sweaty +Russian days. Such commonplaces of environment as elevator service, +water at the turning of a tap, potatoes dug and delivered to her +dumbwaiter, had softened Sara and, it is true, vanquished, along with +the years, some of the wing flash of vitality from across her face. So +was the tough fiber of her skin vanquished to almost a creaminess, and +her hair, due perhaps to the warm water always on tap, had taken on +a sheen, and even through its grayness grew out hardily and was well +trained to fall in soft scallops over the singed place. + +Yes, all in all, life had sweetened Sara, and, except for the occasional +look of crucifixion somewhere back in her eyes, had roly-polied her +into new rotundities of hip and shelf of bosom, and even to what +mischievously promised to be a scallop of second chin. + +Sara Turkletaub, daughter of a ne'er-do-well who had died before her +birth with the shadow of an unproved murder on him; Sara, who had run +swiftly barefoot for the first dozen summers of her life, and married, +without dower or approval, the reckless son of old Turkletaub, the +peddler; Sara, who once back in the dim years, when a bull had got loose +in the public square, had jerked him to a halt by swinging herself from +his horns, and later, standing by, had helped hold him for the emergency +of an un-kosher slaughter, not even paling at the slitting noises of the +knife. + +Mosher Turkletaub, who had peddled new feet for stockings and calico for +the sacques the peasant women wore in the fields, reckoning no longer in +dozens of rubles but in dozens of thousands! Indeed, Turkletaub Brothers +could now afford to owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars! Mosher +dwelling thus, thighs gone flabby, in a seven-story apartment house with +a liveried lackey to swing open the front door and another to shoot him +upward in a gilded elevator. + +It was to laugh! + +And Sara and Mosher with their son, their turbulent Nikolai, now an +accredited Doctor of Law and practicing before the bar of the city of +New York! + +It was upon that realization, most of all, that Sara could surge tears, +quickly and hotly, and her heart seem to hurt of fullness. + +Of Nikolai, the black. Nicholas, now: + +It was not without reason that Sara had cried terrible tears over him, +and that much, but not all, of the struggle was gone from her face. +Her boy could be as wayward as the fling to his fierce black head, and +sickeningly often Mosher, with a nausea at the very pit of him, had +wielded the lash. + +Once even Nicholas in his adolescent youth, handsomely dark, had stood +in Juvenile Court, ringleader of a neighborhood gang of children on a +foray into the strange world of some packets of cocaine purloined from +the rear of a vacated Chinese laundry. + +Bitterly had Mosher stood in the fore of that court room, thumbing his +hat, his heart gangrening, and trying in a dumbly miserable sort of way +to press down, with his hand on her shoulder, some of the heaving of +Sara's enormous tears. + +There had followed a long, bitter evening of staying the father's lash +from descending, and finally, after five hours with his mother in his +little room, her wide bosom the sea wall against which the boiling +waywardness of him surged, his high head came down like a black swan's +and apparently, at least so far as Mosher knew, Sara had won again. + +And so it was that with the bulwark of this mother and a father who +spared not the wise rod even at the price of the sickness it cost +him, Nicholas came cleanly through these difficult years of the long +midchannel of his waywardness. + +At twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the city of New York, +although an event so perilous followed it by a year or two that the +scallops of strong hair that came down over the singed place of Sara's +brow whitened that year; although Mosher, who was beginning to curve +slightly of the years as he walked, as if a blow had been struck him +from behind, never more than heard the wind before the storm. + +Listen in on the following: + +The third year that Nicholas practiced law, junior member in the Broad +Street firm of Leavitt & Dilsheimer, he took to absenting himself from +dinner so frequently, that across the sturdy oak dining table, laid out +in a red-and-white cloth, gold-band china not too thick of lip, and a +cut-glass fern dish with cunningly contrived cotton carnations stuck in +among the growing green, Sara, over rich and native foods, came more and +more to regard her husband through a clutch of fear. + +"I tell you, Mosher, something has come over the boy. It ain't like him +to miss _gefülte_-fish supper three Fridays in succession." + +"All right, then, because he has a few more or less _gefülte_-fish +suppers in his life, let it worry you! If that ain't a woman every +time." + +"_Gefülte_ fish! If that was my greatest worry. But it's not so easy to +prepare, that you should take it so much for granted. _Gefülte_ fish, he +says, just like it grew on trees and didn't mean two hours' chopping on +my feet." + +"Now, Sara, was that anything to fly off at? Do I ever so much as eat +two helpings of it in Gussie's house? That's how I like yours better!" + +"Gussie don't chop up her onions fine enough. A hundred times I tell her +and a hundred times she does them coarse. Her own daughter-in-law, a +girl that was raised in luxury, can cook better as Gussie. I tell you, +Mosher, I take off my hat to those Berkowitz girls. And if you should +ask me, Ada is a finer one even than Leo's Irma." + +The sly look of wiseacre wizened up Mosher's face. + +"Ada!" she says. "The way you pronounce that girl's name, Sara, it's +like every tooth in your mouth was diamond filled out of Berkowitz's +jewelry firm." + +Quite without precedent Sara's lips began to quiver at this pleasantry. + +"I'm worried, Mosher," she said, putting down a forkful of untasted food +that had journeyed twice toward her lips. "I don't say he--Nicky--I +don't say he should always stay home evenings when Ada comes over +sometimes with Leo and Irma, but night after night--three times whole +nights--I--Mosher, I'm afraid." + +In his utter well-being from her warming food, Mosher drank deeply and, +if it must be admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhaling +copiously the draughts of Sara's coffee. + +Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that +Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so +to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, +velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche. + +They had furnished newly three years before, the year the business +almost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poring +with bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature. + +Bravely had Sara, even more so than Gussie, sacrificed her old regime to +the dealer. Only a samovar remained. A red-and-white pressed-glass punch +bowl, purchased out of Nicholas's--aged fourteen--pig-bank savings. An +enlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker which +she kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling.) +Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable of +metamorphosis into a ladder. And Mosher's cup. + +From this Mosher drank with gusto. His mustache, to Sara so thrillingly +American, without its complement of beard, could flare so above the +relishing sounds of drinking. It flared now and Mosher would share none +of her concern. + +"You got two talents, Sara. First, for being my wife; and second, for +wasting worry like it don't cost you nothing in health or trips to +Cold Springs in the Catskills for the baths. Like it says in Nicky's +Shakespeare, a boy who don't sow his wild oats when he's young will some +day do 'em under another name that don't smell so sweet." + +"I--It ain't like I can talk over Nicky with you, Mosher, like another +woman could with her husband. Either you give him right or right away +you get so mad you make it worse with him than better." + +"Now, Sara--" + +"But only this morning that Mrs. Lessauer I meet sometimes at Epstein's +fish store--you know the rich sausage-casings Lessauers--she says to me +this morning, she says with her sweetness full of such a meanness, like +it was knives in me--'Me and my son and daughter-in-law was coming out +of a movie last night and we saw your son getting into a taxicab with +such a blonde in a red hat!' The way she said it, Mosher, like a cat +licking its whiskers--'such a blonde in a red hat'!" + +"I wish I had one dollar in my pocket for every blond hat with red hair +her Felix had before he married." + +"But it's the second time this week I hear it, Mosher. The same +description of such a--a nix in a red hat. Once in a cabaret show Gussie +says she heard it from a neighbor, and now in and out from taxicabs with +her. Four times this week he's not been home, Mosher. I can't help it, +I--I get crazy with worry." + +A sudden, almost a simian old-age seemed to roll, like a cloud that can +thunder, across Sara's face. She was suddenly very small and no little +old. Veins came out on her brow and upon the backs of her hands, and +Mosher, depressed with an unconscious awareness, was looking into the +tired, cold, watery eyes of the fleet woman who had been his. + +"Why, Sara!" he said, and came around the table to let her head wilt in +unwonted fashion against his coat. "Mamma!" + +"I'm tired, Mosher." She said her words almost like a gush of warm blood +from the wound of her mouth. "I'm tired from keeping up and holding in. +I have felt so sure for these last four years that we have saved him +from his--his wildness--and now, to begin all over again, I--I 'ain't +got the fight left in me, Mosher." + +"You don't have to have any fight in you, Mamma. 'Ain't you got a +husband and a son to fight for you?" + +"Sometimes I think, except for the piece of my heart I left lying back +there, that there are worse agonies than even massacres. I've struggled +so that he should be good and great, Mosher, and now, after four years +already thinking I've won--maybe, after all, I haven't." + +"Why, Sara! Why, Mamma! Shame! I never saw you like this before. You +ain't getting sick for another trip to the Catskills, are you? Maybe you +need some baths--" + +"Sulphur water don't cure heart sickness." + +"Heart sickness, nonsense! You know I don't always take sides with +Nicky, Mamma. I don't say he hasn't been a hard boy to raise. But a man, +Mamma, is a man! I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't. You 'ain't +got him to your apron string in short pants any more. Whatever troubles +we've had with him, women haven't been one of them. Shame, Mamma, the +first time your grown-up son of a man cuts up maybe a little nonsense +with the girls! Shame!" + +"Girls! No one would want more than me he should settle himself down to +a fine, self-respecting citizen with a fine, sweet girl like Ad--" + +"Believe me, and I ain't ashamed to say it, I wasn't an angel, neither, +every minute before I was married." + +"My husband brags to me about his indiscretioncies." + +"_Na, na_, Mamma, right away when I open my mouth you make out a +case against me. I only say it to show you how a mother maybe don't +understand as well as a father how natural a few wild oats can be." + +"L-Leo didn't have 'em." + +"Leo ain't a genius. He's just a good boy." + +"I--I worry so!" + +"Sara, I ask you, wouldn't I worry, too, if there was a reason? God +forbid if his nonsense should lead to really something serious, then +it's time to worry." + +Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow of +crucifixion had moved forward in them. + +"If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did for +Gussie. When Leo's time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitz +from a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry her +eyes out first maybe he's in company that--that--" + +"I don't say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But we +got results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. With +a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm +with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with +a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the +family, for theirs. _We_ got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't that +something to be proud of?" + +She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying. + +"I--I know it, Mosher. It ain't--often I give way like this." + +"We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara. A genius of a lawyer +son on his way to the bench. Mark my word if I ain't right, on his way +to the bench!" + +"Yes, yes, Mosher." + +"Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to--" + +"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you to +go easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he was +the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so. +When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'm +tired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years of +struggling for him--alone--" + +"Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I was +a sick man!" + +"That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why I +should say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in." + +"Say what?" + +"You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn't +the way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temper +like yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why so +much of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraid +to tell you, for fear--for fear--" + +"Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? I +don't say I'm not sometimes hasty--" + +"Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundry +that night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months of +nights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Me +alone with him--" + +"Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!" + +"It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. That +time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thought +it was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. The +nights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of his +gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, +Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?" + +"Liked what?" + +"It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the Juvenile +Court, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night. +He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. All +druggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he was +in with--learned him--" + +"You mean--?" + +"It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit like +that. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!" + +"Why, Sara!" + +"You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted the +doctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't let +him have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should suffer +than have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, +Mosher. He liked that--stuff." + +"That--don't--seem possible." + +"And that wasn't the only lead-pipe case that time, neither, Mosher. +Twice I had to lay out of my own pocket so you wouldn't know, and talk +to him 'til sometimes I thought I didn't have any more tears left +inside of me. Between you and your business worries that year of the +garment-workers' strike--and our boy--I--after all that I haven't got +the strength left. Now that he's come out of it big, I can't begin over +again. I haven't got what he would call the second wind for it. If +anything should keep him now from going straight ahead to make him count +as a citizen, I wouldn't have the strength left to fight it, Mosher. +Wouldn't!" + +And so Sara Turkletaub lay back with the ripple writing of stormy high +tides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that he +had never seen low, wilting there against his breast. + +He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly as +puckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up. + +"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! God knows I never dreamt--" + +"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't got +the struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be all +right, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired." + +"My poor Sara!" + +"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Night +after night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened." + +Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed +paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-on +cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor +bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars +of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in +Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of +it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face. + +"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your +little finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-night +business. By God! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--" + +On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, all +her faculties coiled to spring. + +"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else he +is, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'! +You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_ +for sons--" + +"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!" + +"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding +fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!" + +"I'll break his--" + +"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! I +get a little tired and I try to make myself funny." + +"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--" + +"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that child +has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more. +That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for only +being half of my twins." + +"Then what the devil is--" + +"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you say +yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?" + +"Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick." + +"Sick! If I felt any better I'd be ashamed of having so much health! If +you get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night is +all that can cause me worry. It's natural a handsome boy like ours +should sow what they call his wild oat. With such a matzos face like +poor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain't so easy for him +to have his wild oat. Promise me, Mosher, you won't ask one question or +get mad at him. His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don't even +know he's handled." + +"I'll handle him--" + +"See now, just look at yourself once in the glass with your eyes full of +red. That's why I can't tell you nothing. Right away you fly to pieces. +I say again, you don't know how to handle your son. Promise me you won't +say nothing to him or let on, Mosher. Promise me." + +"That's the way with you women. You get a man crazy and then--" + +"I tell you it's just my nonsense." + +"If I get mad you're mad, and if I don't get mad you're mad! Go do me +something to help me solve such a riddle like you." + +"It's because me and his aunt Gussie are a pair of matchmaking old +women. That the two cousins should marry the two sisters, Irma and Ada, +we got it fixed between us! Just as if because we want it that way it's +got to happen that way!" + +"A pair of geeses, the two of you!" + +"I wouldn't let on to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo's +Irma beat for looks. Such a complexion! And the way she comes over to +sew with me afternoons! A young girl like that! An old woman like me! +You see, Mosher? See?" + +"See, she asks me. What good does it do me if I see or I don't see when +his mother gets her mind made up?" + +"But does Nicky so much as look at her? That night at Leo's birthday I +was ashamed the way he right away had an engagement after supper, when +she sat next to him and all through the meal gave him the white meat off +her own plate. Why, the flowered chiffon dress that girl had on cost ten +dollars a yard if it cost a cent. Did Nicky so much as look at her? No." + +"Too many birthdays in this family." + +"I notice you eat them when they are set down in front of you!" + +"Eat what?" + +"The birthdays." + +"Ha! That's fine! A new dish. Boiled birthdays with horseradish sauce." + +"All right, then, the birthday _parties_. Don't be so exactly with me. +Many a turn in his grave you yourself have given the man who made the +dictionary. I got other worries than language. If I knew where he +is--to-night--" + +Rather contentedly, while Sara cleared and tidied, Mosher snapped open +his evening paper, drawing his spectacles down from the perch of his +forehead. + +"You women," he said, breathing out with the male's easy surcease from +responsibility--"you women and your worries. If you 'ain't got 'em, you +make 'em." + +"Heigh-ho!" sighed out Sara, presently, having finished, and diving +into her open workbasket for the placidity her flying needle could so +cunningly simulate. "Heigh-ho!" + +But inside her heart was beating over and over again to itself, rapidly: + + +"If--only-I--knew--where--he--is--to--night--if--only--I--knew--where +--he--is--to--night." + + +II + +This is where he was: + +In the Forty-fifth-Street flat of Miss Josie Drew, known at various +times and places as Hattie Moore, Hazel Derland, Mrs. Hazel, and--But +what does it matter. + +At this writing it was Josie Drew of whom more is to be said of than +for. + +Yet pause to consider the curve of her clay. Josie had not molded her +nose. Its upward fling was like the brush of a perfumed feather duster +to the senses. Nor her mouth. It had bloomed seductively, long before +her lip stick rushed to its aid and abetment, into a cherry at the +bottom of a glass for which men quaffed deeply. There was something +rather terrifyingly inevitable about her. Just as the tide is plaything +of the stars, so must the naughty turn to Josie's ankle have been +complement to the naughty turn of her mind. + +It is not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a +hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of +the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for +instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the +challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply +drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of +herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth of a gladiator. + +That had been the Josie Drew of eighteen. + +At thirty she penciled the droop to her eyebrows a bit and had a not +always successful trick of powdering out the lurking caves under her +eyes. There was even a scar, a peculiar pocking of little shotted spots +as if glass had ground in, souvenir of one out of dozens of such nights +of orgies, this particular one the result of some unmentionable jealousy +she must have coaxed to the surface. + +She wore it plastered over with curls. It was said that in rage it +turned green. But who knows? It was also said that Josie Drew's correct +name was Josie Rosalsky. But again who knows? Her past was vivid with +the heat lightning of the sharp storms of men's lives. At nineteen she +had worn in public restaurants a star-sapphire necklace, originally +designed by a soap magnate for his wife, of these her birthstones. + +At twenty her fourteen-room apartment faced the Park, but was on the +ground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadcloth +little pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roof +to his mouth, disliked elevators. + +At twenty-three and unmentionably enough, a son of a Brazilian coffee +king, inflamed with the deviltry of debauch, had ground a wine tumbler +against her forehead, inducing the pock marks. At twenty-seven it was +the fourth vice-president of a Harlem bank. At twenty-nine an interim. +Startling to Josie Drew. Terrifying. Lean. For the first time in eight +years her gasoline expenditures amounted to ninety cents a month instead +of from forty to ninety dollars. And then not at the garage, but at the +corner drug store. Cleaning fluid for kicked-out glove and slipper tips. + +The little jangle of chatelaine absurdities which she invariably +affected--mesh bag, lip stick, memorandum (for the traffic in telephone +numbers), vanity, and cigarette case were gold--filled. There remained +a sapphire necklace, but this one faithfully copied to the wink of the +stars and the pearl clasp by the Chemic Jewel Company. Much of the +indoor appeal of Miss Drew was still the pink silkiness of her, a +little stiffened from washing and ironing, it is true, but there was a +flesh-colored arrangement of intricate drape that was rosily kind to +her. Also a vivid yellow one of a later and less expensive period, all +heavily slashed in Valenciennes lace. This brought out a bit of virago +through her induced blondness, but all the same it italicized her, just +as the crescent of black court plaster exclaimed at the whiteness of her +back. + +She could spend an entire morning fluffing at these things, pressing +out, with a baby electric iron and a sleeve board, a crumple of chiffon +to new sheerness, getting at spots with cleaning fluid. Under alcoholic +duress Josie dropped things. There was a furious stain down the +yellow, from a home brew of canned lobster á la Newburg. The stain +she eliminated entirely by cutting out the front panel and wearing it +skimpier. + +In these first slanting years, in her furnished flat of upright, +mandolin-attachment piano, nude plaster-of-Paris Bacchante holding +a cluster of pink-glass incandescent grapes, divan mountainous with +scented pillows, she was about as obvious as a gilt slipper that has +started to rub, or a woman's kiss that is beery and leaves a red +imprint. + +To Nicholas Turkletaub, whose adolescence had been languid and who had +never known a woman with a fling, a perfume, or a moue (there had been +only a common-sense-heeled co-ed of his law-school days and the rather +plump little sister-in-law of Leo's), the dawn of Josie cleft open +something in his consciousness, releasing maddened perceptions that +stung his eyeballs. He sat in the imitation cheap frailty of her +apartment like a young bull with threads of red in his eyeballs, his +head, not unpoetic with its shag of black hair, lowered as if to bash at +the impotence of the thing she aroused in him. + +Also, a curious thing had happened to Josie. Something so jaded in +her that she thought it long dead, was stirring sappily, as if with +springtime. + +Maybe it was a resurgence of sense of power after months of terror that +the years had done for her. + +At any rate, it was something strangely and deeply sweet. + +"Nicky-boy," she said, sitting on the couch with her back against the +wall, her legs out horizontally and clapping her rubbed gilt slippers +together--"Nicky-boy must go home ten o'clock to-night. Josie-girl +tired." + +Her mouth, like a red paper rose that had been crushed there, was always +bunched to baby talk. + +"Come here," he said, and jerked her so that the breath jumped. + +"Won't," she said, and came. + +His male prowess was enormous to him. He could bend her back almost +double with a kiss, and did. His first kisses that he spent wildly. He +could have carried her off like Persephone's bull, and wanted to, so +swift his mood. His flare for life and for her leaped out like a flame, +and something precious that had hardly survived sixteen seemed to stir +in the early grave of her heart. + +"Oh, Nicky-boy! Nicky-boy!" she said, and he caught that she was +yearning over him. + +"Don't say it in down curves like that. Say it up. Up." + +She didn't get this, but, with the half-fearful tail of her eye for +the clock, let him hold her quiescent, while the relentlessly sliding +moments ticked against her unease. + +"I'm jealous of every hour you lived before I met you." + +"Big-bad-eat-Josie-up-boy!" + +"I want to kiss your eyes until they go in deep--through you--I don't +know--until they hurt--deep--I--want--to hurt you--" + +"Oh! Oh! Josie scared!" + +"You're like one of those orange Angora kittens. Yellow. Soft. Deep." + +"I Nicky's pussy." + +"I can see myself in your eyes. Shut me up in them." + +"Josie so tired." + +"Of me?" + +"Nicky so--so strong." + +"My poor pussy! I didn't mean--" + +"Nicky-boy, go home like good Nicky." + +"I don't want ever to go home." + +"Go now, Josie says." + +"You mean never." + +"Now!" + +He kissed his "No, No," down against each of her eyelids. + +"You must," she said this time, and pushed him off. + +For a second he sat quite still, the black shine in his eyes seeming to +give off diamond points. + +"You're nervous," he said, and jerked her back so that the breath jumped +again. + +The tail of her glance curved to the gilt clock half hidden behind a +litter of used highball glasses, and then, seeing that his quickly +suspicious eye followed hers: + +"No," she said, "not nervous. Just tired--and thirsty." + +He poured her a high drink from a decanter, and held it so that, while +she sipped, her teeth were magnified through the tumbler, and he thought +that adorable and tilted the glass higher against her lips, and when she +choked soothed her with a crush of kisses. + +"You devil," he said, "everything you do maddens me." + +There was a step outside and a scraping noise at the lock. It was only +a vaudeville youth, slender as a girl, who lived on the floor above, +feeling unsteadily, and a bit the worse for wear, for the lock that must +eventually fit his key. + +But on that scratch into the keyhole, Josie leaped up in terror, so that +Nicholas went staggering back against the Bacchante, shattering to a +fine ring of crystal some of the pink grapes, and on that instant she +clicked out the remaining lights, shoving him, with an unsuspected and +catamount strength, into an adjoining box of a kitchenette. + +There an uncovered bulb burned greasily over a small refrigerator, that +stood on a table and left only the merest slit of walking space. It was +the none too fastidious kitchen of a none too fastidious woman. A pair +of dress shields hung on the improvised clothesline of a bit of twine. +A clump of sardines, one end still shaped to the tin, cloyed in its own +oil, crumbily, as if bread had been sopped in, the emptied tin itself, +with the top rolled back with a patent key, filled now with old beer. +Obviously the remaining contents of a tumbler had been flung in. +Cigarette stubs floated. A pasteboard cylindrical box, labeled "Sodium +Bi-carbonate," had a spoon stuck in it. A rubber glove drooped deadly +over the sink edge. + +On the second that he stood in that smelling fog, probably for no longer +than it took the swinging door to settle, something of sickness rushed +over Nicholas. The unaired odors of old foods. Those horrific things on +the line. The oil that had so obviously been sopped up with bread. The +old beer, edged in grease. Something of sickness and a panoramic flash +of things absurdly, almost unreasonably irrelevant. + +Snow, somewhere back in his memory. A frozen silence of it that was +clean and thin to the smell. The ridges in the rattan with which his +father had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry. The fine +white head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Friday +night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Red +curls--some one's--somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls that +rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Pretty +perturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in a +pink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of a +rubbed gilt slipper. Josie's slipper. + +Something seemed suddenly to rise in Nicholas, with the quick +capillarity of water boiling over. + +The old familiar star-spangled red over which Sara had time after time +laid sedative hand against his seeing, sprang out. The pit of his +passion was bottomless, into which he was tumbling with the icy laughter +of breaking glass. + +Then he struck out against the swinging door so that it ripped outward +with a sough of stale air, striking Josie Drew, as she approached it +from the room side, so violently that her teeth bit down into her lips +and the tattling blood began to flow. + +"Nicky! It's a mistake. I thought--my sister--It got so late--you +wouldn't go. Go now! The key--turning--Nervous--silly--mistake. Go--" + +He laughed, something exhilarant in his boiling over, and even in her +sudden terror of him she looked at his bare teeth and felt the unnice +beauty of the storm. + +"Nicky," she half cried, "don't be--foolish! I--" + +And then he struck her across the lip so that her teeth cut in again. + +"There is some one coming here to-night," he said, with his smile still +very white. + +She sat on the couch, trying to bravado down her trembling. + +"And what if there is? He'll beat you up for this! You fool! I've tried +to explain a dozen times. You know, or if you don't you ought to, that +there's a--friend. A traveling salesman. Automobile accessories. Long +trips, but good money. Good money. And here you walk in a few weeks ago +and expect to find the way clear! Good boy, you like some one to go +ahead of you with a snow cleaner, don't you? Yes, there's some one due +in here off his trip to-night. What's the use trying to tell Nicky-boy +with his hot head. He's got a hot head, too. Go, and let me clear the +way for you, Nicky. For good if you say the word. But I have to know +where I'm at. Every girl does if she wants to keep her body and soul +together. You don't let me know where I stand. You know you've got me +around your little finger for the saying, but you don't say. Only go +now, Nicky-boy. For God's sake, it's five minutes to eleven and he's due +in on that ten-forty-five. Nicky-boy, go, and come back to me at six +to-morrow night. I'll have the way clear then, for good. Quit blinking +at me like that, Nicky. You scare me! Quit! When you come back to-morrow +evening there won't be any more going home for Josie's Nicky-boy. +Nicky, go now. He's hotheaded, too. Quit blinking, Nicky--for God's +sake--Nicky--" + +It was then Nicholas bent back her head as he did when he kissed her +there on the swan's arch to her neck, only this time his palm was +against her forehead and his other between her shoulder blades. + +"I could kill you," he said, and laughed with his teeth. "I could bend +back your neck until it breaks." + +"Ni--i--Nic--ky--" + +"And I want to," he said through the star-spangled red. "I want you to +crack when I twist. I'm going to twist--twist--" + +And he did, shoving back her hair with his palm, and suddenly bared, +almost like a grimace, up at him, was the glass-shotted spot where +the wine tumbler had ground in, greenish now, like the flanges of her +nostrils. + +Somewhere--down a dear brow was a singed spot like that--singed with the +flame of pain-- + +"Nicky, for God's sake--you're--you're spraining my neck! Let go! Nicky. +God! if you hadn't let go just when you did. You had me croaking. +Nicky-boy--kiss me now and go! Go! To-morrow at six--clear for +you--always--only go--please, boy--my terrible--my wonderful. To-morrow +at six." + +Somehow he was walking home, the burn of her lips still against his, +loathsome and gorgeous to his desires. He wanted to tear her out by the +roots from his consciousness. To be rollickingly, cleanly free of her. +His teeth shone against the darkness as he walked, drenched to the skin +of his perspiration and one side of his collar loose, the buttonhole +slit. + +Rollickingly free of her and yet how devilishly his shoes could clat on +the sidewalk. + +To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. + + * * * * * + +It was some time after midnight when he let himself into the uptown +apartment. He thought he heard his mother, trying to be swift, padding +down the hallway as if she had been waiting near the door. That would +have angered him. + +The first of these nights, only four weeks before (it seemed years), +he had come in hotly about four o'clock and gone to bed. About five he +thought he heard sounds, almost like the scratch of a little dog at +his door. He sprang up and flung it open. The flash of his mother's +gray-flannelette wrapper turned a corner of the hall. She must have +been crying out there and wanting him to need her. None the less it had +angered him. These were men's affairs. + +But in his room to-night the light burned placidly on the little table +next to the bed, a glass of milk on a plate beside it. The bed was +turned back, snowy sheets forming a cool envelope for him to slip +in between. The room lay sedatively in shadow. A man's room. Books, +uncurving furniture, photographs of his parents taken on their +twenty-fifth anniversary standing on the chiffonier in a double leather +frame that opened like a book. Face down on the reading table beside the +glass of milk, quite as he must have left it the night before, except +where Sara had lifted it to dust under, a copy of Bishop's _New Criminal +Law_, already a prognosis, as it were, of that branch of the law he was +ultimately and brilliantly to bend to fuller justice. + +Finally, toward morning Nicholas slept, and at ten o'clock of a +rain-swept Sunday forenoon awoke, as he knew he must, to the grip of a +blinding headache, so called for want of a better noun to interpret the +kind of agony which, starting somewhere around his eyes, could prick +each nerve of his body into a little flame, as if countless matches had +been struck. + +As a youngster these attacks had not been infrequent, usually after a +fit of crying. The first, in fact, had followed the burning of the cat; +a duet of twin spasms then, howled into Sara's apron, And once after he +had fished an exhausted comrade out of an ice hole in Bronx Park. They +had followed the lead-pipe affairs and the Chinese-laundry episode with +dreadful inevitability. But it had been five years since the last--the +night his mother had fainted with terror at what she had found concealed +in the toes of his gymnasium shoes. + +Incredible that into his manhood should come the waving specter of those +early passions. + +At eleven o'clock, after she heard him up and moving about, his mother +carried him his kiss and his coffee, steaming black, the way he liked +it. She had wanted to bring him an egg--in fact, had prepared one, to +just his liking of two minutes and thirty seconds--but had thought +better of it, and wisely, because he drank the coffee at a quick gulp +and set down the cup with his mouth wry and his eyes squeezed tight. +From the taste of it he remembered horridly the litter of tall glasses +beside the gilt clock. + +With all her senses taut not to fuss around him with little jerks and +pullings, Sara jerked and pulled. Too well she knew that furrow between +his eyes and wanted unspeakably to tuck him back into bed, lower the +shades, and prepare him a vile mixture good for exactly everything that +did not ail him. But Sara could be wise even with her son. So instead +she flung up the shade, letting him wince at the clatter, dragged off +the bedclothes into a tremendous heap on the chair, beat up the pillows, +and turned the mattress with a single-handed flop. + +"The Sunday-morning papers are in the dining room, son." + +"Uhm!" + +He was standing in his dressing gown at the rain-lashed window, +strumming. Lean, long, and, to Sara, godlike, with the thick shock of +his straight hair still wet from the shower. + +"Mrs. Berkowitz telephoned already this morning with such a grand +compliment for you, son. Her brother-in-law, Judge Rosen, says you're +the brains of your firm even if you are only the junior partner yet, and +your way looks straight ahead for big things." + +"Uhm! Who's talking out there so incessantly, mother?" + +"That's your uncle Aaron. He came over for Sunday-morning breakfast with +your father. You should see the way he tracked up my hall with his wet +shoes. I'm sending him right back home with your father. They should +clutter up your aunt Gussie's house with their pinochle and ashes. I had +'em last Sunday. She don't need to let herself off so easy every week. +It's enough if I ask them all over here for supper to-night. Not?" + +"Don't count on me, dear. I won't be home for supper." + +There was a tom-tom to the silence against her beating ear drums. + +"All right, son," she said, pulling her lips until they smiled at him, +"with Leo and Irma that'll only make six of us, then." + +He kissed her, but so tiredly that again it was almost her irresistible +woman's impulse to drag down that fiercely black head to the beating +width of her bosom and plead from him drop by drop some of the bitter +welling of pain she could see in his eyes. + +"Nicky," she started to cry, and then, at his straightening back from +her, "come out in the dining room after I pack off the men. I got my +work to do. That nix of a house girl left last night. Such sass, too! +I'm better off doing my work alone." + +Sara, poor dear, could not keep a servant, and, except for the +instigation of her husband and son, preferred not to. Cooks rebelled +at the exactitude of her household and her disputative reign of the +kitchen. + +"I'll be out presently, mother," he said, and flung himself down in the +leather Morris chair, lighting his pipe and ostensibly settling down to +the open-faced volume of _Criminal Law_. + +Sara straightened a straight chair. She knew, almost as horridly as +if she had looked in on it, the mucky thing that was happening; the +intuitive sixth sense of her hovered over him with great wings that +wanted to spread. Josie Drew was no surmise with her. The blond head and +the red hat were tatooed in pain on her heart and she trembled in a bath +of fear, and, trembling, smiled and went out. + +Sitting there while the morning ticked on, head thrown back, eyes +closed, and all the little darting nerves at him, the dawn of Nicholas +Turkletaub's repugnance was all for self. The unfrowsy room, and himself +fresh from his own fresh sheets. His mother's eyes with that clean-sky +quality in them. The affectionate wrangling of those two decent voices +from the dining room. Books! His books, that he loved. His tastiest +dream of mother, with immensity and grandeur in her eyes, listening +from a privileged first-row bench to the supreme quality of his mercy. +_Judge_--Turkletaub! + +But tastily, too, and undeniably against his lips, throughout these +conjurings, lay the last crushy kiss of Josie Drew. That swany arch to +her neck as he bent it back. He had kissed her there. Countlessly. + +He tried to dwell on his aversions for her. She had once used an +expletive in his presence that had sickened him, and, noting its effect, +she had not reiterated. The unfastidious brunette roots to her light +hair. That sink with the grease-rimmed old beer! But then: her eyes +where the brows slid down to make them heavy-lidded. That bit of blue +vein in the crotch of her elbow. That swany arch. + +Back somewhere, as the tidy morning wore in, the tranced, the maddening +repetition began to tick itself through: + +"Six o'clock. Six o'clock." + +He rushed out into the hallway and across to the parlor pinkly lit with +velours, even through the rainy day, and so inflexibly calm. Sara might +have measured the distance between the chairs, so regimental they +stood. The pink-velour curlicue divan with the two pink, gold-tasseled +cushions, carelessly exact. The onyx-topped table with the pink-velour +drape, also gold-tasseled. The pair of equidistant and immaculate china +cuspidors, rose-wreathed. The smell of Sunday. + +"Nicky, that you?" + +It was his mother, from the dining room. + +"Yes, mother," and sauntered in. + +There were two women sitting at the round table, shelling nuts. One of +them his mother, the other Miss Ada Berkowitz, who jumped up, spilling +hulls. + +Nicholas, in the velveteen dressing gown with the collar turned up, +started to back out, Mrs. Turkletaub spoiling that. + +"You can come in, Nicky. Ada'll excuse you. I guess she's seen a man in +his dressing gown before; the magazine advertisements are full with +them in worse and in less. And on Sunday with a headache from all week +working so hard, a girl can forgive. He shouldn't think with his head so +much, I always tell him, Ada." + +"I didn't know he was here," said Miss Berkowitz, already thinking in +terms of what she might have worn. + +"I telephoned over for Ada, Nicky. They got an automobile and she don't +need to get her feet wet to come over to a lonesome old woman on a +rainy Sunday, to spend the day and learn me how to make those delicious +stuffed dates like she fixed for her mother's card party last week. Draw +up a chair, Nicky, and help." + +She was casual, she was matter-of-fact, she was bent on the business +of nut cracking. They crashed softly, never so much as bruised by her +carefully even pressure. + +"Thanks," said Nicholas, and sat down, not caring to, but with good +enough grace. He wanted his coat, somehow, and fell to strumming the +table top. + +"Don't, Nicky; you make me nervous." + +"Here," said Miss Berkowitz, and gave him a cracker and a handful of +nuts. The little crashings resumed. + +Ada had very fair skin against dark hair, slightly too inclined to curl. +There was quite a creamy depth to her--a wee pinch could raise a bruise. +The kind of whiteness hers that challenged the string of tiny Oriental +pearls she wore at her throat. Her healthily pink cheeks and her little +round bosom were plump, and across the back of each of her hands were +four dimples that flashed in and out as she bore down on the cracker. +She was as clear as a mountain stream. + +"A trifle too plumpy," he thought, but just the same wished he had wet +his military brushes. + +"Ada has just been telling me, Nicky, about her ambition to be an +interior decorator for the insides of houses. I think it is grand +the way some girls that are used to the best of everything prepare +themselves for, God forbid, they should ever have to make their own +livings. I give them credit for it. Tell Nicky, Ada, about the drawing +you did last week that your teacher showed to the class." + +"Oh," said Ada, blushing softly, "Mr. Turkletaub isn't interested in +that." + +"Yes, I am," said Nicholas, politely, eating one of the meats. + +"You mean the Tudor dining room--" + +No, no! You know, the blue-and-white one you said you liked best of +all." + +"It was a nursery," began Ada, softly. "Just one of those blue-and-white +darlingnesses for somebody's little darling." + +"For somebody's little darling," repeated Mrs. Turkletaub, silently. She +had the habit, when moved, of mouthing people's words after them. + +"My idea was--Oh, it's so silly to be telling it again, Mrs. +Turkletaub!" + +"Silly! I think it's grand that a girl brought up to the best should +want to make something of herself. Don't you, Nick?" + +"H-m-m!" + +"Well, my little idea was white walls with little Delft-blue borders +of waddling duckies; white dotted Swiss curtains in the brace of sunny +southern-exposure windows, with little Delft-blue borders of more +waddling duckies; and dear little nursery rhymes painted in blue on the +headboard to keep baby's dreams sweet." + +"--baby's dreams sweet! I ask you, is that cute, Nick? Baby's dreams she +even interior decorates." + +"My--instructor liked that idea, too. He gave me 'A' on the drawing." + +"He should have given you the whole alphabet. And tell him about the +chairs, Ada. Such originality." + +"Oh, Mrs. Turkletaub, that was just a--a little--idea--" + +"The modesty of her! Believe me, if it was mine, I'd call it a big one. +Tell him." + +"Mummie and daddie chairs I call them." + +Sara (mouthing): "Mummie and daddie--" + +"Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so when +mummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby good +night--Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and one +for daddie." Little crash. + +"I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical? 'So when mummie and daddie run up +to kiss baby good night.' I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all the +evening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your little +twin brother were two and a half years old, one night I--" + +"Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?" + +"Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me. She didn't know you were twins. +A red one I had, as red as my black one is black. You see my Nicky how +black and mad-looking he is even when he's glad; well, just so--" + +"Now, mother!" + +"Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby. You +didn't know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I left +lying out there. Nicky--she didn't know--" + +She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhood +came out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her features +like lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son had +learned how to dread for her and spare her. + +"Now, mother!" said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair, +holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand. "Come, one +rainy Sunday is enough. Let's not have an indoor as well as an outdoor +storm. Come along. Didn't I hear Miss Ada play the piano one evening +over at Leo's? Up-see-la! Who said you weren't my favorite dancing +partner?" and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor. "Come, +some music!" + +There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. +Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano +to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging +pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for +ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormous +upholstered hips. + +The "Turkish Patrol" was what Ada played, and then, "Who Is Sylvia?" and +sang it, as frailly as a bird. + +At one o'clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roast +chicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to be +gouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs. +Turkletaub's called "_matzos klose_," balls of unleavened bread, +sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot butter bath and light-brown +onions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice the +depth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups. More cracking +of nuts, interspersed with raisins. Ada, cunningly enveloped in a +much-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away. + +Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain the +unrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to the +rhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led to +the kitchen. Comings--and--goings--his mother who rustled so cleanly of +starch--Ada--clear--yes, that was it--clear as a mountain stream. Their +small laughters--comings--goings-- + +It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp already +lighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and an +Afghan across his knees. It was snug there in the rosied dusk. The women +were in the kitchen yet, or was it again? Again, he supposed, looking +at his watch. He had slept three hours. Presently he rose and sauntered +out. There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen, +his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at the +snowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cube +of Swiss cheese. + +"Sleepyhead," she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble. + +And his mother: "That was a good rest for you, son? You feel better?" + +"Immense," he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands down +into his pockets in a yawny well-being. + +"I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me. There's +four besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie's. I just wish you +would look at Ada. For a girl that don't have to turn her hand at home, +with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handy +she is with everything she touches." + +The litter of Sunday-night supper, awaiting its transfer to the +dining-room table, lay spread in the faithful geometry of the cold, +hebdomadal repast. A platter of ruddy sliced tongue; one of noonday +remnants of cold chicken; ovals of liverwurst; a mound of potato salad +crisscrossed with strips of pimento; a china basket of the stuffed +dates, all kissed with sugar; half of an enormously thick cheese cake; +two uncovered apple pies; a stack of delicious raisin-stuffed curlicues, +known as _"schneken,"_ pickles with a fern of dill across them (Ada's +touch, the dill); a dish of stuffed eggs with a toothpick stuck in each +half (also Ada's touch, the toothpicks). + +She moved rather pussily, he thought, sometimes her fair cheeks +quivering slightly to the vibration of her walk, as if they had jelled. +And, too, there was something rather snug and plump in the way her +little hands with the eight dimples moved about things, laying the slabs +of Swiss cheese, unstacking cups. + +"No, only seven cups, Ada. Nicky--ain't going to be home to supper." + +"Oh," she said, "excuse me! I--I--thought--silly--" and looked up at him +to deny that it mattered. + +"Isn't that what you said this morning, Nicky?" Poor Sara, she almost +failed herself then because her voice ended in quite a dry click in her +throat. + +He stood watching the resumed unstacking of the cups, each with its +crisp little grate against its neighbor. + +"One," said Ada, "two-three-four-five-six--seven!" + +He looked very long and lean and his darkly nervous self, except that he +dilly-dallied on his heels like a much-too-tall boy not wanting to look +foolish. + +"If Miss Ada will provide another cup and saucer, I think I'll stay +home." + +"As you will," said Sara, disappearing into the dining room with the +mound of salad and the basket of sugar-kissed dates. + +She put them down rather hastily when she got there, because, sillily +enough, she thought, for the merest instant, she was going to faint. + + * * * * * + +The week that Judge Turkletaub tried his first case in Court of General +Sessions--a murder case, toward which his criminal-law predilection +seemed so inevitably to lead him, his third child, a little daughter +with lovely creamy skin against slightly too curly hair, was lying, just +two days old, in a blue-and-white nursery with an absurd border of blue +ducks waddling across the wallpaper. + +Ada, therefore, was not present at this inaugural occasion of his first +trial. But each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row bench +of the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with her +son's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, her +bosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnet +blinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's +new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes +must look upon. + +Once, during the recital of the defendant, Sara almost seemed to bleed +her tears, so poignantly terrible they came, scorching her eyes of a +pain too exquisite to be analyzed, yet too excruciating to be endured. + + +III + +Venture back, will you, to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when on +the snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color of +blood, and one woman, who could not keep her eyes ahead, moaned as +she fled, prayed, and even screamed to return to her dead in the +bullet-riddled horse trough. + +Toward the noon of that day, a gray one that smelled charred, a fugitive +group from a distant village that was still burning faltered, as it too +fled toward the horizon, in the blackened village of Vodna, because a +litter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen, and a +mother, whose baby had perished at her breast, would bury her dead. + +Huddled beside the horse trough, over a poor fire she had kindled of +charred wood, Hanscha, the midwife (Hanscha, the drunk, they called her, +fascinatedly, in the Pale of generations of sober women), spied Mosher's +flung coat and reached for it eagerly, with an eye to tearing it into +strips to wrap her tortured feet. + +A child stirred as she snatched it, wailing lightly, and the instinct of +her calling, the predominant motive, Hanscha with her fumy breath warmed +it closer to life and trod the one hundred and eight miles to the port +with it strapped to her back like a pack. + +Thus it was that Schmulka, the red twin, came to America and for the +first fourteen years of his life slept on a sour pallet in a sour +tenement he shared with Hanscha, who with filthy hands brought children +into the filthy slums. + +Jason, she called him, because that was the name of the ship that +carried them over. A rolling tub that had been horrible with the cries +of cattle and seasickness. + +At fourteen he was fierce and rebellious and down on the Juvenile Court +records for truancy, petty trafficking in burned-out opium, vandalism, +and gang vagrancy. + +In Hanscha's sober hours he was her despair, and she could be horrible +in her anger, once the court reprimanding her and threatening to take +Jason from her because of welts found on his back. + +It was in her cups that she was proud of him, and so it behooved Jason +to drink her down to her pallet, which he could, easily. + +He was handsome. His red hair had darkened to the same bronze of the +samovar and he was straight as the drop of an apple from the branch. He +was reckless. Could turn a pretty penny easily, even dangerously, and +spend it with a flip for a pushcart bauble. + +Once he brought home a plaster-of-Paris Venus--the Melos one with the +beautiful arch to her torso of a bow that instant after the arrow has +flown. Hanscha cuffed him for the expenditure, but secretly her old +heart, which since childhood had subjected her to strange, rather +epileptical, sinking spells, and had induced the drinking, warmed her +with pride in his choice. + +Hanscha, with her veiny nose and the dreadful single hair growing out of +a mole on her chin, was not without her erudition. She had read for the +midwifery, and back in the old days could recite the bones in the body. + +She let the boy read nights, sometimes even to dropping another coin +into the gas meter. Some of the books were the lewd penny ones of the +Bowery bookstands, old medical treatises, too, purchased three for a +quarter and none too nice reading for the growing boy. But there he had +also found a _Les Miserables_ and _The Confessions of St. Augustine_, +which last, if he had known it, was a rare edition, but destined for the +ash pit. + +Once he read Hanscha a bit of poetry out of a furiously stained old +volume of verse, so fragrantly beautiful, to him, this bit, that it +wound around him like incense, the perfume of it going deeply and +stinging his eyes to tears: + + Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting! + The soul that rises with us, our life's star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar. + Not in entire forgetfulness, + And not in utter nakedness, + But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home: + Heaven lies about us in our infancy. + Shades of the prison house begin to close + Upon the growing boy, + But he beholds the light, and whence it flows + He sees it in his joy; + The youth who daily farther, from the East + Must travel, still is Nature's priest, + And by the vision splendid + Is on his way attended; + At length the man perceives it die away, + And fade into the light of common day. + +But Hanscha was drunk and threw some coffee-sopped bread at him, and so +his foray into poetry ended in the slops of disgust. + +A Miss Manners, a society social worker who taught poverty +sweet forbearance every Tuesday from four until six, wore a +forty-eight-diamond bar pin on her under bodice (on Tuesday from +four until six), and whose gray-suède slippers were ever so slightly +blackened from the tripping trip from front door to motor and back, took +him up, as the saying is, and for two weeks Jason disported himself on +the shorn lawns of the Manners summer place at Great Neck, where the +surf creamed at the edge of the terrace and the smell of the sea set +something beating against his spirit as if it had a thousand imprisoned +wings. + +There he developed quite a flair for the law books in Judge Manners's +laddered library. Miss Manners found him there, reading, on stomach and +elbows, his heels waving in the air. + +Judge Manners talked with him and discovered a legal turn of mind, and +there followed some veranda talk of educating and removing him from his +environment. But that very afternoon Jason did a horrid thing. It was no +more than he had seen about him all his life. Not as much. He kissed the +little pig-tailed daughter of the laundress and pursued her as she ran +shrieking to her mother's apron. That was all, but his defiant head and +the laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did for +him. + +At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made a +spitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, he +was shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easier +in the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. The piece of its +arch which he could see from his window was even beautiful, a curve of a +stone into some beyond. + +That night he fitted down into the mold his body had worn on the pallet, +sighing out satisfaction. + +Environment had won him back. + +On the other hand, in one of those red star-spangled passions of +rebellion against his fetid days, he blindly cut Hanscha with the edge +of a book which struck against her brow as he hurled it. She had been +drunk and had asked of him, at sixteen, because of the handsomeness +that women would easily love in him, to cadet the neighborhood of Grand +Street, using her tenement as his refuge of vice and herself as sharer +of spoils. + +The corner of the book cut deeply and pride in her terror of him came +out redly in her bloodshot eyes. + +In the short half term of his high-school training he had already forged +ahead of his class when he attained the maturity of working papers. He +was plunging eagerly--brilliantly, in fact--into a rapid translation +of the _Iliad_, fired from the very first line by the epic of the +hexametered anger of Achilles, and stubbornly he held out against the +working papers. + +But to Hanscha they came with the inevitability of a summons rather +than an alternative, and so for a year or two he brought home rather +precocious wages from his speed in a canning factory. Then he stoked his +way to Sydney and back, returning fiery with new and terrible oaths. + +One night Hanscha died. He found her crumpled up in the huddle of her +skirts as if she had dropped in her tracks, which she had, in one of the +epileptic heart strictures. + +It was hardly a grief to him. He had seen red with passion at her +atrociousness too often, and, somehow, everything that she stood for had +been part of the ache in him. + +Yet it is doubtful if, released of her, he found better pasture. Bigger +pastures, it is true, in what might be called an upper stratum of the +lower East Side, although at no time was he ever to become party to any +of its underground system of crime. + +Inevitably, the challenge of his personality cleared the way for him. At +nineteen he had won and lost the small fortune of thirty-three hundred +dollars at a third-class gambling resort where he came in time to be +croupier. + +He dressed flashily, wore soft collars, was constantly swapping sporty +scarfpins for sportier ones, and was inevitably the center, seldom part, +of a group. + +Then one evening at Cooper Union, which stands at the head of the +Bowery, he enrolled for an evening course in law, but never entered the +place again. + +Because the next night, in a Fourteenth Street cabaret with adjacent +gambling rooms, he met one who called herself Winnie Ross, the beginning +of a heart-sickening end. + +There is so little about her to relate. She was the color of cloyed +honey when the sugar granules begin to show through. Pale, pimply in a +fashion the powder could cover up, the sag of her facial muscles showed +plainly through, as if weary of doling out to the years their hush +money, and she was quite obviously down at the heels. Literally so, +because when she took them off, her shoes lopped to the sides and could +not stand for tipsiness. + +She was Jason's first woman. She exhaled a perfume, cheap, tickling, +chewed some advertised tablets that scented her kisses, and her throat, +when she threw up her head, had an arch and flex to it that were +mysteriously graceful. + +Life had been swift and sheer with Winnie. She was very tired and, +paradoxically enough, it gave her one of her last remaining charms. Her +eyelids were freighted with weariness, were waxy white of it, and they +could flutter to her cheeks, like white butterflies against white, and +lay shadows there that maddened Jason. + +She called him Red, although all that remained now were the lights +through his browning hair, almost like the flashings of a lantern down a +railroad track. + +She pronounced it with a slight trilling of the R, and if it was left in +her of half a hundred loves to stir on this swift descent of her life +line, she did over Jason. Partly because he was his winged-Hermes self, +and partly because--because--it was difficult for her rather fagged +brain to rummage back. + +Thus the rest may be told: + +Entering her rooms one morning, a pair of furiously garish ones over a +musical-instrument store on the Bowery, he threw himself full length on +the red-cotton divan, arms locked under his always angry-looking head, +and watching her, through low lids, trail about the room at the business +of preparing him a surlily demanded cup of coffee. Her none too +immaculate pink robe trailed a cotton-lace tail irritatingly about her +heels, which slip-slopped as she walked, her stockings, without benefit +of support, twisting about her ankles. + +She was barometer for his moods, which were elemental, and had learned +to tremble with a queer exaltation of fear before them. + +"My Red-boy blue to-day," she said, stooping as she passed and wanting +to kiss him. + +He let his lids drop and would have none of her. They were curiously +blue, she thought, as if of unutterable fatigue, and then quickly +appraised that his luck was still letting him in for the walloping now +of two weeks' duration. His diamond-and-opal scarfpin was gone, and the +gold cuff links replaced with mother-of-pearl. + +She could be violently bitter about money, and when the flame of his +personality was not there to be reckoned with, ten times a day she +ejected him, with a venom that was a psychosis, out of her further +toleration. Not so far gone was Winnie but that she could count on the +twist of her body and the arch of her throat as revenue getters. + +At first Jason had been lavish, almost with a smack of some of the old +days she had known, spending with the easy prodigality of the gambler in +luck. There was a near-seal coat from him in her cupboard of near-silks, +and the flimsy wooden walls of her rooms had been freshly papered in +roses. + +Then his luck had turned, and to top his sparseness with her this new +sullenness which she feared and yet which could be so delicious to +her--reminiscently delicious. + +She gave him coffee, and he drank it like medicine out of a thick-lipped +cup painted in roses. + +"My Red-boy blue," she reiterated, trying to ingratiate her arms about +his neck. "Red-boy tells Winnie he won't be back for two whole days and +then brings her surprise party very next day. Red-boy can't stay away +from Winnie." + +"Let go." + +"Red-boy bring Winnie nothing? Not little weeny, weeny nothing?" drawing +a design down his coat sleeve, her mouth bunched. + +Suddenly he jerked her so that the breath jumped in a warm fan of it +against her face. + +"You're the only thing I've got in the world, Win. My luck's gone, but +I've got you. Tell me I've got you." + +He could be equally intense over which street car to take, and she knew +it, but somehow it lessened for her none of the lure of his nervosity, +and with her mind recoiling from his pennilessness her body inclined. + +"Tell me, Winnie, that I have you." + +"You know you have," she said, and smiled, with her head back so that +her face foreshortened. + +"I'm going far for you Winnie. Gambling is too rotten--and too easy. I +want to build bridges for you. Practice law. Corner Wall Street." + +This last clicked. + +"Once," she said, lying back, with her pupils enlarging with the +fleeting memories she was not always alert enough to clutch--"once--once +when I lived around Central Park--a friend of mine--vice-president he +was--Well, never mind, he was my friend--it was nothing for him to turn +over a thousand or two a week for me in Wall Street." + +This exaggeration was gross, but it could feed the flame of his passion +for her like oil. + +"I'll work us up and out of this! I've got better stuff in me. I want to +wind you in pearls--diamonds--sapphires." + +"I had a five-thousand-dollar string once--of star sapphires." + +"Trust me, Winnie. Help me by having confidence in me. I'm glad my luck +is welching. It will be lean at first, until I get on my legs. But +it's not too late yet. Win, if only I have some one to stand by me. To +believe--to fight with and for me! Get me, girl? Believe in me." + +"Sure. Always play strong with the cops, Red. It's the short cut to +ready money. Ready money, Red. That's what gets you there. Don't ask +any girl to hang on if it's shy. That's where I spun myself dirt many a +time, hanging on after it got shy. Ugh! That's what did for me--hanging +on--after it got shy." + +"No. No. You don't understand. For God's sake try to get me, Winnie. +Fight up with me. It'll be lean, starting, but I'll finish strong for +you." + +"Don't lean on me. I'm no wailing wall. What's it to me all your +highfaluting talk. You've been as slab-sided in the pockets as a cat all +month. Don't have to stand it. I've got friends--spenders--" + +There had been atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which +some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as +she spoke she regretted, and reached back for the words, + +"I mean--" + +"I know what you mean," he said, quietly, permitting her to lie back +against him and baring his teeth down at her. + +She actually thought he was smiling. + +"I'm not a dead one by a long shot," she said, kindling with what was +probably her desire to excite him. + +"No?" + +"No. I can still have the best. The very best. If you want to know it, +a political Indian with a car as long as this room, not mentioning any +names, is after me--" + +She still harbored the unfortunate delusion that he was smiling. + +"You thought I was up at Ossining this morning, didn't you?" he asked, +lazily for him. He went there occasionally to visit a friend in the +state prison who had once served him well in a gambling raid and was now +doing a short larceny term there. + +"You said you were--" + +"I _said_ I was. Yes. But I came back unexpectedly, didn't I?" + +"Y-yes, Red?" + +"Look at me!" + +She raised round and ready-to-be-terrified eyes. + +"Murphy was here last night!" he cracked at her, +bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, like so many pistol shots. + +"Why, Red--I--You--" + +"Don't lie. Murphy was here last night! I saw him leave this morning as +I came in." + +It was hazard, pure and simple. Not even a wild one, because all +too easily he could kiss down what would be sure to be only her +half-flattered resentment. + +But there was a cigar stub on the table edge, and certain of her +adjustments of the room when he entered had been rather quick. He could +be like that with her, crazily the slave of who knows what beauty he +found in her; jealous of even an unaccountable inflection in her voice. +There had been unmentionable frenzies of elemental anger between them +and she feared and exulted in these strange poles of his nature. + +"Murphy was here last night!" + +It had happened, in spite of a caution worthy of a finer finesse than +hers, and suddenly she seemed to realize the quality of her fear for him +to whom she was everything and who to her was not all. + +"Don't, Red," she said, all the bars of her pretense down and dodging +from his eyes rather than from any move he made toward her. "Don't, Red. +Don't!" And began to whimper in the unbeautifulness of fear, becoming +strangely smaller as her pallor mounted. + +He was as terrible and as swarthy and as melodramatic as Othello. + +"Don't, Red," she called still again, and it was as if her voice came to +him from across a bog. + +He was standing with one knee dug into the couch, straining her head +back against the wall, his hand on her forehead and the beautiful +flexing arch of her neck rising ... swanlike. + +"Watch out!" There was a raw nail in the wall where a picture had hung. +Murphy had kept knocking it awry and she had removed it. "Watch out, +Red! No-o--no--" + +Through the star-spangled red he glimpsed her once where the hair swept +off her brow, and for the moment, to his blurred craziness, it was as if +through the red her brow was shotted with little scars and pock marks +from glass, and a hot surge of unaccountable sickness fanned the +enormous silence of his rage. + +With or without his knowing it, that raw nail drove slowly home to the +rear of Winnie's left ear, upward toward the cerebellum as he tilted and +tilted, and the convex curve of her neck mounted like a bow stretched +outward. + + * * * * * + +There was little about Jason's trial to entitle it to more than a +back-page paragraph in the dailies. He sat through those days, that +were crisscrossed with prison bars, much like those drowned figures +encountered by deep-sea divers, which, seated upright in death, are +pressed down by the waters of unreality. + +It is doubtful if he spoke a hundred words during the lean, celled weeks +of his waiting, and then with a vacuous sort of apathy and solely upon +advice of counsel. Even when he took the stand, undramatically, his +voice, without even a plating of zest for life, was like some old drum +with the parchment too tired to vibrate. + +Women, however, cried over him and the storm in his eyes and the +curiously downy back of his neck where the last of his youth still +marked him. + +To Sara, from her place in the first row, on those not infrequent +occasions when his eyes fumbled for hers, he seemed to drown in her +gaze--back--somewhere-- + +On a Friday at high noon the jury adjourned, the judge charging it with +a solemnity that rang up to wise old rafters and down into one woman's +thirsty soul like life-giving waters. + +In part he told the twelve men about to file out, "If there has been +anything in my attitude during the recital of the defendant's story, +which has appeared to you to be in the slightest manner prejudiced one +way or another, I charge you to strike such mistaken impressions from +your minds. + +"I have tried honestly to wash the slate of my mind clean to take down +faithfully the aspects of this case which for two weeks has occupied +this jury. + +"If you believe the defendant guilty of the heinous crime in question, +do not falter in your use of the power with which the law has vested +you. + +"If, on the other hand and to the best of your judgment, there has been +in the defendant's life extenuating circumstances, er--a limitation +of environment, home influence, close not the avenues of your fair +judgment. + +"Did this man in the kind of er--a--frenzy he describes and to which +witnesses agree he was subject, deliberately strain back the Ross +woman's head until the nail penetrated? + +"If so, remember the law takes knowledge only of self-defense. + +"On the other hand, ask of yourselves well, did the defendant, in the +frenzy which he claims had hold of him when he committed this unusual +crime, know that the nail was there? + +"_Would Winnie Ross have met her death if the nail had not been there?_ + +"Gentlemen, in the name of the law, solemnly and with a fear of God in +your hearts, I charge you." + +It was a quick verdict. Three hours and forty minutes. + +"Not guilty." + +In the front row there, with the titillating folderols on her bonnet and +her hand at her throat as if she would tear it open for the mystery of +the pain of the heartbeat in it, Sara Turkletaub heard, and, hearing, +swooned into the pit of her pain and her joy. + +Her son, with brackets of fatigue out about his mouth, was standing over +her when she opened her eyes, the look of crucifixion close to the front +of them. + +"Mother," he said, pressing her head close to his robes of state and +holding a throat-straining quiver under his voice, "I--I shouldn't have +let you stay. It was too--much for you." + +It took her a moment for the mist to clear. + +"I--Son--did somebody strike? Hit? Strange. I--I must have been hurt. +Son, am I bleeding?" And looked down, clasping her hand to the bosom of +her decent black-silk basque. + +"Son, I--It was a good verdict, not? I--couldn't have stood it--if--if +it wasn't. I--Something--It was good, not?" + +"Yes, mother, yes." + +"Don't--don't let that boy get away, son. I think--those tempers--I can +help--him. You see, I know--how to handle--Somehow I--" + +"Yes, mother, only now you must sit quietly--" + +"Promise me, son, you won't let him get away without I see him?" + +"Yes, dear, only please now--a moment--quiet--" + +You see, the judge was very tired, and, looking down at the spot where +her hand still lay at her bosom as if to press down a hurt, the red of +her same obsession shook and shook him. + +Somehow it seemed to him, too, that her dear heart was bleeding. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vertical City, by Fannie Hurst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VERTICAL CITY *** + +***** This file should be named 12659-8.txt or 12659-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/6/5/12659/ + +Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: The Vertical City + +Author: Fannie Hurst + +Release Date: June 25, 2004 [EBook #12659] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VERTICAL CITY *** + + + + +Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +By + +FANNIE HURST + + +_Author of_ + +"GASLIGHT SONATAS" + +"HUMORESQUE" + +ETC. + + +1922 + + + + + + +CONTENTS + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + +BACK PAY + +THE VERTICAL CITY + +THE SMUDGE + +GUILTY + +ROULETTE + + + + + +SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY + + +By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agra +to erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone, +so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monoliths +and peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdly +complete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites, +all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home." + +A mausoleum to the hearth. And as true to form as any that ever mourned +the dynastic bones of an Augustus or a Hadrian. + +An Indiana-limestone and Vermont-marble tomb to Hestia. + +All ye who enter here, at sixty dollars a week and up, leave behind the +lingo of the fireside chair, parsley bed, servant problem, cretonne shoe +bags, hose nozzle, striped awnings, attic trunks, bird houses, ice-cream +salt, spare-room matting, bungalow aprons, mayonnaise receipt, fruit +jars, spring painting, summer covers, fall cleaning, winter apples. + +The mosaic tablet of the family hotel is nailed to the room side of each +door and its commandments read something like this: + + One ring: Bell Boy. + + Two rings: Chambermaid. + + Three rings: Valet. + + Under no conditions are guests permitted to use electric irons in + rooms. + + Cooking in rooms not permitted. + + No dogs allowed. + + Management not responsible for loss or theft of jewels. Same can be + deposited for safe-keeping in the safe at office. + + * * * * * + + Note: + + Our famous two-dollar Table d'Hote dinner is served in the Red + Dining Room from six-thirty to eight. Music. + +It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel Bon +Ton boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along the +forefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping. + +The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw to +all that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hote +seances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and the +tarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Ton +hotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight. + +Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place where +the throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's. +Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that were +twenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty's +profile. + +Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer because +she had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had no +place there. + +Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite of +five rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with her +granddaughters. + +Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lack +of length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the new +filet-lace patterns. + +Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton in +seasonal epidemics. + +The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one. + +In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted in +the lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't. + +The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from little +strands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour. + +Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crepe-de-Chine +nightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles. + +Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herself +and three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes that +were scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running up +sand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here and +there with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satin +rosebuds. + +It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern, +but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latz +liked watching her. + +There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to the +heart interest. + +Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shy +of likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman's +inevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly, +to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked them +passive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them between +his own, but that had never been. + +Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. That +very morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment, +strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansive +tree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly and +very badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them. + +Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swift +lance. + +He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and the +dry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads. + +Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but just +as correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short. +Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked. + +Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger. + +On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby, +Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself down +on a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread, +taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, but +he sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers up +into a little chapel. + +"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smile +encompassing the question. + +"If I was any better I couldn't stand it," relishing her smile and his +reply. + +The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _a la_ Bon Ton, +mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _saute_, choice of or both _poulette +emince_ and spring lamb _grignon_, and on through to fresh strawberry +ice cream in fluted paper boxes, _petits fours_, and _demi-tasse_. +Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational +plush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinner +standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slid +surreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand. +Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen +hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a +hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in +bare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, +patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement and +eager to excel in return badinage. + +Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed. + +The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off men. +Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like a +squaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and an +aftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emerged +from the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law. + +"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing his +own kind of cognizance of the scented trail. + +"_Fleur de printemps_," said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis. +"Eight-ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought +the cunning perfection of a sniff. + +"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max Gronauer +when he first started in the produce business in Jersey City and the +only perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not always fresh +killed at that. _Cold storage de printemps_!" + +"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband," said Mrs. Samstag, +tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace handkerchief, itself +guilty of a not inexpensive attar. + +"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort. + +"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs. +Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for a +grandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almost +eight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scented +sigh. + +He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wanting +to seem appropriate. + +"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble." + +"Share," she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of her +eyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma, +Mr. Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My one +consolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto in +life, 'Keep a bold front.'" + +For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleeding +quality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!" + +"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!" + +There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefully +trimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and what +threatened to be a slight depth of flesh across the shoulders had been +carefully massaged of this tendency, fifteen minutes each night and +morning, by her daughter. + +In fact, through the black transparency of her waist Mr. Latz thought +her plumply adorable. + +It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whatever +inroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were little +dark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal, and two unrelenting sacs +that threatened to become pouchy. + +Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag, +in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the look +of one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found daily +in fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting X-ray appointments. + +What ailed Mrs. Samstag was hardly organic. She was the victim of +periodic and raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side of +her head and down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling and +blazing of nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit up +the one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the wee +hours in her chain of hot applications. + +For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with little +jabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes began +to look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up two +fingers with a little pressing movement to her temple. + +"You're a great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting even +Mrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety of +expression. + +"I try to be," she said, his tone inviting out in her a mood of sweet +forbearance. + +"And a great sufferer, too," he said, noting the pressing fingers. + +She colored under this delightful impeachment. + +"I wouldn't wish one of my neuralgia spells to my worst enemy, Mr. +Latz." + +"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine--I wouldn't stop until +I had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two about +those fellows over there. Some of them are wonders." + +Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if by +little pulleys of emotion. + +"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--widow who wants to do +right by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war." + +"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair that +was as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, then +clutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly, "I +just wish I could help." + +"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift brown look from the lace making and +then at it again. + +He laughed, but from nervousness. + +"My little mother was an ailer, too." + +"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it's +ridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such a +sufferer." + +"Same with her and her joints." + +"Why, except for this old neuralgia, I can outdo Alma when it comes +to dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, or +shopping." + +"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw." + +"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of my +friends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice; +then, hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived. +A regular little mother to me in my spells." + +"Nice girl, Alma." + +"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that up +to then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even know +what a headache was. That long drive. That windy hilltop with two men to +keep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how I +care when I care. But, of course, as the saying is, 'time heals.' But +that's how I got my first attack. 'Intenseness' is what the doctors +called it. I'm terribly intense." + +"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not much +use hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, isn't +it?" + +If he had known it, there was something about his intensity of +expression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little Gothic arches +of anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shaved +face, and as he sat on the edge of his chair it seemed that inevitably +the tight sausagelike knees must push their way through mere fabric. + +Ordinarily he presented the slightly bay-windowed, bay-rummed, spatted, +and somewhat jowled well-being of the Wall Street bachelor who is a +musical-comedy first-nighter, can dig the meat out of the lobster claw +whole, takes his beefsteak rare and with two or three condiments, and +wears his elk's tooth dangling from his waistcoat pocket and mounted on +a band of platinum and tiny diamonds. + +Mothers of debutantes were by no means unamiably disposed toward him, +but the debutantes themselves slithered away like slim-flanked minnows. + +It was rumored that one summer at the Royal Palisades Hotel in Atlantic +City he had become engaged to a slim-flanked one from Akron, Ohio. But +on the evening of the first day she had seen him in a bathing suit the +rebellious young girl and a bitterly disappointed and remonstrating +mother had departed on the Buck Eye for "points west." + +There was almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must have +presented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expression +now as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffed +knees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense and creased with +anxiety. + +"That's about the way of it, isn't it?" he said again into the growing +silence. + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag's fingers were rigid at their task of lace making, +the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in her +ears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closing +her ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded. + +"I--When a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll never +be happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once an +affectionate nature, always an affectionate nature." + +"You mean," he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch that +was left of chair--"you mean--me--?" + +The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out on +his scalp. + +"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but you +cannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life." + +At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs. +Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had not +intended. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, more abruptly than he might have, without +the act of that knee to immediately justify. + +She spread the lace out on her lap. + +Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawny +soup was cold to-night," or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson +pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than ever +in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing in +flashes over his body. + +"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could +repeat their incredible feat. + +With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang. + +"Mr. Latz--" + +"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture. + +"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placed +her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with +his kisses. + +"God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would make +it so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, this +getting it said. Carrie, will you?" + +"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--" + +"Loo--" + +"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you read +about." + +"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up to +five years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had was +alive, I never had eyes for a woman or--" + +"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--" + +"Loo." + +"Loo." + +"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that just +walked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback, +Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when she +was helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that little +stooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it up +to her. Y'understand?" + +"Yes--Loo." + +"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years before +she died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me back +eighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than that +it cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped my +little old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat. + +"I had some friends lived in the Grenoble Apartments when you did--the +Adelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels and +she never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to sit +on it. + +"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting, +without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman in +the world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem." + +Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light. + +"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, but +ask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!" + +"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngster +in years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--" + +"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger." + +"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's +death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl +with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think about +it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I +couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any +more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matches +that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was +too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible to +my own age." + +"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that +gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer +to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?" + +"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your +doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent." + +"I'm--that way." + +"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this +hotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But at +heart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, +you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?" + +"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--" + +"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud +of." + +"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I +haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'" + +"I knew it!" + +"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the +house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my +husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off +the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For +what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the +time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold +snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But +with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--" + +"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to +telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the +little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat +enough herself to keep a bird alive." + +"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr. +Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and +naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People +think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and +a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my +seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a +hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just +the same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the +start." + +"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it." + +"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd a +jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you +know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with +conscientiousness." + +"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you just +said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford for +yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Street +alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousand +last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say +yes?" + +"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean on +her so." + +"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her +mother's light." + +"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family." + +"That don't scare me." + +"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and +through. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too +much to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself. +She's precious to me, Louis." + +"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would +want you to feel different?" + +"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children, +she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spend +the night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it, +but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takes +care of me." + +"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a room +for her." + +"Loo!" + +"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascal +Friedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better business +head you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Dayton +the other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a big +new clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out of +their eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical Supply +Company doubled their excess-profit tax last year." + +A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs. +Samstag into a rigid pallor. + +"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their daughters +off. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's best you +know it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I have to +have my little girl with me!" + +He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist. + +"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to me +further what a grand little woman you are!" + +"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis." + +"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing." + +"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is +reserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the +kind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book or +her sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now." + +"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay young +chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they +start than my little mother did when she finished." + +"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit +of it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More +like the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me, +Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my +baby." + +"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be a +fine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to please +her as a father. Carrie, will you have me?" + +"Oh, Louis--Loo!" + +"Carrie, my dear!" + +And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their +betrothal. + + * * * * * + +None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high +on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening +turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room. + +The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery, +ornamental portieres on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant +French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames. + +But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a +green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framed +photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel. +A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and some +circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawn +up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest worn +from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow. + +From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at +her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheek +was a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in the +palm of her hand. + +"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on +the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late." + +There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little +dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness +that her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the +pupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young +Leo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly +the shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his +heart. + +And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind of +timid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, "Mamma, you stayed +down so late," the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere in +her voice. + +"Why--Mr. Latz--and--I--sat and talked." + +An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right +temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain. + +"You're all right, mamma?" + +"Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greenness +relieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold. + +"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," said +her daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand bag +where it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly and +furtively as if for the shape of its contents. + +"Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in her +voice. + +"Come to bed, mamma. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electric +pad." + +Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in the +invariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by the +ribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock. + +"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her." + +The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's groping +along the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner. + +"Mamma--you haven't--?" + +"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma is +very happy about." + +"Mamma, you've broken your promise again." + +"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?" + +"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--" + +"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamed +Heyman." + +"Mamma, I don't understand." + +"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. But +everything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leaf +that everything is going to be happiness in this family." + +"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that." + +"Alma, look at me." + +"Mamma, you--you frighten me." + +"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?" + +"Why, yes, mamma. Very much." + +"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?" + +"You mean--?" + +"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying around +loose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himself +up from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire." + +"Mamma?" + +"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close. +He asked me to-night." + +"What?" + +"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have." + +"Seen what?" + +"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as +grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and +he--asked me to-night." + +There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared +there by a hand. + +"Asked you what?" + +"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I +buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, +steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face." + +"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?" + +"Alma?" + +There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and +Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face +stiff with the clench of her mouth. + +"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!" + +A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that +she slanted backward, holding her throat. + +"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own child +against me!" + +"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody." + +"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when +a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my +thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted +him." + +"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like +that!" + +Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little +scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and +stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she +stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash. + +"Alma!" + +It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her +coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice. + +"You can't marry Louis Latz." + +"Can't I? Watch me." + +"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!" + +"Do what?" + +"That!" + +Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an +agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold. + +"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my +own child!" + +"Oh--mamma--!" + +"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and +Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what +happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want +happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter will +see to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me out +something--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help +myself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor's +orders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out something +terrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his +prescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself." + +She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery +with them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her own +face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother +into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there. + +"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. I +blame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I know +your fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize. +Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you're +cured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, +you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!" + +"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enough +to travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel. +Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through this +last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the +neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--" + +"Mamma, don't talk like that!" + +"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this big +hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--" + +"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves a +sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--" + +"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they +will never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one to +humiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way +he did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help me +God if I ever give in to--it again." + +"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often, +only to break your promise." + +"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't been +tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--" + +"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frightening +part. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That's +what's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it these +last months. Just from--desire." + +Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands. + +"O God! My own child against me!" + +"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet and +good you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together and +win! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you've +been nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of you +and--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment of +our own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take up +stenography or social ser--" + +"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. A +young man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't let +him come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, I +know--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what I +am, and mine, too!" + +Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks. + +"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well." + +"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up +when he--" + +"Mamma, how can you?" + +"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--" + +"No!" + +"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for +mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The +minute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, +fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me +would hold me back? See, Alma?" + +"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--" + +"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. +Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak +woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you +away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!" + +"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you." + +"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get +rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it +himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'" + +"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!" + +"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a little +while that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a good +man! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night he +wants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!" + +"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so little +as I do--now." + +"You've said that before--and before." + +"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a new +life. I know it. I'm cured!" + +"Mamma, if I thought you meant it." + +"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case of +neuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad. +I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over." + +"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right." + +"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'd +rather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live to +learn such a--thing about me." + +"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hope +you're cured now, but--" + +"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! You +don't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until I +kill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to Louis +Latz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don't +tell--don't tell!" + +"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you. +Never." + +"Say it again." + +"Never." + +"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. But +it's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured." + +There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke of +her tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling she +could no longer control racing through her like a chill. + +"Oh--how--I hope so!" + +"I know so." + +"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year." + +"No! No!" + +"A few months." + +"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma's +cured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep my +promises to you! Cured, Alma, cured." + +And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to +herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to +her mother that night was the long one of felicitation. + +And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of woman +to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad +under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, +these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night. + +"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that +marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from +his mother." + +"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again." + +"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideas +of a good man." + +"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever." + +"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn +now, Alma, to be care free like other girls." + +"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me." + +"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'" + +"I'll never leave you!" + +"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won't +stand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm not +alone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chance +to--pop--" + +"Shh--sh--h--h!" + +"Don't tremble so, darling. Mamma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer last +night when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for the +Convalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white, +because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag." + +"Oh, mamma!" + +"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyes +off you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the same +thing about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have to +hold him off any more." + +"I'll never leave you. Never!" + +Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in the +dark with the secret of her blushes. + +Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raging +head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with +cruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises that +can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator +depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A +train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak +which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By +three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and +her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay +of he cheek. + +Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest, +floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was very +drowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back as +she said: + +"Mamma, you all right?" + +Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathing +resumed its light cadence. + +Then at four o'clock the kind of nervousness that Mrs. Samstag had +learned to fear began to roll over her in waves, locking her throat and +curling her toes and fingers and her tongue up dry against the roof of +her mouth. + +She must concentrate now--must steer her mind away from the craving! + +Now then: West End Avenue. Louis liked the apartments there. Luxurious. +Quiet. Residential. Circassian walnut or mahogany dining room? Alma +should decide. A baby-grand piano. Later to be Alma's engagement gift +from "mamma and--papa." No, "mamma and Louis." Better so. + +How her neck and her shoulder blade and now her elbow were flaming with +the pain. She cried a little, quite silently, and tried a poor, futile +scheme for easing her head in the crotch of her elbow. + +Now then: She must knit Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater stitch +would do. Married in a traveling suit. One of those smart dark-blue +twills like Mrs. Gronauer, junior's. Topcoat--sable. Louis' hair +thinning. Tonic. O God! let me sleep! Please, God! The wheeze rising in +her closed throat. That little threatening desire that must not shape +itself! It darted with the hither and thither of a bee bumbling against +a garden wall. No! No! Ugh! the vast chills of nervousness. The flaming, +the craving chills of desire! + +Just this last giving-in. This one. To be rested and fresh for him +to-morrow. Then never again. The little beaded hand bag. O God! help me! +That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousand +thousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated. +They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in her +head; the crackle of lightning down that arm-- + +"Let me see--Circassian walnut--baby grand--" The pores demanding, +crying--shrieking-- + +It was then that Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink nightdress a +crone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began by +infinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed, +unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning born of +travail. + +It was actually a matter of fifteen minutes, that breathless swing +toward the floor, the mattress rising after her with scarcely a whisper +and her two bare feet landing patly into the pale-blue room slippers, +there beside the bed. + +Then her bag, the beaded one on the end of the divan. The slow, taut +feeling for it and the floor that creaked twice, starting the sweat out +over her. + +It was finally after more tortuous saving of floor creaks and the +interminable opening and closing of a door that Carrie Samstag, the +beaded bag in her hand, found herself face to face with herself in the +mirror of the bathroom medicine chest. + +She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and little +glass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath, +pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firm +perch, as it were. + +There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm. +Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! little +graves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one more +little grave-- + +And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma. +No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin. +Here, this little clean and white area. + +"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!" + +"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No! +No! + +Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gaping +and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her +back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the +conflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in her +ears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain. + +Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hair +spread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. The +remaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could never +find the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of her +sweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faint +perfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out. +Out and in. Toward morning she slept. Actually, sweetly, and deeply, as +if she could never have done with deep draughts of it. + +She awoke to the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into their +apartment for about eight minutes of each forenoon. + +Alma was at the pretty chore of lifting the trays from a hamper of +roses. She placed a shower of them on her mother's coverlet with a kiss, +a deeper and dearer one, somehow, this morning. + +There was a card, and Mrs. Samstag read it and laughed: + + Good morning, Carrie. + Louis. + +They seemed to her, poor dear, these roses, to be pink with the glory of +the coming of the dawn. + + * * * * * + +On the spur of the moment and because the same precipitate decision that +determined Louis Latz's successes in Wall Street determined him here, +they were married the following Thursday in Lakewood, New Jersey, +without even allowing Carrie time for the blue-twill traveling suit. She +wore her brown-velvet, instead, looking quite modish, a sable wrap, gift +of the groom, lending genuine magnificence. + +Alma was there, of course, in a beautiful fox scarf, also gift of the +groom, and locked in a pale kind of tensity that made her seem more +than ever like a little white flower to Leo Friedlander, the sole other +attendant, and who during the ceremony yearned at her with his gaze. But +her eyes were squeezed tight against his, as if to forbid herself the +consciousness that life seemed suddenly so richly sweet to her--oh, so +richly sweet! + + * * * * * + +There was a time during the first months of the married life of Louis +and Carrie Latz when it seemed to Alma, who in the sanctity of her +lovely little ivory bedroom all appointed in rose enamel toilet trifles, +could be prayerful with the peace of it, that the old Carrie, who could +come pale and terrible out of her drugged nights, belonged to some +grimacing and chimeric past. A dead past that had buried its dead and +its hatchet. + +There had been a month at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart of +Virginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right to +the privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips, +and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packing +her off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or a +drive over piny roads, he could still smile and pinch her cheek. + +"You're stingy to me with my wife, Alma," he said to her upon one of +these provocations. "I don't believe she's got a daughter at all, but a +little policeman instead." + +And Alma smiled back, out of the agony of her constant consciousness +that she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so that +her fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit down +her sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, but +still politely held in check, bewilderment. + +Once, these first weeks of their marriage, because she saw the dreaded +signal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the little +quivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence for +a day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from the +hotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of her +mother's darkened room and was adamant. + +"It won't hurt if I tiptoe in and sit with her," he pleaded. + +"No, Louis. No one knows how to get her through these spells like I do. +The least excitement will only prolong her pain." + +He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to his +resentment that was bantam and just a little fighty. + +That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep and +watching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a stricken +dog in them. + +"Alma," she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over. +One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?" + +Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. A +lamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, but +at rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep: + +"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma. +Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma." + +And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. The +happily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of the +well-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special body +that was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery with +mother-of-pearl caparisons. The fourteen-room apartment on West End +Avenue with four baths, drawing-room of pink-brocaded walls, and +Carrie's Roman bathroom that was precisely as large as her old hotel +sitting room, with two full-length wall mirrors, a dressing table +canopied in white lace over white satin, and the marble bath itself, two +steps down and with rubber curtains that swished after. + +There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things with +what must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, would +fall asleep almost directly after dinner, her head back against her +husband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up with +matching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings. +Shopping for a strip of pantry linoleum that was just the desired slate +color. Calculating with electricians over the plugs for floor lamps. +Herself edging pantry shelves in cotton lace. + +Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray, +back against his shoulder, and with his newspapers, Wall Street journals +and the comic weeklies which he liked to read, would sit an entire +evening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, his pipe smoke +carefully directed away from her face. + +Weeks and weeks of this, and already Louis Latz's trousers were a little +out of crease, and Mrs. Latz, after eight o'clock and under cover of a +very fluffy and very expensive negligee, would unhook her stays. + +Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after the +second month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday night +musical-comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter to +remain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, as +many as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband's +shoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with him +in the great white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed. + +And Alma. Almost she tiptoed through these months. Not that her +scorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis' mind ever +diminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see the +displeasure mount in his face. + +If she entered in on a tete-a-tete, as she did once, when by chance she +had sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of a +room through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off that +night to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed. + +Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip and +week-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious. + +"Want to join us, Alma?" + +"Oh--yes--thank you, Louis." + +"But I thought you and Leo were--" + +"No, no. I'd rather go with you and mamma, Louis." + +Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation, +politely uttered, had said so plainly, "Are we two never to be alone, +your mother and I?" + +Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all the +delayed fervor of first youth. + +There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of her +mother that made Alma want to cry. + +He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but at +the wonder that she was his. + +"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie," he told her +once in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little mother +there couldn't ever be another--and now you!" + +At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up, +her eyes dewy. + +"And I felt that way about one good husband," she said, "and now I see +there could be two." + +Alma tiptoed out. + +The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his two +evenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan car +which Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauve +drawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in their +friends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving the +young people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight. +Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back, +and the curving voice of innuendo. + +"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!" + +"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feign +that she did not understand. + +"Loo, don't tease," said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes as +if to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass. + +But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on the +edge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine, +pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke cold +drubbings with Turkish towels. + +And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelings +for nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to the +patent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like a +polished floor. + +In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man, +too." He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturing +business--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his advent +from high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almost +doubled its volume of business. + +The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even to +himself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitality +to match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her may +have heightened his sense of prowess. + +His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid loveliness. "White +honeysuckle," he called her, and the names of all the beautiful white +flowers he knew. And then one night, to the rattle of poker chips from +the remote dining room, he jerked her to him without preamble, kissing +her mouth down tightly against her teeth. + +"My sweetheart! My little white carnation sweetheart! I won't be held +off any longer. I'm going to carry you away for my little moonflower +wife." + +She sprang back prettier than he had ever seen her in the dishevelment +from where his embrace had dragged at her hair. + +"You mustn't," she cried, but there was enough of the conquering male in +him to read easily into this a mere plating over her desire. + +"You can't hold me at arm's length any longer. You've maddened me for +months. I love you. You love me. You do. You do," and crushed her to +him, but this time his pain and his surprise genuine as she sprang back, +quivering. + +"No, I tell you. No! No! No!" and sat down trembling. + +"Why, Alma!" And he sat down, too, rather palely, at the remote end of +the divan. + +"You--I--mustn't!" she said, frantic to keep her lips from twisting, her +little lacy fribble of a handkerchief a mere string from winding. + +"Mustn't what?" + +"Mustn't," was all she could repeat and not weep her words. + +"Won't--I--do?" + +"It's--mamma." + +"What?" + +"Her." + +"Her what, my little white buttonhole carnation?" + +"You see--I--She's all alone." + +"You adorable, she's got a brand-new husky husband." + +"No--you don't--understand." + +Then, on a thunderclap of inspiration, hitting his knee: + +"I have it. Mamma-baby! That's it. My girlie is a cry-baby, mamma-baby!" +And made to slide along the divan toward her, but up flew her two small +hands, like fans. + +"No," she said, with the little bang back in her voice which steadied +him again. "I mustn't! You see, we're so close. Sometimes it's more as +if I were the mother and she my little girl." + +"Alma, that's beautiful, but it's silly, too. But tell me first of all, +mamma-baby, that you do care. Tell me that first, dearest, and then we +can talk." + +The kerchief was all screwed up now, so tightly that it could stiffly +unwind of itself. + +"She's not well, Leo. That terrible neuralgia--that's why she needs me +so." + +"Nonsense! She hasn't had a spell for weeks. That's Louis' great brag, +that he's curing her. Oh, Alma, Alma, that's not a reason; that's an +excuse!" + +"Leo--you don't understand." + +"I'm afraid I--don't," he said, looking at her with a sudden intensity +that startled her with a quick suspicion of his suspicions, but then he +smiled. + +"Alma!" he said, "Alma!" + +Misery made her dumb. + +"Why, don't you know, dear, that your mother is better able to take care +of herself than you are? She's bigger and stronger. You--you're a little +white flower, that I want to wear on my heart." + +"Leo--give me time. Let me think." + +"A thousand thinks, Alma, but I love you. I love you and want so +terribly for you to love me back." + +"I--do." + +"Then tell me with kisses." + +Again she pressed him to arm's length. + +"Please, Leo! Not yet. Let me think. Just one day. To-morrow." + +"No, no! Now!" + +"To-morrow." + +"When?" + +"Evening." + +"No, morning." + +"All right, Leo--to-morrow morning--" + +"I'll sit up all night and count every second in every minute and every +minute in every hour." + +She put up her soft little fingers to his lips. + +"Dear boy," she said. + +And then they kissed, and after a little swoon to his nearness she +struggled like a caught bird and a guilty one. + +"Please go, Leo," she said. "Leave me alone--" + +"Little mamma-baby sweetheart," he said. "I'll build you a nest right +next to hers. Good night, little white flower. I'll be waiting, and +remember, counting every second of every minute and every minute of +every hour." + +For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pink +divan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer for +the prayers that she sent up. + + * * * * * + +At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, and +with such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet, +Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire horses, sprang out of +sleep. + +It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white-tiled +Roman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneath +her eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-length +mirrors--snickering. + +There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right forearm. + + * * * * * + +Sometimes in the weeks that followed a sense of the miracle of what was +happening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear. + +Louis did not know. + +That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes. +Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent, +were taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one who +had worked such wonders on his mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs, +reassuringly foremost in his mind. + +But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four-hour +sieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned, with a +male's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and, +with no great understanding of pain, to condone. + +And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there was +something pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal for +his well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace his +shoes and even shine them--would have, in fact, except for his fierce +catching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching as +he kissed her. + +Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and, +kissing them piece by piece, put them back again, and he found her so, +and they cried together, he of happiness. + +In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to grow +but slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him rather +fiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almost +rudely, but, at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from the +darkened room, backed out shamefacedly, and apologized next day in the +conciliatory language of a tiny wrist watch. + +But a break came, as she knew and feared it must. + +One evening during one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie had +not appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal was +almost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her mother's place +opposite her stepfather. + +He had reached the stage when that little unconscious usurpation in +itself could annoy him. + +"How's your mother?" he asked, dourly for him. + +"She's asleep." + +"Funny. This is the third attack this month, and each time it lasts +longer. Confound that neuralgia!" + +"She's easier now." + +He pushed back his plate. + +"Then I'll go in and sit with her while she sleeps." + +She, who was so fastidiously dainty of manner, half rose, spilling her +soup. + +"No," she said, "you mustn't! Not now!" And sat down again hurriedly, +wanting not to appear perturbed. + +A curious thing happened then to Louis. His lower lip came pursing +out like a little shelf and a hitherto unsuspected look of pigginess +fattened over his rather plump face. + +"You quit butting into me and my wife's affairs, you, or get the hell +out of here," he said, without raising his voice or his manner. + +She placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart. + +"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!" + +"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you! +There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between me +and her or--get out." + +"I--She's sick." + +"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knows +why, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind. +Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're married +to keep us apart. Shame!" + +"I--She--" + +"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you out +long ago. Haven't you got any pride?" + +"I have. I have," she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up there +and swooned her humiliation. + +"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are! +Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is it +you want?" + +"Louis--I don't--" + +"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don't +come to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever is +eating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that ever +lived. Shame! Shame!" + +"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony, +"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous trying +to pretend to you that she's not suffering when she is. That's +all, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why, +Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn't +she dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been the +best friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis." + +He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon going +into the room. + +"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped open +his newspaper for a lonely evening. + +The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as the +dreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutish +and more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets. + +The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even back +in the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making more +and more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs. + +Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeur +of collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage. + +"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's hearing, of course. "Who's +running this shebang, anyway?" + +Again, after Alma had guarded her well for days, scarcely leaving her +side, Carrie laughed sardonically up into her daughter's face, her eyes +as glassy and without swimming fluid as a doll's. + +"I get it! But wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma's +horror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hour +the sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on her face. + +One night in what had become the horrible sanctity of that +bedchamber--But let this sum it up. When Alma was nineteen years old a +little colony of gray hairs was creeping in on each temple. + +And then one day, after a long period of quiet, when Carrie had lavished +her really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, +spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery, +somehow to express her grateful adoration of her, paying her husband the +secret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, +Alma, returning from a trip taken reluctantly and at her mother's +bidding down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modish +black-lace hat and the sable coat missing from the closet. + +It was early afternoon, sunlit and pleasantly cold. + +The first rush of panic and the impulse to dash after stayed, she forced +herself down into a chair, striving with the utmost difficulty for +coherence of procedure. + +Where in the half hour of her absence had her mother gone? Matinee? +Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen, +neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With a +hand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Car +and chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more than +one occasion, had lately been obliged to remind her mother that she +was becoming careless of the old pointedly rosy hands. Manicurist? She +telephoned the Bon Ton Beauty Parlors. No. Where? O God! Where? Which +way to begin? That was what troubled her most. To start right so as not +to lose a precious second. + +Suddenly, and for no particular reason, Alma began a hurried search +through her mother's dresser drawers of lovely personal appointments. +Turning over whole mounds of fresh white gloves, delving into nests of +sheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while she +stood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed about +her throat. + +"Please, God, where?" + +A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from the +sheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of the +gold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read. + +It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equipped +narcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medically +administer to the pathological cravings of addicts. + +Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and, +with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run. + +At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat and +the black-lace hat, coming toward her. + +Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought better +of it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able to +slow down to a casual walk. + +Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of her +attire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy, +stares followed her. + +Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say a +brief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill of +lading. He hesitated, laughed, and went on. + +Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with a sense of being +followed, because constantly as she walked she jerked a step, to look +back, and then again, over her shoulder. + +A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of a +woman without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's basted +waistcoats, evidently for home work in some tenement. She looked and +muttered her un-understanding at whatever Carrie had to say, and +shambled on. + +Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or any +particular recognition. + +"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? I mean Alma." + +"Mamma, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had this +appointment? Come, dear." + +"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis! I was fooling. +I went up to him in the clinic" (snicker) "and I said to him, 'Give you +five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' That's all I said to him, +or any of them. He's in a white carnation, Louis. You can find him by +the--it on his coat lapel. He's coming! Quick--" + +"Mamma, there's no one following. Wait, I'll call a taxi!" + +"No, you don't! He tried to put me in a taxi, too. No, you don't!" + +"Then the Subway, dearest. You'll sit quietly beside Alma in the Subway, +won't you, Carrie? Alma's so tired." + +Suddenly Carrie began to whimper. + +"My baby! Don't let her see me. My baby! What am I good for? I've ruined +her life. My precious sweetheart's life. I hit her once--Louis--in the +mouth. It bled. God won't forgive me for that." + +"Yes, He will, dear, if you come." + +"It bled. Alma, tell him in the white carnation that mamma lost +her doctor's certificate. That's all I said to him. Saw him in the +clinic--new clinic--'give you five dollars for a doctor's certificate.' +He had a white carnation--right lapel. Stingy. Quick!--following!" + +"Sweetheart, please, there's no one coming." + +"Don't tell! Oh, Alma darling--mamma's ruined your life! Her sweetheart +baby's life." + +"No, darling, you haven't. She loves you if you'll come home with her, +dear, to bed, before Louis gets home and--" + +"No. No. He mustn't see. Never this bad--was I, darling? Oh! Oh!" + +"No, mamma--never--this bad. That's why we must hurry." + +"Best man that ever lived. Best baby. Ruin. Ruin." + +"Mamma, you--you're making Alma tremble so that she can scarcely walk if +you drag her so. There's no one following, dear. I won't let anyone harm +you. Please, sweetheart--a taxicab." + +"No. I tell you he's following. He tried to put me into a taxicab. +Followed me. Said he knew me." + +"Then, mamma, listen. Do you hear? Alma wants you to listen. If you +don't--she'll faint. People are looking. Now I want you to turn square +around and look. No, look again. You see now, there's no one following. +Now I want you to cross the street over there to the Subway. Just with +Alma who loves you. There's nobody following. Just with Alma who loves +you." + +And then Carrie, whose lace hat was quite on the back of her head, +relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic of +trucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, her daughter could wind +their way. + +"My baby! My poor Louis!" she kept saying. "The worst I've ever been. +Oh--Alma--Louis--waiting--before we get there--Louis!" + +It was in the tightest tangle of the crossing and apparently on this +conjuring of her husband that Carrie jerked suddenly free of Alma's +frailer hold. + +"No--no--not home--now. Him. Alma!" And darted back against the breast +of the down side of the traffic. + +There was scarcely more than the quick rotation of her arm around with +the spoke of a truck wheel, so quickly she went down. + +It was almost a miracle, her kind of death, because out of all that jam +of tonnage she carried only one bruise, a faint one, near the brow. + +And the wonder was that Louis Latz, in his grief, was so proud. + +"To think," he kept saying over and over again and unabashed at the way +his face twisted--"to think they should have happened to me. Two such +women in one lifetime as my little mother--and her. Fat little old Louis +to have had those two. Why, just the memory of my Carrie--is almost +enough. To think old me should have a memory like that--it is almost +enough--isn't it, Alma?" + +She kissed his hand. + +That very same, that dreadful night, almost without her knowing it, +her throat-tearing sobs broke loose, her face to the waistcoat of Leo +Friedlander. + +He held her close--very, very close. "Why, sweetheart," he said, "I +could cut out my heart to help you! Why, sweetheart! Shh-h-h! Remember +what Louis says. Just the beautiful memory--of--her--is--wonderful--" + +"Just--the b-beautiful--memory--you'll always have it, too--of her--my +mamma--won't you, Leo? Won't you?" + +"Always," he said when the tight grip in his throat had eased enough. + +"Say--it again--Leo." + +"Always." + +She could not know how dear she became to him then, because not ten +minutes before, from the very lapel against which her cheek lay pressed, +he had unpinned a white carnation. + + + + +BACK PAY + + +I set out to write a love story, and for the purpose sharpened a +bright-pink pencil with a glass ruby frivolously at the eraser end. + +Something sweet. Something dainty. A candied rose leaf after all the +bitter war lozenges. A miss. A kiss. A golf stick. A motor car. Or, if +need be, a bit of khaki, but without one single spot of blood or mud, +and nicely pressed as to those fetching peg-top trouser effects where +they wing out just below the skirt-coat. The oldest story in the world +told newly. No wear out to it. Editors know. It's as staple as eggs +or printed lawn or ipecac. The good old-fashioned love story with the +above-mentioned miss, kiss, and, if need be for the sake of timeliness, +the bit of khaki, pressed. + +Just my luck that, with one of these modish tales at the tip of my pink +pencil, Hester Bevins should come pounding and clamoring at the door of +my mental reservation, quite drowning out the rather high, the lipsy, +and, if I do say it myself, distinctly musical patter of Arline. That +was to have been her name. Arline Kildane. Sweet, don't you think, and +with just a bit of wild Irish rose in it? + +But Hester Bevins would not let herself be gainsaid, sobbing a little, +elbowing her way through the group of mental unborns, and leaving me to +blow my pitch pipe for a minor key. + +Not that Hester's isn't one of the oldest stories in the world, too. No +matter how newly told, she is as old as sin, and sin is but a few weeks +younger than love--and how often the two are interchangeable! + +If it be a fact that the true lady is, in theory, either a virgin or +a lawful wife, then Hester Bevins stands immediately convicted on two +charges. + +She was neither. The most that can be said for her is that she was +honestly what she was. + +"If the wages of sin is death," she said to a roadhouse party of +roysterers one dawn, "then I've quite a bit of back pay coming to me." +And joined in the shout that rose off the table. + +I can sketch her in for you rather simply because of the hackneyed +lines of her very, very old story. Whose pasts so quickly mold and +disintegrate as those of women of Hester's stripe? Their yesterdays are +entirely soluble in the easy waters of their to-days. + +For the first seventeen years of her life she lived in what we might +call Any American Town of, say, fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. +Her particular one was in Ohio. Demopolis, I think. One of those +change-engine-and-take-on-water stops with a stucco art-nouveau station, +a roof drooping all round it, as if it needed to be shaved off like +edges of a pie, and the name of the town writ in conch shells on a +green slant of terrace. You know--the kind that first establishes a +ten-o'clock curfew for its young, its dance halls and motion-picture +theaters, and then sends in a hurry call for a social-service expert +from one of the large Eastern cities to come and diagnose its malignant +vice undergrowth. + +Hester Bevins, of a mother who died bearing her and one of those +disappearing fathers who can speed away after the accident without even +stopping to pick up the child or leave a license number, was reared--no, +grew up, is better--in the home of an aunt. A blond aunt with many gold +teeth and many pink and blue wrappers. + +Whatever Hester knew of the kind of home that fostered her, it left +apparently no welt across her sensibilities. It was a rather poor house, +an unpainted frame in a poor street, but there was never a lack of +gayety or, for that matter, any pinching lack of funds. It was an actual +fact that, at thirteen, cotton or lisle stockings brought out a +little irritated rash on Hester's slim young legs, and she wore silk. +Abominations, it is true, at three pair for a dollar, that sprang runs +and would not hold a darn, but, just the same, they were silk. There was +an air of easy _camaraderie_ and easy money about that house. It was +not unusual for her to come home from school at high noon and find a +front-room group of one, two, three, or four guests, almost invariably +men. Frequently these guests handed her out as much as half a dollar +for candy money, and not another child in school reckoned in more than +pennies. + +Once a guest, for reasons of odd change, I suppose, handed her out +thirteen cents. Outraged, at the meanness of the sum, and with an early +and deep-dyed superstition of thirteen, she dashed the coins out of his +hand and to the four corners of the room, escaping in the guffaw of +laughter that went up. + +Often her childish sleep in a small top room with slanting sides would +be broken upon by loud ribaldry that lasted into dawn, but never by +word, and certainly not by deed, was she to know from her aunt any of +its sordid significance. + +Literally, Hester Bevins was left to feather her own nest. There were +no demands made upon her. Once, in the little atrocious front parlor of +horsehair and chromo, one of the guests, the town baggage-master, to +be exact, made to embrace her, receiving from the left rear a sounding +smack across cheek and ear from the aunt. + +"Cut that! Hester, go out and play! Whatever she's got to learn from +life, she can't say she learned it in my house." + +There were even two years of high school, and at sixteen, when she went, +at her own volition, to clerk in Finley's two-story department store on +High Street, she was still innocent, although she and Gerald Fishback +were openly sweethearts. + +Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but if +ever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald was +in his image. A wide streak of the Scandinavian ran through his make-up, +although he had been born in Middletown, and from there had come +recently to the Finley Dry Goods Company as an accountant. + +He was so the viking in his bigness that once, on a picnic, he had +carried two girls, screaming their fun, across twenty feet of stream. +Hester was one of them. + +It was at this picnic, the Finley annual, that he asked Hester, then +seventeen, to marry him. She was darkly, wildly pretty, as a rambler +rose tugging at its stem is restlessly pretty, as a pointed little +gazelle smelling up at the moon is whimsically pretty, as a runaway +stream from off the flank of a river is naughtily pretty, and she wore +a crisp percale shirt waist with a saucy bow at the collar, fifty-cent +silk stockings, and already she had almond incarnadine nails with points +to them. + +They were in the very heart of Wallach's Grove, under a natural +cathedral of trees, the noises of the revelers and the small explosions +of soda-water and beer bottles almost remote enough for perfect quiet. +He was stretched his full and splendid length at the picknickers' +immemorial business of plucking and sucking grass blades, and she seated +very trimly, her little blue-serge skirt crawling up ever so slightly to +reveal the silken ankle, on a rock beside him. + +"Tickle-tickle!" she cried, with some of that irrepressible animal +spirit of hers, and leaning to brush his ear with a twig. + +He caught at her hand. + +"Hester," he said, "marry me." + +She felt a foaming through her until her finger tips sang. + +"Well, I like that!" was what she said, though, and flung up a pointed +profile that was like that same gazelle's smelling the moon. + +He was very darkly red, and rose to his knees to clasp her about the +waist. She felt like relaxing back against his blondness and feeling her +fingers plow through the great double wave of his hair. But she did not. + +"You're too poor," she said. + +He sat back without speaking for a long minute. + +"Money isn't everything," he said, finally, and with something gone from +his voice. + +"I know," she said, looking off; "but it's a great deal if you happen to +want it more than anything else in the world." + +"Then, if that's how you feel about it, Hester, next to wanting you, I +want it, too, more than anything else in the world." + +"There's no future in bookkeeping." + +"I know a fellow in Cincinnati who's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar man. +Hester? Dear?" + +"A week?" + +"Why, of course not, dear--a month!" + +"Faugh!" she said, still looking off. + +He felt out for her hand, at the touch of her reddening up again. + +"Hester," he said, "you're the most beautiful, the most exciting, the +most maddening, the most--the most everything girl in the world! +You're not going to have an easy time of it, Hester, with your--your +environment and your dangerousness, if you don't settle down--quick, +with some strong fellow to take care of you. A fellow who loves you. +That's me, Hester. I want to make a little home for you and protect you. +I can't promise you the money--right off, but I can promise you the +bigger something from the very start, Hester. Dear?" + +She would not let her hand relax to his. + +"I hate this town," she said. + +"There's Cincinnati. Maybe my friend could find an opening there." + +"Faugh!" + +"Cincinnati, dear, is a metropolis." + +"No, no! You don't understand. I hate littleness. Even little +metropolises. Cheapness. I hate little towns and little spenders +and mercerized stockings and cotton lisle next to my skin, and +machine-stitched nightgowns. Ugh! it scratches!" + +"And I--I just love you in those starchy white shirt waists, Hester. +You're beautiful." + +"That's just the trouble. It satisfies you, but it suffocates me. I've +got a pink-crepe-de-Chine soul. Pink crepe de Chine--you hear?" + +He sat back on his heels. + +"It--Is it true, then, Hester that--that you're making up with that +salesman from New York?" + +"Why," she said, coloring--"why, I've only met him twice walking up High +Street, evenings!" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester?" + +"Say, who was answering your questions this time last year?" + +"But it _is_ true, isn't it, Hester? Isn't it?" + +"Well, of all the nerve!" + +But it was. + + * * * * * + +The rest tells glibly. The salesman, who wore blue-and-white-striped +soft collars with a bar pin across the front, does not even enter the +story. He was only a stepping-stone. From him the ascent or descent, or +whatever you choose to call it, was quick and sheer. + +Five years later Hester was the very private, the very exotic, +manicured, coiffured, scented, svelted, and strictly _de-luxe_ chattel +of one Charles G. Wheeler, of New York City and Rosencranz, Long Island, +vice-president of the Standard Tractor Company, a member of no clubs but +of the Rosencranz church, three lodges, and several corporations. + +You see, there is no obvious detail lacking. Yes, there was an +apartment. "Flat" it becomes under their kind of tenancy, situated on +the windiest bend of Riverside Drive and minutely true to type from +the pale-blue and brocade vernis-Martin parlor of talking-machine, +mechanical piano, and cellarette built to simulate a music cabinet, to +the pink-brocaded bedroom with a _chaise-longue_ piled high with a +small mountain of lace pillowettes that were liberally interlarded with +paper-bound novels, and a spacious, white-marble adjoining bathroom with +a sunken tub, rubber-sheeted shower, white-enamel weighing scales, +and overloaded medicine chest of cosmetic array in frosted bottles, +sleeping-, headache-, sedative powders, _et al_. There were also a negro +maid, two Pomeranian dogs, and last, but by no means least, a private +telephone inclosed in a hall closet and lighted by an electric bulb that +turned on automatically to the opening of the door. + +There was nothing sinister about Wheeler. He was a rather fair exponent +of that amazing genus known as "typical New-Yorker," a roll of money in +his pocket, and a roll of fat at the back of his neck. He went in for +light checked suits, wore a platinum-and-Oriental-pearl chain across his +waistcoat, and slept at a Turkish bath once a week; was once named in a +large corporation scandal, escaping indictment only after violent and +expensive skirmishes; could be either savage or familiar with waiters; +wore highly manicured nails, which he regarded frequently in public, +white-silk socks only; and maintained, on a twenty-thousand-a-year +scale in the decorous suburb of Rosencranz, a decorous wife and three +children, and, like all men of his code, his ethics were strictly double +decked. He would not permit his nineteen-year-old daughter Marion so +much as a shopping tour to the city without the chaperonage of her +mother or a friend, forbade in his wife, a comely enough woman with a +white unmarcelled coiffure and upper arms a bit baggy with withering +flesh, even the slightest of shirtwaist V's unless filled in with +net, and kept up, at an expense of no less than fifteen thousand a +year--thirty the war year that tractors jumped into the war-industry +class--the very high-priced, -tempered, -handed, and -stepping Hester of +wild-gazelle charm. + +Not that Hester stepped much. There were a long underslung roadster +and a great tan limousine with yellow-silk curtains at the call of her +private telephone. + +The Wheeler family used, not without complaint, a large open car of very +early vintage, which in winter was shut in with flapping curtains with +isinglass peepers, and leaked cold air badly. + +On more than one occasion they passed on the road--these cars. The +long tan limousine with the shock absorbers, foot warmers, two brown +Pomeranian dogs, little case of enamel-top bottles, fresh flowers, and +outside this little jewel-case interior, smartly exposed, so that the +blast hit him from all sides, a chauffeur in uniform that harmonized +nicely with the tans and yellows. And then the grotesque caravan of the +Azoic motor age, with its flapping curtains and ununiformed youth in +visored cap at the wheel. + +There is undoubtedly an unsavory aspect to this story. For purpose of +fiction, it is neither fragrant nor easily digested. But it is not so +unsavory as the social scheme which made it possible for those two cars +to pass thus on the road, and, at the same time, Charles G. Wheeler to +remain the unchallenged member of the three lodges, the corporations, +and the Rosencranz church, with a memorial window in his name on the +left side as you enter, and again his name spelled out on a brass plate +at the end of a front pew. + +No one but God and Mrs. Wheeler knew what was in her heart. It is +possible that she did not know what the world knew, but hardly. That she +endured it is not admirable, but then there were the three children, +and, besides, she lived in a world that let it go at that. And so she +continued to hold up her head in her rather poor, mute way, rode beside +her husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement of +their son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little in +private, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul. + +But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but it +was Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told. + +As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. There +was no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, as +the corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. The +white-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers of +her masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray, +and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, was +unfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and, +of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out more +than ever. + +As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more than +once without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before her +face like an overtone; it was an invisible caul. The wells of her eyes +were muddy with it. + +But withal, she commanded something of a manner, even from Wheeler. He +had no key to the apartment. He never entered her room without knocking. +There were certain of his friends she would not tolerate, from one or +another aversion, to be party to their not infrequent carousals. Men +did not always rise from their chairs when she entered a room, but she +suffered few liberties from them. She was absolutely indomitable in her +demands. + +"Lord!" ventured Wheeler, upon occasion, across a Sunday-noon, +lace-spread breakfast table, when she was slim and cool fingered in +orchid-colored draperies, and his newest gift of a six-carat, +pear-shaped diamond blazing away on her right hand. "Say, aren't these +Yvette bills pretty steep? + + "One midnight-blue-and-silver gown . . . . . . . . . $485.00 + One blue-and-silver head bandeau . . . . . . . . . . 50.00 + One serge-and-satin trotteur gown . . . . . . . . . 275.00 + One ciel-blue tea gown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280.00 + +"Is that the cheapest you can drink tea? Whew!" + +She put down her coffee cup, which she usually held with one little +finger poised elegantly outward as if for flight. + +"You've got a nerve!" she said, rising and pushing back her chair. "Over +whose ticker are you getting quotations that I come cheap?" + +He was immediately conciliatory, rising also to enfold her in an embrace +that easily held her slightness. + +"Go on," he said. "You could work me for the Woolworth Building in +diamonds if you wanted it badly enough." + +"Funny way of showing it! I may be a lot of things, Wheeler, but I'm not +cheap. You're darn lucky that the war is on and I'm not asking for a +French car." + +He crushed his lips to hers. + +"You devil!" he said. + +There were frequent parties. Dancing at Broadway cabarets, all-night joy +rides, punctuated with road-house stop-overs, and not infrequently, in +groups of three or four couples, ten-day pilgrimages to showy American +spas. + +"Getting boiled out," they called it. It was part of Hester's scheme for +keeping her sveltness. + +Her friendships were necessarily rather confined to a definite +circle--within her own apartment house, in fact. On the floor above, +also in large, bright rooms of high rental, and so that they were +exchanging visits frequently during the day, often _en deshabille_, +using the stairway that wound up round the elevator shaft, lived a +certain Mrs. Kitty Drew, I believe she called herself. She was plump and +blond, and so very scented that her aroma lay on a hallway for an hour +after she had scurried through it. She was well known and chiefly +distinguished by a large court-plaster crescent which she wore on her +left shoulder blade. She enjoyed the bounty of a Wall Street broker +who for one day had attained the conspicuousness of cornering the egg +market. + +There were two or three others within this group. A Mrs. Denison, half +French, and a younger girl called Babe. But Mrs. Drew and Hester were +intimates. They dwaddled daily in one or the other's apartment, usually +lazy and lacy with negligee, lounging about on the mounds of lingerie +pillows over chocolates, cigarettes, novels, Pomeranians, and always the +headache powders, nerve sedatives, or smelling salts, a running line of: +"Lord! I've a head!" "I need a good cry for the blues!" "Talk about a +dark-brown taste!" or, "There was some kick to those cocktails last +night," through their conversation. + +KITTY: "Br-r-r! I'm as nervous as a cat to-day." + +HESTER: "Naughty, naughty bad doggie to bite muvver's diamond ring." + +KITTY: "Leave it to you to land a pear-shaped diamond on your hooks." + +HESTER: "He fell for it, just like that!" + +KITTY: "You could milk a billiard ball." + +HESTER: "I don't see any 'quality of mercy' to spare around your flat." + +There were the two years of high school, you see. + +"Ed's going out to Geyser Springs next month for the cure. I told him he +could not go without me unless over my dead body, he could not." + +"Geyser Springs. That's thirty miles from my home town." + +"Your home town? Nighty-night! I thought you was born on the corner of +Forty-second Street and Broadway with a lobster claw in your mouth." + +"Demopolis, Ohio." + +"What is that--a skin disease?" + +"My last relation in the world died out there two years ago. An aunt. +Wouldn't mind some Geyser Springs myself if I could get some of this +stiffness out of my joints." + +"Come on! I dare you! May Denison and Chris will come in on it, and Babe +can always find somebody. Make it three or four cars full and let's +motor out. We all need a good boiling, anyways. Wheeler looks about +ready for spontaneous combustion, and I got a twinge in my left little +toe. You on?" + +"I am, if he is." + +"If he is!' He'd fall for life in an Igorrote village with a ring in his +nose if you wanted it." + +And truly enough, it did come about that on a height-of-the-season +evening a highly cosmopolitan party of four couples trooped into the +solid-marble foyer of the Geyser Springs Hotel, motor coated, goggled, +veiled; a whole litter of pigskin and patent-leather bags, hampers, +and hat boxes, two golf bags, two Pomeranians, a bull in spiked collar, +furs, leather coats, monogrammed rugs, thermos bottles, air pillows, +robes, and an _ensemble_ of fourteen wardrobe trunks sent by express. + +They took the "cure." Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at the +casino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for the +smarter European idea, with a special _a la carte_ menu for each meal. +Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates of +the "cure," appeared at their table. Strange midnight goings-on were +reported by the more conservative hotel guests, and the privacy of their +circle was allowed full integrity by the little veranda groups of gouty +ladies or middle-aged husbands with liver spots on their faces. The bath +attendants reveled in the largest tips of the season. When Hester walked +down the large dining room evenings, she was a signal for the craning of +necks for the newest shock of her newest extreme toilette. The kinds of +toilettes that shocked the women into envy and mental notes of how the +underarm was cut, and the men into covert delight. Wheeler liked to sit +back and put her through her paces like a high-strung filly. + +"Make 'em sit up, girl! You got them all looking like dimes around +here." + +One night she descended to the dining room in a black evening gown so +daringly lacking in back, and yet, withal, so slimly perfect an elegant +thing, that an actual breathlessness hung over the hall, the clatter of +dishes pausing. + +There was a gold bird of paradise dipped down her hair over one +shoulder, trailing its smoothness like fingers of lace. She defied with +it as she walked. + +"Take it from me," said Kitty, who felt fat in lavender that night, +"she's going it one too strong." + +Another evening she descended, always last, in a cloth of silver with a +tiny, an absurd, an impeccably tight silver turban dipped down over one +eye, and absolutely devoid of jewels except the pear-shaped diamond on +her left forefinger. + +They were a noisy, a spending, a cosmopolitan crowd of too-well-fed men +and too-well-groomed women, ignored by the veranda groups of wives and +mothers, openly dazzling and arousing a tremendous curiosity in the +younger set, and quite obviously sought after by their own kind. + +But Hester's world, too, is all run through with sharply defined social +schisms. + +"I wish that Irwin woman wouldn't always hang round our crowd," she +said, one morning, as she and Kitty lay side by side in the cooling room +after their baths, massages, manicures, and shampoos. "I don't want to +be seen running with her." + +"Did you see the square emerald she wore last night?" + +"Fake. I know the clerk at the Synthetic Jewelry Company had it made up +for her. She's cheap, I tell you. Promiscuous. Who ever heard of anybody +standing back of her? She knocks around. She sells her old clothes to +Tessie, my manicurist. I've got a line on her. She's cheap." + +Kitty, who lay with her face under a white mud of cold cream and her +little mouth merely a hole, turned on her elbow. + +"We can't all be top-notchers, Hester," she said. "You're hard as +nails." + +"I guess I am, but you've got to be to play this game. The ones who +aren't end up by stuffing the keyhole and turning on the gas. You've got +to play it hard or not at all. If you've got the name, you might as well +have the game." + +"If I had it to do over again--well, there would be one more +wife-and-mother role being played in this little old world, even if I +had to play it on a South Dakota farm." + +"'Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well,' I used to write in a +copy book. Well, that's the way I feel about this. To me, anything is +worth doing to escape the cotton stockings and lisle next to your skin. +I admit I never sit down and _think_. You know, sit down and take stock +of myself. What's the use thinking? Live! Yes," mused Hester, her arms +in a wreath over her head, "I think I'd do it all over again. There's +not been so many, at that. Three. The first was a salesman. He'd have +married me, but I couldn't see it on six thousand a year. Nice fellow, +too--an easy spender in a small way, but I couldn't see a future to +ladies' neckwear. I hear he made good later in munitions. Al was a +pretty good sort, too, but tight. How I hate tightness! I've been pretty +lucky in the long run, I guess." + +"Did I say 'hard as nails'?" said Kitty, grotesquely fitting a cigarette +in the aperture of her mouth. "I apologize. Why, alongside of you a +piece of flint is morning cereal. Haven't you ever had a love affair? +I've been married twice--that's how chicken hearted I can be. Haven't +you ever pumped a little faster just because a certain some one walked +into the room?" + +"Once." + +"Once what?" + +"I liked a fellow. Pretty much. A blond. Say, he was blond! I always +think to myself, Kit, next to Gerald, you've got the bluest eyes under +heaven. Only, his didn't have any dregs." + +"Thanks, dearie." + +"I sometimes wonder about Gerald. I ought to drive over while we're out +here. Poor old Gerald Fishback!" + +"Sweet name--'Fishback.' No wonder you went wrong, dearie." + +"Oh, I'm not getting soft. I saw my bed and made it, nice and soft and +comfy, and I'm lying on it without a whimper." + +"You just bet your life you made it up nice and comfy! You've the right +idea; I have to hand that to you. You command respect from them. Lord! +Ed would as soon fire a teacup at me as not. But, with me, it pays. The +last one he broke he made up to me with my opal-and-diamond beetle." + +"Wouldn't wear an opal if it was set next to the Hope diamond." + +"Superstitious, dearie?" + +"Unlucky. Never knew it to fail." + +"Not a superstition in my bones. I don't believe in walking under +ladders or opening an umbrella in the house or sitting down with +thirteen, but, Lordy! never saw the like with you! Thought you'd have +the hysterics over that little old vanity mirror you broke that day out +at the races." + +"Br-r-r! I hated it." + +"Lay easy, dearie. Nothing can touch you the way he's raking in the war +contracts." + +"Great--isn't it?" + +"Play for a country home, dearie. I always say real estate and jewelry +are something in the hand. Look ahead in this game, I always say." + +"You just bet I've looked ahead." + +"So have I, but not enough." + +"Somehow, I never feel afraid. I could get a job to-morrow if I had to." + +"Say, dearie, if it comes to that, with twenty pounds off me, there's +not a chorus I couldn't land back in." + +"I worked once, you know, in Lichtig's import shop." + +"Fifth Avenue?" + +"Yes. It was in between the salesman and Al. I sold two thousand five +hundred dollars' worth of gowns the first week." + +"Sure enough?" + +"'Girl,' old man Lichtig said to me the day I quit--'girl,' he said, 'if +ever you need this job again, comeback; it's waiting.'" + +"Fine chance!" + +"I've got the last twenty-five dollars I earned pinned away this minute +in the pocket of the little dark-blue suit I wore to work. I paid for +that suit with my first month's savings. A little dark-blue Norfolk, +Lichtig let me have out of stock for twenty-seven fifty." + +"Were they giving them away with a pound of tea?" + +"Honest, Kitty, it was neat. Little white shirt waist, tan shoes, and +one of those slick little five-dollar sailors, and every cent paid out +of my salary. I could step into that outfit to-morrow, look the part, +and land back that job or any other. I had a way with the trade, even +back at Finley's." + +"Here, hold my jewel bag, honey; I'm going to die of cold-cream +suffocation if she don't soon come back and unsmear me." + +"Opal beetle in it?" + +"Yes, dearie; but it won't bite. It's muzzled with my diamond +horseshoe." + +"Nothing doing, Kit. Put it under your pillow." + +"You better watch out. There's a thirteenth letter in the alphabet; you +might accidentally use it some day. You're going to have a sweet time +to-night, you are!" + +"Why?" + +"The boys have engaged De Butera to come up to the rooms." + +"You mean the fortune teller over at the Stag Hotel?" + +"She's not a fortune teller, you poor nervous wreck. She's the +highest-priced spiritualist in the world. Moving tables--spooks--woof!" + +"Faugh!" said Hester, rising from her couch and feeling with her little +bare feet for the daintiest of pink-silk mules. "I could make tables +move, too, at forty dollars an hour. Where's my attendant? I want an +alcohol rub." + +They did hold seance that night in a fine spirit of lark, huddled +together in the _de-luxe_ sitting room of one of their suites, and +little half-hysterical shrieks and much promiscuous ribaldry under cover +of darkness. + +Madame de Butera was of a distinctly fat and earthy blondness, with a +coarse-lace waist over pink, and short hands covered with turquoise +rings of many shapes and blues. + +Tables moved. A dead sister of Wheeler's spoke in thin, high voice. Why +is it the dead are always so vocally thin and high? + +A chair tilted itself on hind legs, eliciting squeals from the women. +Babe spoke with a gentleman friend long since passed on, and Kitty with +a deceased husband, and began to cry quite sobbily and took little sips +of highball quite gulpily. May Denison, who was openly defiant, allowed +herself to be hypnotized and lay rigid between two chairs, and +Kitty went off into rampant hysteria until Wheeler finally placed a +hundred-dollar bill over the closed eyes, and whether under it, or to +the legerdemain of madam's manipulating hands, the tight eyes opened, +May, amid riots of laughter, claiming for herself the hundred-dollar +bill, and Kitty, quite resuscitated, jumping up for a table cancan, her +yellow hair tumbling, and her china-blue eyes with the dregs in them +inclined to water. + +All but Hester. She sat off by herself in a peacock-colored gown that +wrapped her body suavity as if the fabric were soaking wet, a band of +smoky-blue about her forehead. Never intoxicated, a slight amount of +alcohol had a tendency to make her morose. + +"What's the matter, Cleo?" asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her and +lifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remote +analogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen. +"What's the matter Cleo? Does the spook stuff get your goat?" + +She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenly +wind-blown. + +"God!" she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm. +"Wheeler--can--can the--dead--speak?" + +But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, and +the following morning there they were, the eight of them, light with +laughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, off +for a day's motoring through the springtime countryside. + +"Where to?" shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat in +the first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind. + +"I thought Crystal Cave was the spot"--from May Denison in the last of +the cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil. + +"Crystal Cave it is, then." + +"Is that through Demopolis?" + +Followed a scanning of maps. + +"Sure! Here it is! See! Granite City. Mitchell. Demopolis. Crystal +Cave." + +"Good Lord! Hester, you're not going to spend any time in that dump?" + +"It's my home town," she replied, coldly. "The only relation I had is +buried there. It's nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-house +steps and pick me up as you drive back, I've been wanting to get there +ever since we're down here. Wanting to stop by your home town you +haven't seen in five years isn't unreasonable, is it?" + +He admitted it wasn't, leaning to kiss her. + +She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually found +irresistible. + +"Honey," she said, "what do you think?" + +"What?" + +"Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom's +window the day before we left." + +"The deuce he is!" he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediately +covering his. + +"She's wiring her sister in the 'Girlie Revue' to go in and buy it for +her." + +"Outrage--fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman's back! Look at the +beautiful scenery, honey! You're always prating about views. Look at +those hills over there! Great--isn't it?" + +"I wouldn't expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn't war year and you landing +one big contract after another. I'd hate to see May show herself in +that chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire. I could +telegraph Meyerbloom himself. I bought the sable rug of him. I'd hate +it, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it. So would you. What's +fifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundred +thousands? Honey?" + +"Wire," he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers. + + * * * * * + +They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but with +pleasantry and gibe. + +"Give my love to the town pump." + +"Rush the old oaken growler for me." + +"So long!" she called, eager to be rid of them. "Pick me up at six +sharp." + +She walked slowly up High Street. Passers-by turned to stare, but +otherwise she was unrecognized. There was a new five-and-ten-cent store, +and Finley Brothers had added an ell. High Street was paved. She made a +foray down into the little side street where she had spent those queerly +remote first seventeen years of her life. How dim her aunt seemed! The +little unpainted frame house was gone. There was a lumber yard on the +site. Everything seemed to have shrunk. The street was narrower and +dirtier than she recalled it. + +She made one stop, at the house of Maggie Simms, a high-school chum. It +was a frame house, too, and she remembered that the front door opened +directly into the parlor and the side entrance was popularly used +instead. But a strange sister-in-law opened the side door. Maggie was +married and living in Cincinnati. Oh, fine--a master mechanic, and there +were twins. She started back toward Finley's, thinking of Gerald, and +halfway she changed her mind. + +Maggie Simms married and living in Cincinnati. Twins! Heigh-ho! What a +world! The visit was hardly a success. At half after five she was on her +way back to the court-house steps. Stupid to have made it six! + +And then, of course, and quite as you would have it, Gerald Fishback +came along. She recognized his blondness long before he saw her. He was +bigger and more tanned, and, as of old, carried his hat in his hand. She +noticed that there were no creases down the front of his trousers, but +the tweed was good and he gave off that intangible aroma of well-being. + +She was surprised at the old thrill racing over her. Seeing him was like +a stab of quick steel through the very pit of her being. She reached +out, touching him, before he saw her. + +"Gerald," she said, soft and teasingly. + +It was actually as if he had been waiting for that touch, because before +he could possibly have perceived her her name was on his lips. + +"Hester!" he said, the blueness of his eyes flashing between blinks. +"Not Hester?" + +"Yes, Hester," she said, smiling up at him. + +He grasped both her hands, stammering for words that wanted to come +quicker than he could articulate. + +"Hester!" he kept repeating. "Hester!" + +"To think you knew me, Gerald!" + +"Know you! I'd know you blindfolded. And how--I--You're beautiful, +Hester! I think you've grown five years younger." + +"You've got on, Gerald. You look it." + +"Yes; I'm general manager now at Finley's." + +"I'm so glad. Married?" + +"Not while there's a Hester Bevins on earth." + +She started at her own name. + +"How do you know I'm not married?" + +"I--I know--" he said, reddening up. + +"Isn't there some place we can talk, Gerald? I've thirty minutes before +my friends call for me." + +"'Thirty minutes?'" + +"Your rooms? Haven't you rooms or a room where we could go and sit +down?" + +"Why--why, no, Hester," he said, still red. "I'd rather you didn't +go there. But here. Let's stop in at the St. James Hotel. There's a +parlor." + +To her surprise, she felt herself color up and was pleasantly conscious +of her finger tips. + +"You darling!" She smiled up at him. + +They were seated presently in the unaired plush-and-cherry, +Nottingham-and-Axminster parlor of a small-town hotel. + +"Hester," he said, "you're like a vision come to earth." + +"I'm a bad durl," she said, challenging his eyes for what he knew. + +"You're a little saint walked down and leaving an empty pedestal in my +dreams." + +She placed her forefinger over his mouth. + +"Sh-h!" she said. "I'm not a saint, Gerald; you know that." + +"Yes," he said, with a great deal of boyishness in his defiance, "I do +know it, Hester, but it is those who have been through the fire who can +sometimes come out--new. It was your early environment." + +"My aunt died on the town, Gerald, I heard. I could have saved her all +that if I had only known. She was cheap, aunt was. Poor soul! She never +looked ahead." + +"It was your early environment, Hester. I've explained that often enough +to them here. I'd bank on you, Hester--swear by you." + +She patted him. + +"I'm a pretty bad egg, Gerald. According to the standards of a town +like this, I'm rotten, and they're about right. For five years, Gerald, +I've--" + +"The real _you_ is ahead of--and not behind you, Hester." + +"How wonderful," she said, "for you to feel that way, but--" + +"Hester," he said, more and more the big boy, and his big blond head +nearing hers, "I don't care about anything that's past; I only know +that, for me, you are the--" + +"Gerald," she said, "for God's sake!" + +"I'm a two hundred-a-month man now, Hester. I want to build you the +prettiest, the whitest little house in this town. Out in the Briarwood +section. I'll make them kowtow to you, Hester; I--" + +"Why," she said, slowly, and looking at him with a certain sadness, "you +couldn't keep me in stockings, Gerald! The aigrettes on this hat cost +more than one month of your salary." + +"Good God!" he said. + +"You're a dear, sweet boy just the same; but you remember what I told +you about my crepe-de-Chine soul." + +"Just the same, I love you best in those crispy white shirt waists you +used to wear and the little blue suits and sailor hats. You remember +that day at Finleys' picnic, Hester, that day, dear, that you--you--" + +"You dear boy!" + +"But it--your mistake--it--it's all over. You work now, don't you, +Hester?" + +Somehow, looking into the blueness of his eyes and their entreaty for +her affirmative, she did what you or I might have done. She half lied, +regretting it while the words still smoked on her lips. + +"Why, yes, Gerald; I've held a fine position in Lichtig Brothers, New +York importers. Those places sometimes pay as high as seventy-five a +week. But I don't make any bones, Gerald; I've not been an angel." + +"The--the salesman, Hester?"--his lips quivering with a nausea for the +question. + +"I haven't seen him in four years," she answered, truthfully. + +He laid his cheek on her hand. + +"I knew you'd come through. It was your environment. I'll marry you +to-morrow--to-day, Hester. I love you." + +"You darling boy!" she said, her lips back tight against her teeth. "You +darling, darling boy!" + +"Please, Hester! We'll forget what has been." + +"Let me go," she said, rising and pinning on her hat; "let me go--or--or +I'll cry, and--and I don't want to cry." + +"Hester," he called, rushing after her and wanting to fold her back into +his arms, "let me prove my trust--my love--" + +"Don't! Let me go! Let me go!" + +At slightly after six the ultra cavalcade drew up at the court-house +steps. She was greeted with the pleasantries and the gibes. + +"Have a good time, sweetness?" asked Wheeler, arranging her rugs. + +"Yes," she said, lying back and letting her lids droop; "but +tired--very, very tired." + +At the hotel, she stopped a moment to write a telegram before going up +for the vapor bath, nap, and massage that were to precede dinner. + +"Meyerbloom & Co., Furriers. Fifth Avenue, New York," it was addressed. + + * * * * * + +This is not a war story except that it has to do with profiteering, +parlor patriots, and the return of Gerald Fishback. + +While Hester was living this tale, and the chinchilla coat was +enveloping her like an ineffably tender caress, three hundred thousand +of her country's youths were at strangle hold across three thousand +miles of sea, and on a notorious night when Hester walked, fully dressed +in a green gown of iridescent fish scales, into the electric fountain of +a seaside cabaret, and Wheeler had to carry her to her car wrapped in a +sable rug, Gerald Fishback was lying with his face in Flanders mud, and +his eye sockets blackly deep and full of shrapnel, and a lung-eating gas +cloud rolling at him across the vast bombarded dawn. + + * * * * * + +Hester read of him one morning, sitting up in bed against a mound of +lace-over-pink pillows, a masseuse at the pink soles of her feet. It was +as if his name catapulted at her from a column she never troubled to +read. She remained quite still, looking at the name for a full five +minutes after it had pierced her full consciousness. Then, suddenly, she +swung out of bed, tilting over the masseuse. + +"Tessie," she said, evenly enough, "that will do. I have to hurry to +Long Island to a base hospital. Go to that little telephone in the +hall--will you?--and call my car." + +But the visit was not so easy of execution. It required two days of red +tape and official dispensation before she finally reached the seaside +hospital that, by unpleasant coincidence, only a year before had been +the resort hotel of more than one dancing orgy. + +She thought she would faint when she saw him, jerking herself back with +a straining of all her faculties. The blood seemed to drain away +from her body, leaving her ready to sink, and only the watchful and +threatening eye of a man nurse sustained her. He was sitting up in bed, +and she would never have recognized in him anything of Gerald except +for the shining Scandinavian quality of his hair. His eyes were not +bandaged, but their sockets were dry and bare like the beds of old lakes +long since drained. She had only seen the like in eyeless marble busts. +There were unsuspected cheek bones, pitched now very high in his face, +and his neck, rising above the army nightshirt, seemed cruelly long, +possibly from thinness. + +"Are you Hester?" whispered the man nurse. + +She nodded, her tonsils squeezed together in an absolute knot. + +"He called for you all through his delirium," he said, and went out. She +stood at the bedside, trying to keep down the screams from her speech +when it should come. But he was too quick for her. + +"Hester," he said, feeling out. + +And in their embrace, her agony melted to tears that choked and seared, +beat and scalded her, and all the time it was he who held her with rigid +arm, whispered to her, soothed down the sobs which tore through her like +the rip of silk, seeming to split her being. + +"Now--now! Why, Hester! Now--now--now! Sh-h! It will be over in a +minute. You mustn't feel badly. Come now, is this the way to greet a +fellow that's so darn glad to see you that nothing matters? Why I can +see you, Hester. Plain as day in your little crispy waist. Now, now! +You'll get used to it in a minute. Now--now--" + +"I can't stand it, Gerald! I can't! Can't! Kill me, Gerald, but don't +ask me to stand it!" + +He stroked down the side of her, lingering at her cheek. + +"Sh-h! Take your time, dear," he said, with the first furry note in his +voice. "I know it's hard, but take your time. You'll get used to me. +It's the shock, that's all. Sh-h!" + +She covered his neck with kisses and scalding tears, her compassion for +him racing through her in chills. + +"I could tear out my eyes, Gerald, and give them to you. I could tear +out my heart and give it to you. I'm bursting of pain. Gerald! Gerald!" + +There was no sense of proportion left her. She could think only of what +her own physical suffering might do in penance. She would willingly have +opened the arteries of her heart and bled for him on the moment. Her +compassion wanted to scream. She, who had never sacrificed anything, +wanted suddenly to bleed at his feet, and prayed to do so on the +agonized crest of the moment. + +"There's a girl! Why, I'm going to get well, Hester, and do what +thousands of others of the blinded are doing. Build up a new, a useful, +and a busy life." + +"It's not fair! It's not fair!" + +"I'm ready now, except for this old left lung. It's burnt a bit, you +see--gas." + +"God! God!" + +"It's pretty bad, I admit. But there's another way of looking at it. +There's a glory in being chosen to bear your country's wounds." + +"Your beautiful eyes! Your blue, beautiful eyes! O God, what does it +all mean? Living! Dying! All the rotters, all the rat-eyed ones I know, +scot-free and Gerald chosen. God! God! where are you?" + +"He was never so close to me as now, Hester. And with you here, dear, He +is closer than ever." + +"I'll never leave you, Gerald," she said, crying down into his sleeve +again. "Don't be afraid of the dark, dear; I'll never leave you." + +"Nonsense!" he said, smoothing her hair that the hat had fallen away +from. + +"Never! Never! I wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawl +on my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave you, Gerald--never!" + +"My beautiful Hester!" he said, unsteadily, and then again, "Nonsense!" + +But, almost on the moment, the man nurse returned and she was obliged to +leave him, but not without throbbing promises of the to-morrow's +return, and then there took place, downstairs in an anteroom, a long, a +closeted, and very private interview with a surgeon and more red tape +and filing of applications. She was so weak from crying that a nurse was +called finally to help her through the corridors to her car. + +Gerald's left lung was burned out and he had three, possibly four, weeks +to live. + +All the way home, in her tan limousine with the little yellow curtains, +she sat quite upright, away from the upholstery, crying down her +uncovered face, but a sudden, an exultant determination hardening in her +mind. + + * * * * * + +That night a strange conversation took place in the Riverside Drive +apartment. She sat on Wheeler's left knee, toying with his platinum +chain, a strained, a rather terrible pallor out in her face, but the +sobs well under her voice, and its modulation about normal. She had been +talking for over two hours, silencing his every interruption until he +had fallen quite still. + +"And--and that's all, Wheeler," she ended up. "I've told you everything. +We were never more than just--friends--Gerald and me. You must take my +word for it, because I swear it before God." + +"I take your word, Hester," he said, huskily. + +"And there he lies, Wheeler, without--without any eyes in his head. Just +as if they'd been burned out by irons. And he--he smiles when he talks. +That's the awful part. Smiles like--well, I guess like the angel he--he +almost is. You see, he says it's a glory to carry the wounds of his +country. Just think! just think! that boy to feel that, the way he lies +there!" + +"Poor boy! Poor, poor boy!" + +"Gerald's like that. So--so full of faith. And, Wheeler, he thinks he's +going to get well and lead a useful life like they teach the blind to +do. He reminds me of one of those Greek statues down at the Athens Cafe. +You know--broken. That's it; he's a broken statue." + +"Poor fellow! Poor fellow! Do something for him. Buy the finest fruit in +the town for him. Send a case of wine. Two." + +"I--I think I must be torn to pieces inside, Wheeler, the way I've +cried." + +"Poor little girl!" + +"Wheeler?" + +"Now, now," he said; "taking it so to heart won't do no good. It's +rotten, I know, but worrying won't help. Got me right upset, too. Come, +get it off your mind. Let's take a ride. Doll up; you look a bit peaked. +Come now, and to-morrow we'll buy out the town for him." + +"Wheeler?" she said. "Wheeler?" + +"What?" + +"Don't look, Wheeler. I've something else to ask of you--something +queer." + +"Now, now," he said, his voice hardening but trying to maintain a +chiding note; "you know what you promised after the chinchilla--no more +this year until--" + +"No, no; for God's sake, not that! It's still about Gerald." + +"Well?" + +"Wheeler, he's only got four weeks to live. Five at the outside." + +"Now, now, girl; we've been all over that." + +"He loves me, Wheeler, Gerald does." + +"Yes?" dryly. + +"It would be like doing something decent--the only decent thing I've +done in all my life, Wheeler, almost like doing something for the war, +the way these women in the pretty white caps have done, and you know +we--we haven't turned a finger for it except to--to gain--if I was +to--to marry Gerald for those few weeks, Wheeler. I know it's a--rotten +sacrifice, but I guess that's the only kind I'm capable of making." + +He sat squat, with his knees spread. + +"You crazy?" he said. + +"It would mean, Wheeler, his dying happy. He doesn't know it's all up +with him. He'd be made happy for the poor little rest of his life. He +loves me. You see, Wheeler, I was his first--his only sweetheart. I'm on +a pedestal, he says, in his dreams. I never told you--but that boy was +willing to marry me, Wheeler, knowing--some--of the things I am. He's +always carried round a dream of me, you see--no, you wouldn't see, but +I've been--well, I guess sort of a medallion that won't tarnish in his +heart. Wheeler, for the boy's few weeks he has left? Wheeler?" + +"Well, I'll be hanged!" + +"I'm not turning holy, Wheeler. I am what I am. But that boy lying +out there--I can't bear it! It wouldn't make any difference with +us--afterward. You know where you stand with me and for always, but it +would mean the dying happy of a boy who fought for us. Let me marry +that boy, Wheeler. Let his light go out in happiness. Wheeler? Please, +Wheeler?" He would not meet her eyes. "Wheeler?" + +"Go to it, Hester," he said, coughing about in his throat and rising to +walk away. "Bring him here and give him the fat of the land. You can +count on me to keep out of the way. Go to it," he repeated. + +And so they were married, Hester holding his hand beside the hospital +cot, the man nurse and doctor standing by, and the chaplain incanting +the immemorial words. A bar of sunshine lay across the bed, and Gerald +pronounced each "I will" in a lifted voice that carried to the four +corners of the little room. She was allowed to stay that night past +hospital hours, and they talked with the dusk flowing over them. + +"Hester, Hester," he said, "I should have had the strength to hold out +against your making this terrible sacrifice." + +"It's the happiest hour of my life," she said, kissing him. + +"I feel well enough to get up now, sweetheart." + +"Gerald, don't force. You've weeks ahead before you are ready for that." + +"But to-morrow, dear, home! In whose car are you calling for me +to-morrow to take me _home_?" + +"In a friend's, dearest." + +"Won't I be crowding up our little apartment? Describe it again to me, +dearest--our _home_." + +"It's so little, Gerald. Three rooms and the littlest, babiest kitchen. +When you're once up, I'll teach its every corner to you." + +Tears seeped through the line where his lids had been, and it was almost +more than she could bear. + +"I'll make it up to you, though, Hester. I know I should have been +strong enough to hold out against your marrying me, but I'll make it up. +I've a great scheme; a sort of braille system of accountancy--" + +"Please, Gerald--not now!" + +"If only, Hester, I felt easier about the finances. Will your savings +stand the strain? Your staying at home from your work this way--and then +me--" + +"Gerald dear, I've told you so often--I've saved more than we need." + +"My girl!" + +"My dear, my dear!" she said. + + * * * * * + +They moved him with hardly a jar in an army ambulance, and with the +yellow limousine riding alongside to be of possible aid, and she had the +bed stripped of its laces and cool with linen for him, and he sighed out +when they placed him on it and would not let go her hand. + +"What a feeling of space for so little a room!" + +"It's the open windows, love." + +He lay back tiredly. + +"What sweet linen!" + +"I shopped it for you." + +"You, too--you're in linen, Hester?" + +"A percale shirt waist. I shopped it for you, too." + +"Give me your hand," he said, and pressed a string of close kisses into +its palm. + +The simplicity of the outrageous subterfuge amazed even her. She held +hothouse grapes at two dollars a pound to his lips, and he ate them +through a smile. + +"Naughty, extravagant girl!" he said. + +"I saw them on a fruit stand for thirty cents, and couldn't resist." + +"Never mind; I'll make it up to you." + +Later, he asked for braille books, turning his sightless face toward her +as he studied, trying to concentrate through the pain in his lung. + +"If only you wouldn't insist upon the books awhile yet, dear. The doctor +says it's too soon." + +"I feel so strong, Hester, with you near, and, besides, I must start the +pot boiling." + +She kissed down into the high nap of his hair, softly. + +Evenings, she read to him newspaper accounts of his fellow-soldiers, and +the day of the peace, for which he had paid so terribly, she rolled his +bed, alone, with a great tugging and straining, to the open window, +where the wind from the river could blow in against him and steamboat +whistles shoot up like rockets. + +She was so inexpressibly glad for the peace day. Somehow, it seemed +easier and less blackly futile to give him up. + +Of Wheeler for three running weeks she had not a glimpse, and then, one +day, he sent up a hamper, not a box, but an actual trunk of roses, and +she, in turn, sent them up the back way to Kitty's flat, not wanting +even their fragrance released. + +With Kitty there were little hurried confabs each day outside the +apartment door in the hallway before the elevator shaft. A veil of awe +seemed to wrap the Drew woman. + +"I can't get it out of my head, Hester. It's like a fairy story, and, in +another way, it's a scream--Wheeler standing for this." + +"Sh-h, Kitty! His ears are so sensitive." + +"Quit shushing me every time I open my mouth. Poor kid! Let me have a +look at him. He wouldn't know." + +"No! No!" + +"God! if it wasn't so sad it would be a scream--Wheeler footing the +bills!" + +"Oh--you! Oh--oh--you!" + +"All right, all right! Don't take the measles over it. I'm going. Here's +some chicken broth I brought down. Ed sent it up to me from Sherry's." + +But Hester poured it into the sink for some nameless reason, and brewed +some fresh from a fowl she tipped the hallboy a dollar to go out and +purchase. + +She slept on a cot at the foot of his bed, so sensitive to his waking +that almost before he came up to consciousness she was at his side. All +day she wore the little white shirt waists, a starchy one fresh each +morning, and at night scratchy little unlacy nightgowns with long +sleeves and high yokes. He liked to run his hand along the crispness of +the fabric. + +"I love you in cool stuff, Hester. You're so cool yourself, I always +think of you in the little white waist and blue skirt. You remember, +dear--Finleys' annual?" + +"I--I'm going to dress like that for you always, Gerald." + +"I won't let you be going back to work for long, sweetheart. I've some +plans up my sleeve, I have." + +"Yes! Yes!" + +But when the end did come, it was with as much of a shock as if she had +not been for days expecting it. The doctor had just left, puncturing his +arm and squirting into his poor tired system a panacea for the pain. But +he would not react to it, fighting down the drowsiness. + +"Hester," he said, suddenly, and a little weakly, "lean down, +sweetheart, and kiss me--long--long--" + +She did, and it was with the pressure of her lips to his that he died. + + * * * * * + +It was about a week after the funeral that Wheeler came back. She was on +the _chaise-longue_ that had been dragged out into the parlor, in the +webbiest of white negligees, a little large-eyed, a little subdued, but +sweetening the smile she turned toward him by a trick she had of lifting +the brows. + +"Hel-lo, Wheeler!" she said, raising her cheek to be kissed. + +He trailed his lips, but did not seek her mouth, sitting down rather +awkwardly and in the spread-kneed fashion he had. + +"Well, girl--you all right?" + +"You helped," she said. + +"It gave me a jolt, too. I made over twenty-five thousand to the Red +Cross on the strength of it." + +"Thank you, Wheeler." + +"Lord!" he said, rising and rubbing his hands together. "Give us a +couple of fingers to drink, honey; I'm cotton-mouthed." + +She reached languidly for a blue-enameled bell, lying back, with her +arms dangling and her smile out. Then, as if realizing that the occasion +must be lifted, turned her face to him. + +"Old bummer!" she said, using one of her terms of endearment for him and +two-thirds closing her eyes. Then did he stoop and kiss her roundly on +the lips. + + * * * * * + +For the remainder of this tale, I could wish for a pen supernally +dipped, or for a metaphysician's plating to my vernacular, or for the +linguistic patois of that land off somewhere to the west of Life. Or +maybe just a neurologist's chart of Hester's nerve history would help. + +In any event, after an evening of musical comedy and of gelatinous +dancing, Hester awoke at four o'clock the next morning out of an hour of +sound sleep, leaping to her knees there in bed like a quick flame, her +gesture shooting straight up toward the jointure of wall and ceiling. + +"Gerald!" she called, her smoky black hair floating around her and her +arms cutting through the room's blackness. "Gerald!" Suddenly the room +was not black. It was light with the Scandinavian blondness of Gerald, +the head of him nebulous there above the pink-satin canopy of her +dressing table, and, more than that, the drained lakes of his sockets +were deep with eyes. Yes, in all their amazing blueness, but queerly +sharpened to steel points that went through Hester and through her as if +bayonets were pushing into her breasts and her breathing. + +"Gerald!" she shrieked, in one more cry that curdled the quiet, and sat +up in bed, trembling and hugging herself, and breathing in until her +lips were drawn shudderingly against her teeth like wind-sucked window +shades. + +"Gerald!" And then the picture did a sort of moving-picture fade-out, +and black Lottie came running with her hair grotesquely greased and +flattened to take out the kink, and gave her a drink of water with the +addition of two drops from a bottle, and turned on the night light and +went back to bed. + +The next morning Hester carried about what she called "a head," and, +since it was Wheeler's day at Rosencranz, remained in bed until three +o'clock, Kitty curled at the foot of it the greater part of the +forenoon. + +"It was the rotten night did me up. Dreams! Ugh! dreams!" + +"No wonder," diagnosed Kitty, sweetly. "Indigestion from having your +cake and eating it." + +At three she dressed and called for her car, driving down to the Ivy +Funeral Rooms, a Gothic Thanatopsis, set, with one of those laughs up +her sleeves in which the vertical city so loves to indulge, right in +the heart of the town, between an automobile-accessory shop and a +quick-lunch room. Gerald had been buried from there with simple +flag-draped service in the Gothic chapel that was protected from the +view and roar of the Elevated trains by suitably stained windows. There +was a check in Hester's purse made out for an amount that corresponded +to the statement she had received from the Ivy Funeral Rooms. And right +here again, for the sake of your elucidation, I could wish at least for +the neurologist's chart. At the very door to the establishment--with +one foot across the threshold, in fact--she paused, her face tilted +toward the corner where wall and ceiling met, and at whatever she saw +there her eyes dilated widely and her left hand sprang to her bosom as +if against the incision of quick steel. Then, without even entering, she +rushed back to her car again, urging her chauffeur, at the risk of every +speed regulation, homeward. + +That was the beginning of purgatorial weeks that were soon to tell on +Hester. They actually brought out a streak of gray through her hair, +which Lottie promptly dyed and worked under into the lower part of her +coiffure. For herself, Hester would have let it remain. + +Wheeler was frankly perplexed. God knows it was bad enough to be called +upon to endure streaks of unreasonableness at Rosencranz, but Hester +wasn't there to show that side to him if she had it. To be pretty frank +about it, she was well paid not to. Well paid! He'd done his part. More +than nine out of ten would have done. Been made a jay of, if the truth +was known. She was a Christmas-tree bauble and was expected to throw off +holiday iridescence. There were limits! + +"You're off your feed, girl. Go off by yourself and speed up." + +"It's the nights, Gerald. Good God--I mean Wheeler! They kill me. I +can't sleep. Can't you get a doctor who will give me stronger drops? He +doesn't know my case. Nerves, he calls it. It's this head. If only I +could get rid of this head!" + +"You women and your nerves and your heads! Are you all alike? Get out +and get some exercise. Keep down your gasoline bills and it will send +your spirits up. There's such a thing as having it too good." + +She tried to meet him in lighter vein after that, dressing her most +bizarrely, and greeting him one night in a batik gown, a new process of +dyeing that could be flamboyant and narrative in design. This one, a +long, sinuous robe that enveloped her slimness like a flame, beginning +down around the train in a sullen smoke and rushing up to her face in a +burst of crimson. + +He thought her so exquisitely rare that he was not above the poor, soggy +device of drinking his dinner wine from the cup of her small crimson +slipper, and she dangled on his knee like the dangerous little flame she +none too subtly purported to be, and he spanked her quickly and softly +across the wrists because she was too nervous to hold the match steadily +enough for his cigar to take light, and then kissed away all the mock +sting. + +But the next morning, at the fateful four o'clock, and in spite of four +sleeping-drops, Lottie on the cot at the foot of her bed, and the night +light burning, she awoke on the crest of such a shriek that a stiletto +might have slit the silence, the end of the sheet crammed up and into +her mouth, and, ignoring all of Lottie's calming, sat up on her knees, +her streaming eyes on the jointure of wall and ceiling, where the open, +accusing ones of Gerald looked down at her. It was not that they were +terrible eyes. They were full of the sweet blue, and clear as lakes. It +was only that they knew. Those eyes _knew. They knew!_ She tried the +device there at four o'clock in the morning of tearing up the still +unpaid check to the Ivy Funeral Rooms, and then she curled up in bed +with her hand in the negro maid's and her face half buried in the +pillow. + +"Help me, Lottie!" she begged; "help me!" + +"Law! Pore child! Gettin' the horrors every night thisaway! I've been +through it before with other ladies, but I never saw a case of the sober +horrors befoh. Looks like they's the worst of all. Go to sleep, child. +I's holdin'." + +You see, Lottie had looked in on life where you and I might not. A +bird's-eye view may be very, very comprehensive, but a domestic's-eye +view can sometimes be very, very close. + +And then, one night, after Hester had beat her hands down into the +mattress and implored Gerald to close his accusing eyes, she sat up in +bed, waiting for the first streak of dawn to show itself, railing at the +pain in her head. + +"God! My head! Rub it, Lottie! My head! My eyes! The back of my neck!" + +The next morning she did what you probably have been expecting she would +do. She rose and dressed, sending Lottie to bed for a needed rest. +Dressed herself in the little old blue-serge suit that had been hanging +in the very back of a closet for four years, with a five-and two +ten-dollar bills pinned into its pocket, and pressed the little blue +sailor hat down on the smooth, winglike quality of her hair. She looked +smaller, peculiarly, indescribably younger. She wrote Wheeler a note, +dropping it down the mail-chute in the hall, and then came back, looking +about rather aimlessly for something she might want to pack. There was +nothing; so she went out quite bare and simply, with all her lovely +jewels in the leather case on the upper shelf of the bedroom closet, as +she had explained to Wheeler in the note. + +That afternoon she presented herself to Lichtig. He was again as you +would expect--round-bellied, and wore his cigar up obliquely from one +corner of his mouth. He engaged her immediately at an increase of five +dollars a week, and as she was leaving with the promise to report at +eight-thirty the next morning he pinched her cheek, she pulling away +angrily. + +"None of that!" + +"My mistake," he apologized. + +She considered it promiscuous and cheap, and you know her aversion for +cheapness. + +Then she obtained, after a few forays in and out of brownstone houses +in West Forty-fifth Street, one of those hall bedrooms so familiar to +human-interest stories--the iron-bed, washstand, and slop-jar kind. +There was a five-dollar advance required. That left her twenty dollars. + +She shopped a bit then in an Eighth Avenue department store, and, with +the day well on the wane, took a street car up to the Ivy Funeral Rooms. +This time she entered, but the proprietor did not recognize her until +she explained. As you know, she looked smaller and younger, and there +was no tan car at the curb. + +"I want to pay this off by the week," she said, handing him out +the statement and a much-folded ten-dollar bill. He looked at her, +surprised. "Yes," she said, her teeth biting off the word in a click. + +"Certainly," he replied, handing her out a receipt for the ten. + +"I will pay five dollars a week hereafter." + +"That will stretch it out to twenty-eight weeks," he said, still +doubtfully. + +"I can't help it; I must." + +"Certainly," he said, "that will be all right," but looked puzzled. + +That night she slept in the hall bedroom in the Eighth Avenue, +machine-stitched nightgown. She dropped off about midnight, praying not +to awaken at four. But she did--with a slight start, sitting up in bed, +her eyes where the wall and ceiling joined. + +Gerald's face was there, and his blue eyes were open, but the steel +points were gone. They were smiling eyes. They seemed to embrace her, to +wash her in their fluid. + +All her fear and the pain in her head were gone. She sat up, looking at +him, the tears streaming down over her smile and her lips moving. + +Then, sighing out like a child, she lay back on the pillow, turned over, +and went to sleep. + + * * * * * + +And this is the story of Hester which so insisted to be told. I think +she must have wanted you to know. And wanted Gerald to know that you +know, and, in the end, I rather think she wanted God to know. + + + + +THE VERTICAL CITY + + +In the most vertical city in the world men have run up their dreams +and their ambitions into slim skyscrapers that seem to exclaim at the +audacity of the mere mortar that sustains them. + +Minarets appear almost to tamper with the stars; towers to impale +the moon. There is one fifty-six-story rococo castle, built from the +five-and-ten-cent-store earnings of a merchant prince, that shoots +upward with the beautiful rush of a Roman candle. + +Any Manhattan sunset, against a sky that looks as if it might give to +the poke of a finger, like a dainty woman's pink flesh, there marches a +silhouetted caravan of tower, dome, and the astonished crests of office +buildings. + +All who would see the sky must gaze upward between these rockets of +frenzied architecture, which are as beautiful as the terrific can ever +be beautiful. + +In the vertical city there are no horizons of infinitude to rest the +eyes; rather little breakfast napkins of it showing between walls and +up through areaways. Sometimes even a lunchcloth of five, six, or maybe +sixty hundred stars or a bit of daylight-blue with a caul of sunshine +across, hoisted there as if run up a flagpole. + +It is well in the vertical city if the eyes and the heart have a lift +to them, because, after all, these bits of cut-up infinitude, as +many-shaped as cookies, even when seen from a tenement window and to the +accompaniment of crick in the neck, are as full of mysterious alchemy +over men's hearts as the desert sky or the sea sky. That is why, up +through the wells of men's walls, one glimpse of sky can twist the soul +with--oh, the bitter, the sweet ache that lies somewhere within the +heart's own heart, curled up there like a little protozoa. That is, if +the heart and the eyes have a lift to them. Marylin's had. + + * * * * * + +Marylin! How to convey to you the dance of her! The silver scheherazade +of poplar leaves when the breeze is playful? No. She was far nimbler +than a leaf tugging at its stem. A young faun on the brink of a pool, +startled at himself? Yes, a little. Because Marylin's head always had a +listening look to it, as if for a message that never quite came through +to her. From where? Marylin didn't know and didn't know that she didn't +know. Probably that accounted for a little pucker that could sometimes +alight between her eyes. Scarcely a shadow, rather the shadow of a +shadow. A lute, played in a western breeze? Once a note of music, +not from a lute however, but played on a cheap harmonica, had caught +Marylin's heart in a little ecstasy of palpitations, but that doesn't +necessarily signify. Zephyr with Aurora playing? Laughter holding both +his sides? + +How Marylin, had she understood it, would have kicked the high hat off +of such Miltonic phrasing. Ah, she was like--herself! + +And yet, if there must be found a way to convey her to you more quickly, +let it be one to which Marylin herself would have dipped a bow. + +She was like nothing so much as unto a whole two dollars' worth of +little five-cent toy balloons held captive in a sea breeze and tugging +toward some ozonic beyond in which they had never swum, yet strained so +naturally toward. + +That was it! A whole two dollars' worth of tugging balloons. +Red--blue--orange--green--silver, jerking in hollow-sided collisions, +and one fat-faced pink one for ten cents, with a smile painted on one +side and a tear on the other. + +And what if I were to tell you that this phantom of a delight of a +Marylin, whose hair was a sieve for sun and whose laughter a streamer of +it, had had a father who had been shot to death on the underslinging +of a freight car in one of the most notorious prison getaways ever +recorded, and whose mother--but never mind right here; it doesn't matter +to the opening of this story, because Marylin, with all her tantalizing +capacity for paradox, while every inch a part of it all, was not at all +a part of it. + +For five years, she who had known from infancy the furtive Bradstreet of +some of the vertical city's most notorious aliases and gang names, and +who knew, almost by baptism of fire, that there were short cuts to an +easier and weightier wage envelope, had made buttonholes from eight +until five on the blue-denim pleat before it was stitched down the front +of men's blue-denim shirts. + +At sweet sixteen she, whose mother had borne her out of wed--well, +anyway, at sweet sixteen, like the maiden in the saying, she had never +been kissed, nor at seventeen, but at eighteen-- + +It was this way. Steve Turner--"Getaway," as the quick lingo of the +street had him--liked her. Too well. I firmly believe, though, that +if in the lurid heat lightning of so stormy a career as Getaway's the +beauty of peace and the peace of beauty ever found moment, Marylin +nestled in that brief breathing space somewhere deep down within the +noisy cabaret of Getaway's being. His eyes, which had never done +anything of the sort except under stimulus of the horseradish which he +ate in quantities off quick-lunch counters, could smart to tears at the +thought of her. And over the emotions which she stirred in him, and +which he could not translate, he became facetious--idiotically so. + +Slim and supine as the bamboo cane he invariably affected, he would wait +for her, sometimes all of the six work-a-evenings of the week, until +she came down out of the grim iron door of the shirt factory where she +worked, his one hip flung out, bamboo cane bent almost double, and, in +his further zeal to attitudinize, one finger screwing up furiously at +a vacant upper lip. That was a favorite comedy mannerism, screwing at +where a mustache might have been. + +"Getaway!" she would invariably admonish, with her reproach all in the +inflection and with the bluest blue in her eyes he had ever seen outside +of a bisque doll's. + +The peculiar joy, then, of linking her sweetly resisting arm into his; +of folding over each little finger, so! until there were ten tendrils +at the crotch of his elbow and his heart. Of tilting his straw "katy" +forward, with his importance of this possession, so that the back of his +head came out in a bulge and his hip, and then of walking off with her, +so! Ah yes, so! + +MARYLIN _(who had the mysterious little jerk in her laugh of a very +young child_): "Getaway, you're the biggest case!" + +GETAWAY _(wild to amuse her further_): "Hocus pocus, Salamagundi! I +smell the blood of an ice-cream sundae!" + +MARYLIN _(hands to her hips and her laughter full of the jerks_): +"Getaway, stop your monkeyshines. The cop has his eye on you!" + +GETAWAY _(sobered):_ "C'm on!" + +Therein lay some of the wonder of her freshet laughter. Because to +Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, +designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night +stick strike security into her heart as she hurried home of short, +wintry evenings. A little procession of him and his equally dread +brother, the plain-clothes man, had significantly patrolled the days of +her childhood. + +Once her mother, who had come home from a shopping expedition with the +inside pocket of her voluminous cape full of a harvest of the sheerest +of baby things to match Marylin's blond loveliness--batiste--a whole +bolt of Brussels lace--had bitten the thumb of a policeman until it +hung, because he had surprised her horribly by stepping in through the +fire escape as she was unwinding the Brussels lace. + +Another time, from her mother's trembling knee, she had seen her father +in a crowded courtroom standing between two uniforms, four fingers +peeping over each of his shoulders! + +A uniform had shot her father from the underpinnings of the freight +car. Her mother had died with the phantom of one marching across her +delirium. Even opposite the long, narrow, and exceedingly respectable +rooming house in which she now dwelt a uniform had stood for several +days lately, contemplatively. + +There was a menacing flicker of them almost across her eyeballs, so +close they lay to her experience, and yet how she could laugh when +Getaway made a feint toward the one on her beat, straightening up into +exaggerated decorum as the eye of the law, noting his approach, focused. + +"Getaway," said Marylin, hop-skipping to keep up with him now, "why has +old Deady got his eye on you nowadays?" + +Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing +inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed +to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be. + +"You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapping granny's +wrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!" + +But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway," she +said, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face must +be almost level with hers--"you're up to something again." + +"I'm up to snuff," he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped a +circle. + +She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood, +her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away." And pushed him aside that she might +walk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustling +that was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one of +those moments when she could make his eyes smart. + +But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?" + +"Me, in here," she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsy +blouse where her heart beat under it. + +"Whadda you mean, dead?" + +"Just dead, sometimes--as if something inside of me that can't get out +had--had just curled up and croaked." + +The walk from the shirt factory where Marylin worked, to the long, lean +house in the long, lean street where she roomed, smelled of unfastidious +bedclothes airing on window sills; of garbage cans that repulsed even +high-legged cats; of petty tradesmen who, mysteriously enough, with +aerial clotheslines flapping their perpetually washings, worked and +sweated and even slept in the same sour garments. Facing her there on +these sidewalks of slops, and the unprivacy of stoops swarming with +enormous young mothers and puny old children, Getaway, with a certain +fox pointiness out in his face, squeezed her arm until she could feel +the bite of his elaborately manicured finger nails. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, "and you'll wear diamonds." + +In spite of herself, his bay-rummed nearness was not unpleasant to her. +"Cut it out--here, Getaway," she said through a blush. + +He hooked her very close to him by the elbow, and together they crossed +through the crash of a street bifurcated by elevated tracks. + +"You hear, Marylin," he shouted above the din. "Marry me and you'll wear +diamonds." + +"Getaway, you're up to something again!" + +"Whadda you mean?" + +"Diamonds on your twenty a week! It can't be done." + +His gaze lit up with the pointiness. "I tell you, Marylin, I can promise +you headlights!" + +"How?" + +"Never you bother your little head how; O.K., though." + +"_How_, Getaway?" + +"Oh--clean--if that's what's worrying you. Clean-cut." + +"It _is_ worrying me." + +"Saw one on a little Jane yesterday out to Belmont race track. A +fist-load for a little trick like her. And sparkle! Say, every time that +little Jane daubed some whitewash on her little nosie she gave that +grand stand the squints. That's what I'm going to do. Sparkle you up! +With a diamond engagement ring. Oh boy! How's that? A diamond engagement +ring!" + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, with her hand on the flutter of her throat and +closing her eyes as if to imprison the vision against her lids. "A pure +white one with lots of fire dancing around it." And little Marylin, who +didn't want to want it, actually kissed the bare dot on her left ring +finger where she could feel the burn of it, and there in the crowded +street, where he knew he was surest of his privacy with her, he stole a +kiss off that selfsame finger, too. + +"I'll make their eyes hang out on their cheeks like grapes when they see +you coming along, Marylin." + +"I love them because they're so clear--and clean! Mountain water that's +been filtered through pebbles." + +"Pebbles is right! I'm going to dike you out in one as big as a pebble. +And poils! Sa-y, they're what cost the spondulicks. A guy showed me a +string of little ones no bigger than pimples. Know what? That little +string could knock the three spots out of a thousand-dollar bond--I mean +bill!" + +It was then that something flashed out of Marylin's face. A shade might +have been lowered; a candle blown out. + +"Getaway," she said, with a quick little dig of fingers into his +forearm, "you're up to something!" + +"Snuff, I said." + +"What did you mean by that word, 'bond'?" + +"Who built a high fence around the word 'bond'?" + +"Bonds! All that stuff in the newspapers about those messengers +disappearing out of Wall Street with--bonds! Getaway, are you mixed up +in that? Getaway!" + +"Well, well! I like that! I had you doped out for fair and warmer +to-day. The weather prophet didn't predict no brainstorm." + +"That's not answering." + +"Well, whadda you know! Miss Sherlock Holmes finds a corkscrew in the +wine cellar and is sore because it's crooked!" + +"Getaway--answer." + +"Whadda you want me to answer, Fairylin? That I'm the master mind behind +the--" + +"It worries me so! You up in Monkey's room so much lately. You think I +don't know it? I do! All the comings and goings up there. Muggs Towers +sneaking up to Monkey's room in that messenger boy's suit he keeps +wearing all the time now. He's no more messenger boy than I am. Getaway, +tell me, you and Muggs up in Monkey's room so often? Footsteps up there! +Yours!" + +"Gawalmighty! Now it's my footsteps!" + +"I know them! Up in Monkey's room, right over mine. I know how you sneak +up there evenings after you leave me. It don't look nice your going into +the same house where I live, Getaway, even if it isn't to see me. It +don't look right from the outside!" + +"Nobody can ever say I wanted to harm a hair of your little head. I even +look the other way when I pass your door. That's the kind of a modest +violet I am." + +"It's not that, but the looks. That's the reason, I'll bet, if the +truth's known, why Monkey squirmed himself into that room over mine--to +hide your comings and goings as if they was to see me." + +"Nothing of the kind!" + +"Everything--up there--worries me so! Monkey's room right over mine. +My ceiling so full of soft footsteps that frighten me. I +know your footsteps, Getaway, just as well as anything. The +ball-of-your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your-foot--squeak!" + +"Well, that's a good one! The-ball-of-me-foot--squeak!" + +"Everybody tiptoeing! Muggs! Somebody's stocking feet! Monkey's. Steps +that aren't honest. All on my ceiling. Monkey never ought to have rented +a room in a respectable house like Mrs. Granady's. Nobody but genteel +young fellows holding down genteel jobs ever had that room before. +Monkey passing himself off as Mr. James Pollard, or whatever it is he +calls himself, just for the cover of a respectable house--or of me, for +all I know. You could have knocked me down with a feather the first time +I met him in the hall. If I did right I'd squeal." + +"You would, like hell." + +"Of course I wouldn't, but with Mrs. Granady trying to run a respectable +house, only the right kind of young fellows and girls rooming there, +it's not fair. Monkey getting his nose into a house like that and +hatching God knows what! Getaway, what do you keep doing up in that +room--all hours--you and all the pussyfooters?" + +"That's the thanks a fellow gets for letting a straight word like +'marry' slip between his teeth; that's the thanks a fellow gets for +honest-to-God intentions of trying to get his girl out of a shirt +factory and dike her out in--" + +"But, Getaway, if I was only sure it's all straight!" + +"Well, if that's all you think of me--" + +"All your big-gun talk about the ring. Of course I--I'd like it. How +could a girl help liking it? But only if it's on the level. Getaway--you +see, I hate to act suspicious all the time, but all your new silk shirts +and now the new checked suit and all. It don't match up with your +twenty-dollar job in the Wall Street haberdashery." + +Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I +tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her, +and me thinking I did." + +"What, Getaway, what?" + +"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have +pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket +used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just +because I--" + +"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of +the newspaper!" + +"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like +vaccination, they take or they don't." + +"They never take with you, Getaway." + +"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--" + +"A job?" + +"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on. +If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solid +gold." + +"What is it, then, the proposition?" + +"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through? +Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a good +thing." + +"You mean--" + +"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets." + +"What kind of money?" + +"Real money." + +"_Honest_ money?" + +"Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea. +Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one of +them hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a lace +umbrella and--" + +"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers on +a hat." + +"Red-white-and-blue ones!" + +"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket." + +"And slippers with real diamond buckles." + +"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoe +buckles--" + +"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new business +proposition?" + +"I do, only you've had so many--" + +"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!" + +"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you're +cornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh, +Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--" + +"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she has +to rub her fingers in old soot to do it." + +"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it's +in me so to suspect." + +"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!" + +"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it's +been so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it. +Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me not +getting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on the +beat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep. +Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You're +finger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt if +there was one. Don't--Getaway!" + +"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome." + +"Money wouldn't make no difference with me, anyway, if everything else +wasn't all right. Nothing can be pink to me even if it is pink, unless +it's honest. That's why I hold back, Getaway--there's things in you +I--can't trust." + +"Yah, fine chance of you holding back if I was to come rolling up to +your door in a six-cylinder--" + +"I tell you, no! If I was that way I wouldn't be holding down the same +old job at the factory. I know plenty of boys who turn over easy money. +Too easy--" + +"Then marry me, Marylin, and you'll wear diamonds. In a couple of days, +when this goes through, this deal with the fellows--oh, _honest_ deal, +if that's what you're opening your mouth to ask--I can stand up beside +you with money in my pockets. Twenty bucks to the pastor, just like +that! Then you can pick out another job and I'll hold it down for you. +Bet your life I will--Oh--here, Marylin--this way--quick!" + +"Getaway, why did you turn down this street so all of a sudden? This +isn't my way home." + +"It's only a block out of the way. Come on! Don't stand gassing." + +"You-thought-that-fellow-on-the-corner-of-Dock-Street-might-be-a-plain +-clothes-man!" + +"What if I did? Want me to go up and kiss him?" + +"Why-should-you-care, Getaway?" + +"Don't." + +"But--" + +"Don't believe in hugging the law, though. It's enough when it hugs +you." + +"I want to go home, Getaway." + +"Come on. I'll buy some supper. Steak and French frieds and some French +pastry with a cherry on top for your little sweet tooth. That's the kind +of a regular guy I am." + +"No. I want to go home." + +"All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?" + +"Straight." + +"Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home." + +They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouth +wilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flower +in the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenly +and so whitely that almost a second could blight her. + +"Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quickly +conciliatory and trying to make his voice grate. + +"No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad." + +She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and +as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the +riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole +jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one with +gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed +ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can. + +"I'm going in now, Getaway." + +"Gowann! Get into your blue dress and I'll blow you to supper." + +"Not to-night." + +"Mad?" + +"No. I said only--" + +"Sad?" + +"No--tired--I guess." + +"Please, Marylin." + +"No. Some other time." + +"When? To-morrow? It's Saturday! Coney?" + +"Oh!" + +He thought he detected the flash of a dimple. He did. Remember, she was +very young and, being fanciful enough to find the witch in the face of +her rooming house, the waves at Coney Island, peanut cluttered as they +were apt to be, told her things. Silly, unrepeatable things. Nonsense +things. Little secret goosefleshing things. Prettinesses. And then the +shoot the chutes! That ecstatic leap of heart to lips and the feeling +of folly down at the very pit of her. Marylin did like the shoot the +chutes! + +"All right, Getaway--to-morrow--Coney!" + +He did not conceal his surge of pleasure, grasping her small hand in +both his. "Good girlie!" + +"Good night, Getaway," she said, but with the inflection of something +left unsaid. + +He felt the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped +its stick, and started up the steps after her. + +"What is it, Marylin?" + +"Nothing," she said and ran in. + +The window in her little rear room with the zigzag of fire escape across +it was already full of dusk. She took off her hat, a black straw with a +little pink-cotton rose on it, and, rubbing her brow where it had left a +red rut, sat down beside the window. There were smells there from a city +bouquet of frying foods; from a pool of old water near a drain pipe; +from the rear of a butcher shop. Slops. Noises, too. Babies, traffic, +whistles, oaths, barterings, women, strife, life. On her very +own ceiling the whisper of footsteps--of restless comings and +goings--stealthy comings and goings--and then after an hour, +suddenly and ever so softly, the ball-of-a-foot--squeak! +The-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! + +Marylin knew that step. + +And yet she sat, quiet. A star had come out. Looking up at the napkin of +sky let in through the walls of the vertical city, Marylin had learned +to greet it almost every clear evening. It did something for her. It +was a little voice. A little kiss. A little upside down pool of light +without a spill. A little of herself up there in that beyond--that +little napkin of beyond that her eyes had the lift to see. + + * * * * * + +Who are you, whose neck has never ached from nine hours a day, six days +a week, of bending over the blue-denim pleat that goes down the front +of men's shirts, to quiver a supersensitive, supercilious, and superior +nose over what, I grant you, may appear on the surface to be the omelet +of vulgarities fried up for you on the gladdest, maddest strip of +carnival in the world? + +But it is simpler to take on the cold glaze of sophistication than to +remain simple. When the eyelids become weary, it is as if little +red dancing shoes were being wrapped away forever, or a very tight +heartstring had suddenly sagged, and when plucked at could no longer +plong. + +To Marylin, whose neck very often ached clear down into her shoulder +blade and up into a bandeau around her brow, and to whom city walls +were sometimes like slaps confronting her whichever way she turned, her +enjoyment of Coney Island was as uncomplex as A B C. Untortured by any +awarenesses of relative values, too simple to strive to keep simple, +unself-conscious, and with a hungry heart, she was not a spectator, half +ashamed of being amused. She _was_ Coney Island! Her heart a shoot the +chutes for sheer swoops of joy, her eyes full of confetti points, the +surf creaming no higher than her vitality. + +And it was so the evening following, as she came dancing down the +kicked-up sand of the beach, in a little bright-blue frock, mercerized +silk, if you please, with very brief sleeves that ended right up in the +jolliest part of her arm, with a half moon of vaccination winking out +roguishly beneath a finish of ribbon bow, and a white-canvas sport hat +with a jockey rosette to cap the little climax of her, and by no means +least, a metal coin purse, with springy insides designed to hold exactly +fifty cents in nickels. + +Once on the sand, which ran away, tickling each step she took, her +spirits, it must be admitted, went just a little crazily off. The +window, you see, where Marylin sewed her buttonholes six days the week, +faced a brick wall that peeled with an old scrofula of white paint. +Coney Island faced a world of sky. So that when she pinched Getaway's +nose in between the lips of her coin purse and he, turning a double +somersault right in his checked suit, landed seated in a sprawl of mock +daze, off she went into peals of laughter only too ready to be released. + +He bought her a wooden whirring machine, an instrument of noise that, +because it was not utilitarian, became a toy of delicious sound. + +They rode imitation ocean waves at five cents a voyage, their only _mal +de mer_, regret when it was over. He bought her salt-water taffy, and +when the little red cave of her mouth became too ludicrously full of the +pully stuff he tried to kiss its state of candy paralysis, and instantly +she became sober and would have no more of his nonsense. + +"Getaway," she cried, snapping fingers of inspiration, "let's go in +bathing!" + +"I'll say we will!" + +No sooner said than done. In rented bathing suits, unfastidious, if you +will, but, pshaw! with the ocean for wash day, who minded! Hers a little +blue wrinkly one that hit her far too far, below the knees, but her head +flowered up in a polka-dotted turban, that well enough she knew bound +her up prettily, and her arms were so round with that indescribable +softiness of youth! Getaway, whose eyes could focus a bit when he looked +at them, set up a leggy dance at sight of her. He shocked her a bit in +his cheap cotton trunks--woman's very old shock to the knobby knees and +hairy arms of the beach. But they immediately ran, hand in hand, down +the sand and fizz! into the grin of a breaker. + +Marylin with her face wet and a fringe of hair, like a streak of +seaweed, down her cheek! Getaway, shivery and knobbier than ever, +pushing great palms of water at her and she back at him, only less +skillfully her five fingers spread and inefficient. Once in the water, +he caught and held her close, and yet, for the wonder of it, almost +reverentially close, as if what he would claim for himself he must keep +intact. + +"Marry me, Marylin," he said, with all the hubbub of the ocean about +them. + +She reached for some foam that hissed out before she could touch it. + +"That's you," he said. "Now you are there, and now you aren't." + +"I wish," she said--"oh, Getaway, there's so much I wish!" + +"What do you wish?" + +She looked off toward the immensity of sea and sky. "I--Oh, I don't +know! Being here makes me wish--Something as beautiful as out there is +what I wish." + +"Out where?" + +"There." + +"I don't see--" + +"You--wouldn't." + +And then, because neither of them could swim, he began chasing her +through shallow water, and in the kicked-up spray of their own merriment +they emerged finally, dripping and slinky, the hairs of his forearms +lashed flat, and a little drip of salt water running off the tip of her +chin. + +Until long after the sun went down they lay drying on the sand, her +hair spread in a lovely amber flare, and, stretched full length on his +stomach beside her, he built a little grave of sand for her feet. And +the crowd thinned, and even before the sun dipped a faint young moon, +almost as if wearing a veil, came up against the blue. They were quiet +now with pleasant fatigue, and, propped up on his elbows, he spilled +little rills of sand from one fist into the other. + +"Gee! you're pretty, Marylin!" + +"Are I, Getaway?" + +"You know you are. You wasn't born with one eye shut and the other +blind." + +"Honest, I don't know. Sometimes I look in the mirror and hope so." + +"You've had enough fellows tell you so." + +"Yes, but--but not the kind of fellows that mean by pretty what _I_ mean +by pretty." + +"Well, this here guy means what you mean by pretty." + +"What do you mean by pretty, Getaway?" + +"Pep. Peaches. Cream. Teeth. Yellow hair. Arms. Le--those little holes +in your cheeks. Dimples. What do I mean by pretty? I mean you by pretty. +Ain't that what you want me to mean by pretty?" + +"Yes--and no--" + +"Well, what the--" + +"It's all right, Getaway. It's fine to be pretty, but--not +enough--somehow. I--I can't explain it to you--to anybody. I guess +pretty isn't the word. It's beauty I mean." + +"All right, then, anything your little heart desires--beauty." + +"The ocean beauty out there, I mean. Something that makes you hurt +and want to hurt more and more. Beauty, Getaway. It's something you +understand or something you don't. It can't be talked. It sounds silly." + +"Well, then, whistle it!" + +"It has to be _felt_." + +"Peel me," he said, laying her arm to his bare bicep. "Some little +gladiator, eh? Knock the stuffings out of any guy that tried to take you +away from me." + +She turned her head on its flare of drying hair away from him. The beach +was all but quiet and the haze of the end of day in the air, almost in +her eyes, too. + +"Oh, Getaway!" she said, on a sigh, and again, "Getaway!" + +His reserve with her, at which he himself was the first to marvel, +went down a little then and he seized her bare arm, kissing it, almost +sinking his teeth. The curve of her chin down into her throat, as she +turned her head, had maddened him. + +"Quit," she said. + +"Never you mind. You'll wear diamonds," he said, in his sole phraseology +of promise. "Will you get sore if I ask you something, Fairylin?" + +"What?" + +"Want one now?" + +"Want what?" + +"A diamond." + +"No," she said. "When I'm out here I quit wanting things like that." + +"Fine chance a fellow has to warm up to you!" + +"Getaway!" + +"What?" + +"What did you do last night, after you walked home with me?" + +"When?" + +"You know when." + +"Why, bless your heart, I went home, Fairylin!" + +"Please, Getaway--" + +"Home, Fairy." + +"You were up in Monkey's room last night about eleven. Now think, +Getaway!" + +"Aw now--" + +"You were." + +"Aw now--" + +"Nobody can fool me on your step. You tiptoed for all you were worth, +but I knew it! The-ball-of your-foot--squeak! The-ball-of-your +foot--squeak!" + +"Sure enough, now you mention it, maybe for a minute around eleven, but +only for a minute--" + +"Please, Getaway, don't lie. It was for nearly all night. Comings and +goings on my ceiling until I couldn't sleep, not because they were so +noisy, but because they were so soft. Like ugly whispers. Is Monkey the +friend you got the deal on with, Getaway?" + +"We just sat up there talking old times--" + +"And Muggs, about eleven o'clock, sneaking up through the halls, dressed +like the messenger boy again. I saw him when I peeked out of the door to +see who it was tiptoeing. Getaway, for God's sake--" + +He closed over her wrist then, his face extremely pointed. It was a bony +face, so narrow that the eyes and the cheek bones had to be pitched +close, and his black hair, usually so shiny, was down in a bang now, +because it was damp, and to Marylin there was something sinister in that +dip of bang which frightened her. + +"What you don't know don't hurt you. You hear that? Didn't I tell you +that after a few days this business deal--_business_, get that?--will be +over. Then I'm going to hold down any old job your heart desires. But +first I'm going to have money in my pockets! That's the only way to make +this old world sit up and take notice. Spondulicks! Then I'm going to +carry you off and get spliced. See? Real money. Diamonds. If you weren't +so touchy, maybe you'd have diamonds sooner than you think. Want one +now?" + +"Getaway, I know you're up to something. You and Monkey and Muggs are +tied up with those Wall Street bond getaways." + +"For the luvagod, cut that talk here! First thing I know you'll have me +in a brainstorm too." + +"Those fake messenger boys that get themselves hired and, instead of +delivering the bonds from one office to another--disappear with them. +Muggs isn't wearing that messenger's uniform for nothing. You and Monkey +are working with him under cover on something. You can't pass a cop any +more without tightening up. I can feel it when I have your arm. You've +got that old over-your-shoulder look to you, Getaway. My father--had it. +My--mother--too. Getaway!" + +"By gad! you can't beat a woman!" + +"You don't deny it." + +"I do!" + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm glad then, glad!" + +"Over-the-shoulder look. Why, if I'd meet a plain-clothes this minute +I'd go up and kiss him--with my teeth in his ear. That's how much I got +to be afraid of." + +"Oh, Getaway, I'm so glad!" + +"Well, then, lay off--" + +"Getaway, you jumped then! Like somebody had hit you, and it was only a +kid popping a paper bag." + +"You get on my nerves. You'd make a cat nervous, with your suspecting! +The more a fellow tries to do for a girl like you the less--Look here +now, you got to get the hell out of my business." + +She did not reply, but lay to the accompaniment of his violent +nervousness and pinchings into the sand, with her face still away from +him, while the dusk deepened and the ocean quieted. + +After a while: "Now, Marylin, don't be sore. I may be a rotten egg some +ways, but when it comes to you, I'm there." + +"I'm not sore, Getaway," she said, with her voice still away from him. +"Only I--Let's not talk for a minute. It's so quiet out here--so full of +rest." + +He sat, plainly troubled, leaning back on the palms of his hands and +dredging his toes into the sand. In the violet light the tender line of +her chin to her throat still teased him. + +Down farther along the now deserted beach a youth in a bathing suit was +playing a harmonica, his knees hunched under his chin, his mouth and +hand sliding at cross purposes along the harp. That was the silhouette +of him against a clean sky, almost Panlike, as if his feet might be +cloven. + +What he played, if it had any key at all, was rather in the mood of +Chopin's Nocturne in D flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, +a sob for the beauty of that death, and a hope and ecstasy for the new +day yet unborn--all of that on a little throbbing mouth organ. + +"Getaway," cried Marylin, and sat up, spilling sand, "that's it! That's +what I meant a while ago. Hear? It can't be talked. That's it on the +mouth organ!" + +"It?" + +"It! Yes, like I said. Somebody has to feel it inside of him, just like +I do, before he can understand. Can't you feel it? Please! Listen." + +"Aw, that's an old jew's-harp. I'll buy you one. How's that?" + +"All right, I guess," she said, starting off suddenly toward the +bathhouse. + +He was relieved that she had thrown off the silence. + +"Ain't mad any more, are you, Marylin?" + +"No, Getaway--not mad." + +"Mustn't get fussy that way with me, Marylin. It scares me off. I've had +something to show you all day, but you keep scaring me off." + +"What is it?" she said, tiptoe. + +His mouth drew up to an oblique. "You know." + +"No, I don't." + +"Maybe I'll tell you and maybe I won't," he cried, scooping up a handful +of sand and spraying her. "What'll you give me if I tell?" + +"Why--nothing." + +"Want to know?" + +But at the narrowing something in his eyes she sidestepped him, stooping +down at the door of her bathhouse for a last scoop of sand at him. + +"No," she cried, her hair blown like spray and the same breeze carrying +her laughter, guiltless of mood, out to sea. + +On the way home, though, for the merest second, there recurred the +puzzling quirk in her thoughtlessness. + +In the crush of the electric train, packed tightly into the heart of +the most yammering and petulant crowd in the world--home-going pleasure +seekers--a youth rose to give her his seat. A big, beach-tanned fellow +with a cowlick of hair, when he tipped her his hat, standing up off his +right brow like a little apostrophe to him, and blue eyes so very wide +apart, and so clear, that they ran back into his head like aisles with +little lakes shining at the ends of them. + +"Thank you," said Marylin, the infinitesimal second while his hat and +cowlick lifted, her own gaze seeming to run down those avenues of his +eyes for a look into the pools at the back. + +"That was it, too, Getaway! The thing that fellow looked--that I +couldn't say. He said it--with his eyes." + +"Who?" + +"That fellow who gave me this seat." + +"I'll break his face if he goo-goos you," said Getaway, who by this time +had a headache and whose feet had fitted reluctantly back into patent +leather. + +But inexplicably, even to herself, that night, in the shadow of the +stoop of her witch of a rooming house, she let him kiss her lips. His +first of her--her first to any man. It may have been that suddenly she +was so extremely tired--tired of the lay of the week ahead, suggested by +the smells and the noises and the consciousness of that front box pleat. + +The little surrender, even though she drew back immediately, was wine to +him and as truly an intoxicant. + +"Marylin," he cried, wild for her lips again, "I can't be held off much +longer. I'm straight with you, but I'm human, too." + +"Don't, Getaway, not here! To-morrow--maybe." + +"I'm crazy for you!" + +"Go home now, Getaway." + +"Yes--but just one more--" + +"Promise me you'll go straight home from here--to bed." + +"I promise. Marylin, one more. One little more. Your lips--" + +"No, no--not now. Go--" + +Suddenly, by a quirk in the dark, there was a flash of something down +Marylin's bare third finger, so hurriedly and so rashly that it scraped +the flesh. + +"That's for you! I've been afraid all day. Touchy! Didn't I tell you? +Diamonds! Now will you kiss me? Now will you?" + +In the shadow of where she stood, looking down, it was as if she gazed +into a pool of fire that was reaching in flame clear up about her head, +and everywhere in the conflagration Getaway's triumphant "Now will you! +Now will you!" + +"Getaway," she cried, flecking her hand as if it burned, "where did you +get this?" + +"It's for you, Fairylin, and more like it coming. It weighs a carat and +a half. That stone's worth more than a sealskin jacket. You're going to +have one of those, too. Real seal! Now are you sore at me any more? Now +you've a swell kick coming, haven't you? Now! Now!" + +"Getaway," she cried behind her lit hand, because her palm was to her +mouth and above it her eyes showing the terror in their whites, "where +did you get this?" + +"There!" he said, and kissed her hotly and squarely on the lips. + +Somehow, with the ring off her finger and in a little pool of its light +as it lay at his feet, where he stood dazed on the sidewalk, Marylin +was up the stoop, through the door, up two flights, and through her +own door, slamming it, locking it, and into her room, rubbing and half +crying over her left third finger where the flash had been. + +She was frightened, because for all of an hour she sat on the end of the +cot in her little room trembling and with her palms pressed into her +eyes so tightly that the darkness spun. There was quick connection in +Marylin between what was emotional and what was merely sensory. She +knew, from the sickness at the very pit of her, how sick were her heart +and her soul--and how afraid. + +She undressed in the dark--a pale darkness relieved by a lighted window +across the areaway. The blue mercerized dress she slid over a hanger, +covering it with one of her cotton nightgowns and putting it into +careful place behind the cretonne curtain that served her as clothes +closet. Her petticoat, white, with a rill of lace, she folded away. And +then, in her bare feet and a pink-cotton nightgown with a blue bird +machine-stitched on the yoke, stood cocked to the hurry of indistinct +footsteps across her ceiling, and in the narrow slit of hallway +outside her door, where the stairs led up still another flight, +the-ball-of-a-foot--squeak! The sharp crack of a voice. Running. + +"Getaway!" cried Marylin's heart, almost suffocating her with a dreadful +spasm of intuition. + +It was all so quick. In the flash of her flung-open door, as her head +in its amber cloud leaned out, Getaway, bending almost double over +the upper banister, his lips in his narrow face back to show a white +terribleness of strain that lingered in the memory, hurled out an arm +suddenly toward two men mounting the steps of the flight below him. + +There was a shot then, and on the lower flight one of the men, with +an immediate red mouth opening slowly in his neck, slid downstairs +backward, face up. + +Suddenly, from a crouching position beside her door, the second +figure shot forward now, with ready and perfect aim at the +already-beginning-to-be-nerveless figure of Getaway hanging over the +banister with the smoking pistol. + +By the reaching out of her right hand Marylin could have deflected that +perfect aim. In fact, her arm sprang toward just that reflex act, then +stayed itself with the jerk of one solid body avoiding collision with +another. + +So much quicker than it takes in the telling there marched across +Marylin's sickened eyes this frieze: Her father trailing dead from the +underslinging of a freight car. That moment when a uniform had stepped +in from the fire escape across the bolt of Brussels lace; her +mother's scream, like a plunge into the heart of a rapier. +Uniforms--contemplating. On street corners. Opposite houses. Those four +fingers peeping over each of her father's shoulders in the courtroom. +Getaway! His foxlike face leaner. Meaner. Black mask. Electric chair. +Volts. Ugh--volts! God--you know--best--help-- + +When the shot came that sent Getaway pitching forward down the +third-floor flight she was on her own room floor in a long and merciful +faint. Marylin had not reached out. + + * * * * * + +Time passed. Whole rows of days of buttonholes down pleats that were +often groped at through tears. Heavy tears like magnifying glasses. And +then, with that gorgeous and unassailable resiliency of youth, lighter +tears. Fewer tears. Few tears. No tears. + +Under the cretonne curtain, though, the blue mercerized frock hung +unworn, and in its dark drawer remained the petticoat with its rill of +lace. But one night, with a little catch in her throat (it was the last +of her sobs), she took out the sport hat, and for no definite reason +began to turn the jockey rosette to the side where the sun had not faded +it. + +These were quiet evenings in her small room. All the ceiling agitation +had long ago ceased since the shame of the raided room above, and Muggs, +in his absurd messenger's suit, and Monkey marching down the three +flights to the clanking of steel at the wrists. + +There were new footsteps now. Steps that she had also learned to know, +but pleasantly. They marched out so regularly of mornings, invariably +just as she was about to hook her skirtband or pull on her stockings. +They came home so patly again at seven, about as she sat herself down to +a bit of sewing or washing-out. They went to bed so pleasantly. Thud, +on the floor, and then, after the expectant interval of unlacing, thud +again. They were companionable, those footsteps, almost like reverential +marching on the grave of her heart. + +Marylin reversed the rosette, and as the light began to go sat down +beside her window, idly, looking up. There was the star point in her +patch of sky, eating its way right through the purple like a diamond, +and her ache over it was so tangible that it seemed to her she could +almost lift the hurt out of her heart, as if it were a little imprisoned +bird. And as it grew darker there came two stars, and three, and nine, +and finally the sixty hundred. + +Then from the zig of the fire escape above, before it twisted down into +the zag of hers, there came to Marylin, through the medley of city +silences and the tears in her heart, this melody, on a jew's-harp: + +If it had any key at all, it was in the mood of Chopin's Nocturne in D +flat major. A little sigh for the death of a day, a sob for the beauty +of that death, and the throb of an ecstasy for the new day not yet born. + +Looking up against the sheer wall of the vertical city, on the ledge of +fire escape above hers, and in the yellow patch of light thrown out from +the room behind, a youth, with his knees hunched up under his chin, and +his mouth and hand moving at cross purposes, was playing the harmonica. + +Wide apart were his eyes, and blue, so that while she gazed up, smiling, +as he gazed down, smiling, it was almost as if she ran up the fire +escape through the long clear lanes of those eyes, for a dip into the +little twin lakes at the back of them. + +And--why, didn't you know?--there was a lift of cowlick to the right +side of his front hair, as he sat there playing in the twilight, that +was exactly the shape of an apostrophe! + + + + +THE SMUDGE + + +In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves, +and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sag +and the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel. + +That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is a +tender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that still +aches with threads of life. + +Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug with +the fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet. +It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles. + +Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where there +have been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among the +headstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Just +drearily. + +There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. But +it, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth with +receding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. They +had. + +Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids +now. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat of +kettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet. + +She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedy +black." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster! +Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week and +no road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" had +been especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedy +relief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept the +audience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whose +heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly. + +And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love, +but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, could +kiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly. + +Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivory +fan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke her +tongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy: + +It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, for +instance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck of +Marcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume. + +Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown Cold +Cream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had come +Marcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet set; the Steinway +grand piano; the yearly and by no means light tuition toll at Miss +Harperly's Select Day School for Girls. + +You get the whimsy of it? For everything fair that was Marcia, Hattie +had brownly paid for. Liltingly, and with the rill of the song of +thanksgiving in her heart. + +That was how Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody of +Marcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater. +Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge. +Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into the +look of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of red +meat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of a +cocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and caking +the breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed. +The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Men +in undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddy +bears you're puttin' on." Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor's +overtone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait in +the wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jaws +etched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eat +you. Faces swimming in the stage ozone and wolfish for cue. The purple +lips-- + +Almost like a frieze stuck on to the border of each day was Hattie's +life in the theater. Passementerie. + +That was how Hattie treated it. Especially during those placid years of +the phenomenal New York run of "Love Me Long." The outer edge of her +reality. The heart of her reality? Why, the heart of it was the long +morning hours in her own fragrant kitchen over doughnuts boiled in oil +and snowed under in powdered sugar! Cookies that bit with a snap. Filet +of sole boned with fingers deft at it and served with a merest fluff of +tartar sauce. Marcia ate like that. Preciously. Pecksniffily. An egg at +breakfast a gag to the sensibilities! So Hattie ate hers in the kitchen, +standing, and tucked the shell out of sight, wrapped in a lettuce leaf. +Beefsteak, for instance, sickened Marcia, because there was blood in the +ooze of its juices. But Hattie had a sly way of camouflage. Filet +mignon (so strengthening, you see) crushed under a little millinery of +mushrooms and served under glass. Then when Marcia's neat little row of +neat little teeth bit in and the munch began behind clean and careful +lips, Hattie's heart, a regular old bandit for cunning, beat hoppity, +skippity, jump! + +Those were her realities. Home. The new sandwich cutters. Heart shape. +Diamond shape. Spade. The strip of hall carpet newly discovered to scour +like new with brush and soap and warm water. Epstein's meat market +throws in free suet. The lamp with the opal-silk shade for Marcia's +piano. White oilcloth is cleaner than shelf paper. Dotted Swiss +curtains, the ones in Marcia's room looped back with pink bows. Old +sashes, pressed out and fringed at the edges. + +And if you think that Hattie's six rooms and bath and sunny, full-sized +kitchen, on Morningside Heights, were trumped-up ones of the press agent +for the Sunday Supplement, look in. + +Any afternoon. Tuesday, say, and Marcia just home from school. On +Tuesday afternoon of every other week Hattie made her cream, in a large +copper pot that hung under the sink. Six dozen half-pint jars waiting +to be filled with Brown Cold Cream. One hundred and forty-four jars +a month. Guaranteed Color-fast. Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate. Labeled. +Sealed. Sold. And demand exceeding the supply. An ingratiating, expert +cream, known the black-faced world over. It slid into the skin, not +sootily, but illuminating it to winking, African copper. For instance, +Hattie's make-up cream for Linda in "Love Me Long" was labeled +"Chocolate." But it worked in even a truer brown, as if it had come out +of the pigment instead of gone into the pores. + +Four hours of stirring it took, adding with exact minutiae the +mysteriously proper proportions of spermacetti, oil of sweet almonds, +white wax--But never mind. Hattie's dark secret was her own. + +Fourteen years of her black art as Broadway's maid _de luxe_ had been +her laboratory. It was almost her boast now--remember the sunken +headstones--that she had handled spotlessly every fair young star of the +theaters' last ten years. + +It was as mysterious as pigment, her cream, and as true, and netted +her, with occasional extra batches, an average of two hundred dollars a +month. She enjoyed making it. Singing as she stirred or rather stirring +as she sang, the plenitude of her figure enveloped in a blue-and-white +bungalow apron with rickrack trimming. + +Often Marcia, home from day school, watched. Propped up in the window +frame with her pet cat, a Persian, with eyes like swimming pools with +painted green bottoms, seated in a perfect circle in her quiet lap, +for all the world in the attitude of a sardel except for the toothpick +through. + +Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sit +like that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie that +stare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little suns +were having their high noon. + +Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's back +could ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into her +face when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at her +nerves. + +"Momie, I'll stir for a while." + +Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as precise +as a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and her +teeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word, +biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had never +grown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was something +about them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes that +she had saved. Little innocences. + +"I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired." + +"But your face is all twisted." + +Hattie's twisted face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor that +the egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there. + +"Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon." + +"Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep." + +As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could +keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a +little arch of sweat came out in a mustache. + +The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of it +into her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so was +the bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been a +prettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkled +and were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But the +red of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars were +just freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing above +the ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheeks +hung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's arms +and thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckled +granite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hips +were like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it. +Mab smacking the Himalayas. + +After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. There +was still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as her +kitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly. +The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city from +Hattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flat +as slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. The +seventy-two jars were untopped now, in a row on a board over the built-in +washtub. Seventy-two yawning for content. Squnch! Her enormous spoon +into the copper kettle and flop, gurgle, gooze, softly into the jars. +One--two--three--At the sixty-eighth, Marcia, without stirring or +lifting her lids, spoke into the sucky silence. + +"Momie?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"You'll be glad." + +Hattie, pausing at the sixty-eighth, "Why, dear?" + +"I came home in Nonie Grosbeck's automobile. I'm invited to a dinner +dance October the seventeenth. At their house in Gramercy Park." + +The words must have gone to Hattie's knees, because, dropping a spat of +mulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchen +chair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal set +on the shelf above it. + +"Marcy!" + +"And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I'm to +be her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invited +except Edwina Nelson, because her father's on nearly all the same boards +of directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and--" + +"Marcia! Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing had +happened! Child, sometimes I think you're made of ice." + +"Why, I'm glad, momie." + +But that's what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfaction +in Marcia's eyes. + +"Glad," said Hattie, the word full of tears. "Why, honey, you don't +realize it, but this is the beginning! This is the meaning of my +struggle to get you into Miss Harperly's school. It wasn't easy. I've +never told you the--strings I had to pull. Conservative people, you see. +That's what the Grosbecks are, too. Home people. The kind who can afford +to wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirty +years." + +"Nome's mother was born in the house they live in." + +"Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges. +Taxpayers. Policyholders. Church members. Oh, Marcia, those are the safe +people!" + +"There's a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church." + +"I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to the +make-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear for +you! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotel +room, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for just +throwing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's because +I'm too tired, Marcy. Too lonesome for home. On the road I always used +to think of all the families in the audience. The husbands and wives. +Brides and grooms. Sweethearts. After the performance they all went to +homes. To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks'. To cottages. To flats. +With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-room +table. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turned +back. And then--me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the dark +downtown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. The +dingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reach +over that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell of +disinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you." + +"Ugh!" + +"Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia! The unexciting people, maybe, but +the safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones." + +"Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy." + +"Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia." + +"Nonie goes to riding academy." + +"So shall you." + +"It's six dollars an hour." + +"I don't care." + +"Her father's retired except for being director in banks. And, +momie--they don't mind, dear--about us. Nonie knows that my--father +is--is separated and never lived at home with us. She's broad-minded. +She says just so there's no scandal, a divorce, or anything like that. +She said it's vulgar to cultivate only rich friends. She says she'd go +with me even if she's forbidden to." + +"Why, Marcy darling, why should she be forbidden?" + +"Oh, Nonie's broadminded. She says if two people are unsuited they +should separate, quietly, like you and my father. She knows we're one of +the first old Southern families on my father's side. I--I'm not trying +to make you talk about it, dear, but--but we are--aren't we?" + +"Yes, Marcy." + +"He--he was just--irresponsible. That's not being--not nice people, is +it?" + +"No, Marcy." + +"Nonie's not forbidden. She just meant in case, momie. You see, with +some old families like hers--the stage--but Nonie says her father +couldn't even say anything to that if he wanted to. His own sister went +on the stage once, and they had to hush it up in the papers." + +"Did you explain to her, Marcy, that stage life at its best can be full +of fine ideals and truth? Did you make her see how regular your own +little life has been? How little you know about--my work? How away I've +kept you? How I won't even play out-of-town engagements so we can always +be together in our little home? You must explain all those things to +your friends at Miss Harperly's. It helps--with steady people." + +"I have, momie, and she's going to bring me home every afternoon in +their automobile after we've called for her brother Archie at Columbia +Law School." + +"Marcy! the Grosbeck automobile bringing you home every day!" + +"And it's going to call for me the night of the party. Nonie's getting a +lemon taffeta." + +"I'll get you ivory, with a bit of real lace!" + +"Oh, momie, momie, I can scarcely wait!" + +"What did she say, Marcy, when she asked--invited you?" + +"She?" + +"Nonie." + +"Why--she--didn't invite me, momie." + +"But you just said--" + +"It was her brother Archie invited me. We called for him at Columbia Law +School, you see. It was he invited me. Of course Nonie wants me and said +'Yes' right after him--but it's he--who wants Nonie and me to be chums. +I--He--I thought--I--told--you--momie." + +Suddenly Marcia's eyes, almost with the perpendicular slits of her +kitten's in them, seemed to swish together like portieres, shutting +Hattie behind them with her. + +"Oh--my Marcy!" said Hattie, dimly, after a while, as if from their +depths. "Marcy, dearest!" + +"At--at Harperly's, momie, almost all the popular upper-class girls +wear--a--a boy's fraternity pin." + +"Fraternity pin?" + +"It's the--the beginning of being engaged." + +"But, Marcy--" + +"Archie's a Pi Phi!" + +"A--what?" + +"A Pi Phi." + +"Phi--pie--Marcy--dear--" + + * * * * * + +On October 17th "Love Me Long" celebrated its two-hundredth performance. +Souvenir programs. A few appropriate words by the management. +A flashlight of the cast. A round of wine passed in the +after-the-performance gloom of the wings. Aqueous figures fading off in +the orderly back-stage fashion of a well-established success. + +Hattie kissed the star. They liked each other with the unenvy of their +divergent roles. Miss Robinson even humored some of Hattie's laughs. She +liked to feel the flame of her own fairness as she stood there waiting +for the audience to guffaw its fill of Hattie's drolleries; a narcissus +swaying reedily beside a black crocodile. + +She was a new star and her beauty the color of cloth of gold, and Hattie +in her lowly comedian way not an undistinguished veteran. So they could +kiss in the key of a cat cannot unseat a king. + +But, just the same, Miss Robinson's hand flew up automatically against +the dark of Hattie's lips. + +"I don't fade off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast. +I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never so +much as a speck or a spot on her. My cream don't fade." + +"Of course not, dear! How silly of me! Kiss me again." + +That was kind enough of her. Oh yes, they got on. But sometimes Hattie, +seated among her sagging headstones, would ache with the dry sob of the +black crocodile who yearned toward the narcissus.... + +Quite without precedent, there was a man waiting for her in the wings. + +The gloom of back-stage was as high as trees and Hattie had not seen +him in sixteen years. But she knew. With the stunned consciousness of a +stabbed person that glinting instant before the blood begins to flow. + +It was Morton Sebree--Marcia's father. + +"Morton!" + +"Hattie." + +"Come up to my dressing room," she said, as matter-of-factly as if her +brain were a clock ticking off the words. + +They walked up an iron staircase of unreality. Fantastic stairs. Wisps +of gloom. Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit very +hard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to her +pain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant little +ideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now. +Terribly. Morton was back. + +His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister. +It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of a +hand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again. +Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesque +show. + +Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in a +wire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks of +grease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end. +Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with the +gesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinks +seeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around her +lips. It made of her mouth a comedy blubber, her own rather firm lips +sliding about somewhere in the lightish swamp. That was all of Hattie +that looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with popping +whites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the irises +were in their pools, inviolate. + +"Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black." + +"I thought you were in Rio." + +"Got to hankering after the States, Hattie." + +"I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to think +maybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one." + +"No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while." + +"Where?" + +"Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?" + +"No." + +"Cancer." + +It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowly +soluble in it. Gurgling down. + +"O-oh!" + +"Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin' +behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night. +You looked right natural. Little heavier." + +"What do you want?" + +"Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular, +as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey." + +"Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking in +a box of echoes. + +"Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into the +theater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey." + +She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of the +foment of torture. + +"What's my looks to you?" + +"You've filled out." + +"You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven't +aged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. A +wall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone." + +"I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin' +streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had a +different way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn in +me." + +"Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!" + +"But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I ever +really cared for, too. You and m' mother." + +Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him. + +"Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuate +me only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathe +now. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eats +out the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from a +distance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine big +house with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were the +sickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! If +she and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that there +aren't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that a +Morris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good! +You're no good!" + +She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice. + +"Why, Hattie," he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!" + +"I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten apple +that can speck every one it touches." + +"That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong." + +"Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The very +sound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had. +I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is you +might as well go. I'm cured!" + +He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He was +dressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There was +still a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But his +hands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowly +stained, like meerschaum darkening. + +"Grantin' everything you say, Hattie--and I'm holdin' no brief for +myself--_I've_ been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been down +sick with hookworm." + +"With devilishness." + +"No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick man +all my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knocked +it out of me." + +"Faugh!" + +"I'm a new man since I'm well of it." + +"Hookworm! That's an easy word for ingrained no-'countness, deviltry, +and deceit. It wasn't hookworm came into the New Orleans stock company +where I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play big +things. It wasn't hookworm put me in a position where I had to take +anything I could get! So that instead of finding me playing leads +you find me here--black-face! It was a devil! A liar! A spendthrift, +no-'count son out of a family that deserved better. I've cried more +tears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry. +Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in New +Orleans! Peach Tree Street! I remember how beautiful even the name of +it was when you took me there--lying--and how horrible it became to me. +Those months when I used to see your mother's carriage drive by the +house twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains. That's +what I've never forgiven myself for. She was a woman who stood for +fine things in New Orleans. A good woman whom the whole town pitied! A +no-'count son squandering her fortune and dragging down the family name. +If only I had known all that then! She would have helped me if I had +appealed to her. She wouldn't have let things turn out secretly--the way +they did. She would have helped me. I--You--Why have you come here +to jerk knives out of my heart after it's got healed with the points +sticking in? You're nothing to me. You're skulking for a reason. You've +been hanging around, getting pointers about me. My life is my own! You +get out!" + +"The girl. She well?" + +It was a quiet question, spoken in the key of being casual, and Hattie, +whose heart skipped a beat, tried to corral the fear in her eyes to take +it casually, except that her eyelids seemed to grow old even as they +drooped. Squeezed grape skins. + +"You get out, Morton," she said. "You've got to get out." + +He made a cigarette in an old, indolent way he had of wetting it with +his smile. He was handsome enough after his fashion, for those who like +the rather tropical combination of dark-ivory skin, and hair a lighter +shade of tan. It did a curious thing to his eyes. Behind their allotment +of tan lashes they became neutralized. Straw colored. + +"She's about sixteen now. Little over, I reckon." + +"What's that to you?" + +"Blood, Hattie. Thick." + +"What thickened it, Morton--after sixteen years?" + +"Used to be an artist chap down in Rio. On his uppers. One night, +according to my description of what I imagined she looked like, he drew +her. Yellow hair, I reckoned, and sure enough--" + +"You're not worthy of the resemblance. It wouldn't be there if I had the +saying." + +"You haven't," he said, suddenly, his teeth snapping together as if +biting off a thread. + +"Nor you!" something that was the whiteness of fear lightening behind +her mask. She rose then, lifting her chair out of the path toward the +door and flinging her arm out toward it, very much after the manner of +Miss Robinson in Act II. + +"You get out, Morton," she said, "before I have you put out. They're +closing the theater now. Get out!" + +"Hattie," his calm enormous, "don't be hasty. A man that has come to his +senses has come back to you humble and sincere. A man that's been sick. +Take me back, Hattie, and see if--" + +"Back!" she said, lifting her lips scornfully away from touching the +word. "You remember that night in that little room on Peach Tree Street +when I prayed on my knees and kissed--your--shoes and crawled for your +mercy to stay for Marcia to be born? Well, if you were to lie on this +floor and kiss my shoes and crawl for my mercy I'd walk out on you the +way you walked out on me. If you don't go, I'll call a stage hand and +make you go. There's one coming down the corridor now and locking the +house. You go--or I'll call!" + +His eyes, with their peculiar trick of solubility in his color scheme, +seemed all tan. + +"I'll go," he said, looking slim and Southern, his imperturbability ever +so slightly unfrocked--"I'll go, but you're making a mistake, Hattie." + +Fear kept clanging in her. Fire bells of it. + +"Oh, but that's like you, Morton! Threats! But, thank God, nothing you +can do can harm me any more." + +"I reckon she's considerable over sixteen now. Let's see--" + +Fire bells. Fire bells. + +"Come out with what you want, Morton, like a man! You're feeling +for something. Money? Now that your mother is dead and her fortune +squandered, you've come to harass me? That's it! I know you, like a +person who has been disfigured for life by burns knows fire. Well, I +won't pay!" + +"Pay? Why, Hattie--I want you--back--" + +She could have cried because, as she sat there blackly, she was sick +with his lie. + +"I'd save a dog from you." + +"Then save--her--from me." + +The terrible had happened so quietly. Morton had not raised his voice; +scarcely his lips. + +She closed the door then and sat down once more, but that which had +crouched out of their talk was unleashed now. + +"That's just exactly what I intend to do." + +"How?" + +"By saving her sight or sound of you." + +"You can't, Hattie." + +"Why?" + +"I've come back." There was a curve to his words that hooked into her +heart like forceps about a block of ice. But she outstared him, holding +her lips in the center of the comedy rim so that he could see how firm +their bite. + +"Not to me." + +"To her, then." + +"Even you wouldn't be low enough to let her know--" + +"Know what?" + +"Facts." + +"You mean she doesn't know?" + +"Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I've +kept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband and +wife--who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her--" And +suddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayed +her. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leap +of her error into her consciousness. + +"Oh," he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely as +sorghum in the pouring. + +"You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!" + +"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected. +Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it." + +"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you are +and what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you going +to do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips were +taking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device. + +"Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of great +pink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!" + +"Wouldn't tell what?" + +He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying to +fasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyes +there. Only the neutral, tricky tan. + +"You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more important +than anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared like +her to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little school +friends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton. +For God's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care so +terribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'll +tell her then. But for God's sake, Morton, let us live--now!" + +"Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to one +of these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lie +to her won't be a lie any more." + +"Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?" + +"I'll marry you." + +"You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gotten +on a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over the +jar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're so +easy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can get +the coward words out. Marry you! You fool!" + +It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, sucking +back her lower lip, then hurling. + +"Well, Hattie," he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that's +pretty plain." + +"I reckon it is, Morton." + +"All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to the +grave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something to +know I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out of +here for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it." + +"I'd advise you to." + +"No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Entitled to a +little natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. The +girl. No harm." + +"You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn't +tell--that--child!" + +"Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well, +you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'." + +"You can't put your foot--" + +"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Course +there's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. I +wouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I even +know where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, +Miss Harperly's." + +"You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her +tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips. +They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she +could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God! +Marcia! + +That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately she +could manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! She +must keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black. + +"Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab." + +"How do you know it's--up?" + +"Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural to +put it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate." + +"So--you _have_--been watching." + +"Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got to +town--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's a +mighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl brings +your--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a family +of Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon." + +"O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rolling +suddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake! +Please!" + +He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheek +and its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid's +dress. + +"By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream if +you handle it right, honey." + +"My way is the right way for me." + +"But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on the +job. Promote it!" + +"Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of your +mother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of your +wildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you in +South America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way you +squandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. The +alfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't get +your hands on my affairs. My way suits me!" + +The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in the +circular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the door +and the hairy voice that came through. + +"All out!" + +"Yes," she said, without knowing it. + +"You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman like +you, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something with +a fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regard +for the girl. Black-face!" + +"What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kept +her like a lily!" + +"Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eating +humble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart, +I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwich +to-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years is +the truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's done +every day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there cream +will--" + +She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leaves +scuttling ahead of wind. + +"The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, piece +by piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to you +again is, 'Get out!'" + +"All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin' +to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!" + +"No. It's late. She's--" + +"Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another. +If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'd +let me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but if +I were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me." + +"Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer without +trying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Would +a hundred--two hundred--" + +"I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--" + +"You see, Morton, she's such a little thing. A little thing with big +eyes. All her life those eyes have looked right down into me, believing +everything I ever told her. About you too, Morton. Good things. Not that +I'm ashamed of anything I ever told her. My only wrong was ignorance. +And innocence. Innocence of the kind of lesson I was to learn from you." + +"Nothin' was ever righted by harping on it, Hattie." + +"But I want you to understand--O God, make him understand--she's such a +sensitive little thing. And as things stand now--glad I'm her mother. +Yes, glad--black-face and all! Why, many's the time I've gone home from +the theater, too tired to take off my make-up until I got into my own +rocker with my ankles soaking in warm water. They swell so terribly +sometimes. Rheumatism, I guess. Well, many a time when I kissed her in +her sleep she's opened her eyes on me--black-face and all. Her arms up +and around me. I was there underneath the black! She knows that! And +that's what she'll always know about me, no matter what you tell her. +I'm there--her mother--underneath the black! You hear, Morton! That's +why you must let us--live--" + +"My proposition is the mighty decent one of a gentleman." + +"She's only a little baby, Morton. And just at that age where being +like all the other boys and girls is the whole of her little life. It's +killing--all her airiness and fads and fancies. Such a proper little +young lady. You know, the way they clip and trim them at finishing +school. Sweet-sixteen nonsense that she'll outgrow. To-night, Morton, +she's at a party. A boy's. Her first. That fine-looking yellow-haired +young fellow and his sister that bring her home every afternoon. At +their house. Gramercy Park. A fine young fellow--Phi Pi--" + +"Looka here, Hattie, are you talking against time?" + +"She's home asleep by now. I told her she had to be in bed by eleven. +She minds me, Morton. I wouldn't--couldn't--wake her. Morton, Morton, +she's yours as much as mine. That's God's law, no matter how much man's +law may have let you shirk your responsibility. Don't hurt your own +flesh and blood by coming back to us--now. I remember once when you cut +your hand it made you ill. Blood! Blood is warm. Red. Sacred stuff. +She's your blood, Morton. You let us alone when we needed you. Leave us +alone, now that we don't!" + +"But you do, Hattie girl. That's just it. You're running things a +woman's way. Why, a man with the right promoting ideas--" + +There was a fusillade of bangs on the door now, and a shout as if the +hair on the voice were rising in anger. + +"All out or the doors 'll be locked on yuh! Fine doings!" + +She grasped her light wrap from its hook, and her hat with its whirl of +dark veil, fitting it down with difficulty over the fizz of wig. + +"Come, Morton," she said, suddenly. "I'm ready. You're right, now or +never." + +"Your face!" + +"No time now. Later--at home! She'll know that I'm there--under the +black!" + +"So do I, Hattie. That's why I--" + +"I'm not one of the ready-made heroines you read about. That's not my +idea of sacrifice! I'd let my child hang her head of my shame sooner +than stand up and marry you to save her from it. Marcia wouldn't want me +to! She's got your face--but my character! She'll fight! She'll glory +that I had the courage to let you tell her the--truth! Yes, she will," +she cried, her voice pleading for the truth of what her words exclaimed. +"She'll glory in having saved me--from you! You can come! Now, too, +while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't want +you skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head--or hers! You +can tell her to-night--but in my presence! Come!" + +"Yes, sir," he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!" +Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click. +"Yes--sir!" + +They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat of +rain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timbers +taxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did something +horrid to her. + +It was as if the skull of her, set in torment, were looking through a +transparent black mask, but, because there were not lips, forced to +grin. + +And yet, do you know that while she rode with him Hattie's heart was +high? So high that when she left him finally, seated in her little +lamplit living room, it was he whose unease began to develop. + +"I--If she's asleep, Hattie--" + +Her head looked so sure. Thrust back and sunk a little between the +shoulders. + +"If she's asleep, I'll wake her. It's better this way. I'm glad, now. I +want her to see me save myself. She would want me to. You banked on mock +heroics from me, Morton. You lost." + +Marcia was asleep, in her narrow, pretty bed with little bowknots +painted on the pale wood. About the room all the tired and happy muss of +after-the-party. A white-taffeta dress with a whisper of real lace at +the neck, almost stiffishly seated, as if with Marcia's trimness, on +a chair. A steam of white tulle on the dressing table. A buttonhole +gardenia in a tumbler of water. One long white-kid glove on the table +beside the night light. A naked cherub in a high hat, holding a pink +umbrella for the lamp shade. + +"Dear me! Dear me!" screamed Hattie to herself, fighting to keep her +mind on the plane of casual things. "She's lost a glove again. Dear me! +Dear me! I hope it's a left one to match up with the right one she saved +from the last pair. Dear me!" + +She picked up a white film of stocking, turning and exploring with +spread fingers in the foot part for holes. There was one! Marcia's big +toe had danced right through. "Dear me!" + +Marcia sleeping. Very quietly and very deeply. She slept like that. +Whitely and straightly and with the covers scarcely raised for the ridge +of her slim body. + +Sometimes Marcia asleep could frighten Hattie. There was something about +her white stilliness. Lilies are too fair and so must live briefly. +That thought could clutch so that she would kiss Marcia awake. Kiss her +soundly because Marcia's sleep could be so terrifyingly deep. + +"Marcia," said Hattie, and stood over her bed. Then again, "Mar-cia!" On +more voice than she thought her dry throat could yield her. + +There was the merest flip of black on the lacy bosom of Marcia's +nightgown, and Hattie leaned down to fleck it. No. It was a pin--a small +black-enameled pin edged in pearls. Automatically Hattie knew. + +"Pi Phi!" + +"Marcia," cried Hattie, and shook her a little. She hated so to waken +her. Always had. Especially for school on rainy days. Sometimes didn't. +Couldn't. Marcia came up out of sleep so reluctantly. A little dazed. A +little secretive. As if a white bull in a dream had galloped off with +her like Persephone's. + +Only Hattie did not know of Persephone. She only knew that Marcia slept +beautifully and almost breathlessly. Sweet and low. It seemed silly, +sleeping beautifully. But just the same, Marcia did. + +Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marcia +should know. Now, too, while her heart was so high. + +Sometimes it took as many as three kisses to awaken Marcia. Hattie bent +for the first one, a sound one on the tip of her lip. + +"Marcia!" she cried. "Marcy, wake up!" and drew back. + +Something had happened! Darkly. A smudge the size of a quarter and +the color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly on +Marcia's whiteness. + +Hattie had smudged Marcia! _Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_ + +There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge. + + * * * * * + +It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat dangling +from soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else. +Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent about +it. + +"We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married," he +said. + +"Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia." + +"Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her. + +"Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without noting +that his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--" + +"To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour for +Greenwich." + +He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur. + +"Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now." + +"Of course," he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strapped +me--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help." + +She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehow +her fingers were not flexible enough to open it. + +His were. + +There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactly +as he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence. + +Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, banging +shutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck by +lightning. + +And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder. + + + + +GUILTY + + +To the swift hiss of rain down soot-greasy window panes and through a +medley of the smells of steam off wet overcoats and a pale stench +of fish, a judge turned rather tired Friday-afternoon eyes upon the +prisoner at the bar, a smallish man in a decent-enough salt-and-pepper +suit and more salt than pepper in his hair and mustache. + +"You have heard the charge against you," intoned the judge in the holy +and righteous key of justice about to be administered. "Do you plead +guilty or not guilty?" + +"I--I plead guilty of not having told her facts that would have helped +her to struggle against the--the thing--her inheritance." + +"You must answer the Court directly. Do you--" + +"You see, Your Honor--my little girl--so little--my promise. Yes, yes, +I--I plead guilty of keeping her in ignorance of what she should have +known, but you see, Your Honor, my little gi--" + +"Order! Answer to the point. Do you," began the judge again, "plead +guilty or not guilty?" his tongue chiming the repetition into the +waiting silence like a clapper into a bell. + +The prisoner at the bar thumbed his derby hat after the immemorial +dry-fingered fashion of the hunted meek, his mouth like an open wound +puckering to close. + +"Guilty or not guilty, my man? Out with it." + +Actually it was not more than a minute or two before the prisoner found +reply, but it was long enough for his tortured eye to flash inward and +backward with terrible focus.... + + * * * * * + +On its long cross-town block, Mrs. Plush's boarding house repeated +itself no less than thirty-odd times. Every front hall of them smelled +like cold boiled potato, and the gilt chair in the parlor like banana. +At dinner hour thirty-odd basement dining rooms reverberated, not +uncheerfully, to the ironstone clatter of the canary-bird bathtub of +succotash, the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, and +on Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, +oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-down +high shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pints +of water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle with old +broom runts. + +If Mrs. Plush's house broke rank at all, it did so by praiseworthy +omission. In that row of the fly-by-night and the van-by-day, the moving +or the express wagon seldom backed up before No. 28, except immediately +preceding a wedding or following a funeral. And never, in twenty-two +years of respectable tenancy, had the furtive lodger oozed, under +darkness, through the Plush front door by night, or a huddle of +sidewalk trunks and trappings staged the drab domestic tragedy of the +dispossessed. + +The Kellers (second-story back) had eaten their satisfied way through +fourteen years of the breakfasts of apple sauce or cereal; choice of ham +and eggs any style or country sausage and buckwheat cakes. + +Jeanette Peopping, born in the back parlor, was married out of the +front. + +On the night that marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Dangs into +the third-floor alcove room there was frozen pudding with hot fudge +sauce for dessert, and a red-paper bell ringing silently from the +dining-room chandelier. + +For the eight years of their placid connubiality Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jett +had occupied the second-story front. + +Stability, that was the word. Why, Mrs. Plush had dealt with her corner +butcher for so long that on crowded Saturday mornings it was her custom +to step without challenge into the icy zone of the huge refrigerator, +herself pinching and tearing back the cold-storage-bitten wings of +fowls, weighing them with a fidelity to the ounce, except for a few +extra giblets (Mr. Keller loved them), hers, anyhow, most of the time, +for the asking. + +Even the nearest drug store, wary of that row of the transient +hat-on-the-peg, off-the-peg, would deliver to No. 28 a mustard plaster +or a deck of cards and charge without question. + +To the Jett Fish Company, "Steamers, Hotels, and Restaurants +Supplied--If It Swims We Have It," Mrs. Plush paid her bill quarterly +only, then Mr. Jett deducting the sum delicately from his board. + +So it may be seen that Mrs. Plush's boarding house offered scanty palate +to the dauber in local color. + +On each of the three floors was a bathroom, spotlessly clean, with a +neat hand-lettered sign over each tin tub: + + DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU + + PLEASE WASH OUT THE TUB AFTER YOU + +Upon the outstanding occasion of the fly in the soup and Mr. Keller's +subsequent deathly illness, the regrettable immersion had been directly +traceable, not to the kitchen, but to the dining-room ceiling. It was +November, a season of heavy dipterous mortality. Besides, Mrs. Peopping +had seen it fall. + +Nor entered here the dirge of the soggy towel; Mrs. Plush placed fluffy +stacks of them outside each door each morning. Nor groggy coffee; Mrs. +Plush was famous for hers. Drip coffee, boiled up to an angry sea and +half an eggshell dropped in like a fairy barque, to settle it. + +The Jetts, with whom we have really to do, drank two cups apiece at +breakfast. Mrs. Jett, to the slight aid and abetment of one of her two +rolls, stopped right there; Mr. Jett plunging on into choice-of-- + +The second roll Mrs. Jett usually carried away with her from the table. +Along about ten o'clock she was apt to feel faint rather than hungry. + +"Gone," she called it. "Feeling a little gone." + +Not that there was a suggestion of frailty about Mrs. Jett. Anything but +that. On the contrary, in all the eight years in the boarding house, +she held the clean record of not a day in bed, and although her history +previous to that time showed as many as fifteen hours a day on duty in +the little fancy-goods store of her own proprietorship, those years +showed her guilty of only two incapacitated days, and then because she +ran an embroidery needle under her finger nail and suffered a slight +infection. + +Yet there was something about Emma Jett--eight years of married life +had not dissipated it--that was not eupeptic; something of the sear and +yellow leaf of perpetual spinsterhood. She was a wintry little body +whose wide marriage band always hung loosely on her finger with an air +of not belonging; wore an invariable knitted shawl iced with beads +across her round shoulders, and frizzed her graying bangs, which, +although fruit of her scalp, had a set-on look. Even the softness to her +kind gray eyes was cozy rather than warm. + +She could look out tabbily from above a lap of handiwork, but in her +boudoir wrapper of gray flannelette scalloped in black she was scrawny, +almost rangy, like a horse whose ribs show. + +"I can no more imagine those two courting," Mrs. Keller, a proud twin +herself and proud mother of twins, remarked one afternoon to a euchre +group. "They must have sat company by correspondence. Why, they won't +even kiss when he comes home if there's anybody in the room!" + +"They kiss, all right," volunteered Mrs. Dang of the bay-window alcove +room, "and she waves him good-by every morning clear down the block." + +"You can't tell about anybody nowadays," vouchsafed some one, +tremendously. + +But in the end the consensus of opinion, unanimous to the vote, was: +Lovely woman, Mrs. Jett. + +Nice couple; so unassuming. The goodness looks out of her face; and so +reserved! + +But it was this aura of reserve that kept Mrs. Jett, not without a bit +of secret heartache about it, as remote from the little world about her +as the yolk of an egg is remote from the white. Surrounded, yet no part +of those surroundings. No osmosis took place. + +Almost daily, in some one or another's room, over Honiton lace or the +making of steel-bead chatelaine bags, then so much in vogue, those +immediate, plushy-voiced gatherings of the members of the plain gold +circle took place. Delicious hours of confidence, confab, and the +exchanges of the connubially loquacious. + +The supreme _lese majeste_ of the married woman who wears her state of +wedlock like a crown of blessed thorns; bleeds ecstatically and swaps +afternoon-long intimacies, made nasty by the plush in her voice, with +her sisters of the matrimonial dynasty. + +Mrs. Jett was also bidden, by her divine right, to those conclaves of +the wives, and faithfully she attended, but on the rim, as it were. +Bitterly silent she sat to the swap of: + +"That's nothing. After Jeanette was born my hair began to fall out just +as if I had had typhoid"; or, "Both of mine, I am proud to say, were +bottle babies"; and once, as she listened, her heart might have been a +persimmon, puckering: "The idea for a woman of forty-five to have her +first! It's not fair to the child." + +They could not, of course, articulate it, but the fact of the matter was +not alone that Mrs. Jett was childless (so was Mrs. Dang, who somehow +belonged), it was that they sensed, with all the antennae of their busy +little intuitions, the ascetic odor of spinsterhood which clung to Mrs. +Jett. She was a little "too nice." Would flush at some of the innuendoes +of the _contes intimes_, tales of no luster and dulled by soot, but in +spite of an inner shrinkage would loop up her mouth to smile, because +not to do so was to linger even more remotely outside the privileged rim +of the wedding band. + +Evenings, after these gatherings, Mrs. Jett was invariably even a bit +gentler than her wont in her greetings to Mr. Jett. + +Of course, they kissed upon his arrival home, comment to the contrary +notwithstanding, in a taken-for-granted fashion, perhaps, but there was +something sweet about their utter unexcitement; and had the afternoon +session twisted her heart more than usual, Mrs. Jett was apt to place a +second kiss lightly upon the black and ever so slightly white mustache, +or lay her cheek momentarily to his, as if to atone by thus yearning +over him for the one aching and silent void between them. + +But in the main Henry Jett was a contented and happy man. + +His wife, whom he had met at a church social and wooed in the front of +the embroidery and fancy-goods store, fitted him like the proverbial +glove--a suede one. In the eight years since, his fish business had +almost doubled, and his expenses, if anything, decreased, because more +and more it became pleasanter to join in the evening game of no-stakes +euchre down in the front parlor or to remain quietly upstairs, a +gas lamp on the table between them, Mr. Jett in a dressing gown of +hand-embroidered Persian design and a newspaper which he read from first +to last; Mrs. Jett at her tranquil process of fine needlework. + +Their room abounded in specimens of it. Centerpieces of rose design. +Mounds of cushions stamped in bulldog's head and pipe and appropriately +etched in colored floss. A poker hand, upheld by realistic five fingers +embroidered to the life, and the cuff button denoted by a blue-glass +jewel. Across their bed, making it a dais of incongruous splendor, was +flung a great counterpane of embroidered linen, in design as narrative +as a battle-surging tapestry and every thread in it woven out of these +long, quiet evenings by the lamp side. + +He was exceedingly proud of her cunning with a needle, so fine that its +stab through the cloth was too slight to be seen, and would lose no +occasion to show off the many evidences of her delicate workmanship that +were everywhere about the room. + +"It's like being able to create a book or a piece of music, Em, to say +all that on a piece of cloth with nothing but a needle." + +"It's a good thing I am able to create something, Henry," placing her +thimbled hand on his shoulder and smiling down. She was slightly the +taller. + +It was remarkable how quick and how tender his intuitions could be. +An innuendo from her, faint as the brush of a wing, and he would +immediately cluck with his tongue and throw out quite a bravado of +chest. + +"You're all right, Em. You suit me." + +"And you suit me, Henry," stroking his hand. + +This he withdrew. It was apt to smell of fish and he thought that once +or twice he had noticed her draw back from it, and, anyway, he was +exceedingly delicate about the cling of the rottenly pungent fish odor +of his workadays. + +Not that he minded personally. He had long ago ceased to have any +consciousness of the vapors that poured from the bins and the incoming +catches into his little partitioned-off office. But occasionally he +noticed that in street cars noses would begin to crinkle around him, +and every once in a while, even in a crowded conveyance he would find +himself the center of a little oasis of vacant seats which he had +created around himself. + +Immediately upon his arrival home, although his hands seldom touched the +fish, he would wash them in a solution of warm water and carbolic +acid, and most of the time he changed his suit before dinner, from a +salt-and-pepper to a pepper-and-salt, the only sartorial variety in +which he ever indulged. + +His wife was invariably touched by this little nicety of his, and +sometimes bravely forced his hand to her cheek to prove her lack of +repugnance. + +Boarding-house lore had it correctly. They were an exceedingly nice +couple, the Jetts. + +One day in autumn, with the sky the color and heaviness of a Lynnhaven +oyster, Mrs. Jett sat quite unusually forward on her chair at one of +the afternoon congresses of the wives, convened in Mrs. Peopping's back +parlor, Jeanette Peopping, aged four, sweet and blond, whom the Jetts +loved to borrow Sunday mornings, while she was still in her little +nightdress, playing paper dolls in the background. + +Her embroidery hoop, with a large shaded pink rose in the working, had, +contrary to her custom, fallen from idle hands, and instead of following +the dart of the infinitesimal needle, Mrs. Jett's eyes were burningly +upon Mrs. Peopping, following, with almost lip-reading intensity, that +worthy lady's somewhat voluptuous mouthings. + +She was a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked as +if at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets and +a characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to an +explosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it would hold. + +It had been a long tale of obstetrical fact and fancy, told plushily, +of course, against the dangerous little ears of Jeanette, and at its +conclusion Mrs. Peopping's steel-bead bag, half finished, lay in a +huddle at her feet, her pink and flabby face turned reminiscently toward +the fire. + +"--and for three days six doctors gave me up. Why, I didn't see Jeanette +until the fourteenth day, when most women are up and out. The crisis, +you know. My night nurse, an awful sweet girl--I send her a Christmas +present to this day--said if I had been six years younger it wouldn't +have gone so hard with me. I always say if the men knew what we women go +through--Maybe if some of them had to endure the real pain themselves +they would have something to do besides walk up and down the hall and +turn pale at the smell of ether coming through the keyhole. Ah me! I've +been a great sufferer in my day." + +"Thu, thu, thu," and, "I could tell tales," and, "I've been through my +share"--from various points of vantage around the speaker. + +It was then that Mrs. Jett sat forward on the edge of the straight +chair, and put her question. + +There was a pause after it had fallen into the silence, as if an +intruder had poked her head in through the door, and it brought only the +most negligible answer from Mrs. Peopping. + +"Forty-three." + +Almost immediately Mrs. Dang caught at the pause for a case in point +that had been trembling on her lips all during Mrs. Peopping's recital. + +"A doctor once told a second cousin of my sister-in-law's--" and so on +_ad infinitum, ad lib._, and _ad nauseaum_. + +That night Mrs. Jett did an unprecedented thing. She crept into the +crevice of her husband's arm from behind as he stood in his waistcoat, +washing his hands in the carbolic solution at the bowl and washstand. +He turned, surprised, unconsciously placing himself between her and the +reeky water. + +"Henry," she said, rubbing up against the alpaca back to his vest like +an ingratiating Maltese tabby, "Hen-ery." + +"In a minute, Em," he said, rather puzzled and wishing she would wait. + +Suddenly, swinging herself back from him by his waistcoat lapel, easily, +because of his tenseness to keep her clear of the bowl of water, she +directed her eyes straight into his. + +"Hen-ery--Hen-ery," each pronouncement of his name surging higher in her +throat. + +"Why, Em?" + +"Hen-ery, I haven't words sweet enough to tell you." + +"Em, tell what?" And stopped. He could see suddenly that her eyes were +full of new pins of light and his lightening intuition performed a +miracle of understanding. + +"Emmy!" he cried, jerking her so that her breath jumped, and at the +sudden drench of tears down her face sat her down, supporting her +roundish back with his wet hands, although he himself felt weak. + +"I--can't say--what I feel, Henry--only--God is good and--I'm not +afraid." + +He held her to his shoulder and let her tears rain down into his watch +pocket, so shaken that he found himself mouthing silent words. + +"God is good, Henry, isn't He?" + +"Yes, Emmy, yes. Oh, my Emmy!" + +"It must have been our prayers, Henry." + +"Well," sheepishly, "not exactly mine, Emmy; you're the saint of this +family. But I--I've wished." + +"Henry. I'm so happy--Mrs. Peopping had Jeanette at forty-three. Three +years older than me. I'm not afraid." + +It was then he looked down at her graying head there, prone against his +chest, and a dart of fear smote him. + +"Emmy," he cried, dragging her tear-happy face up to his, "if you're +afraid--not for anything in the world! You're _first_, Em." + +She looked at him with her eyes two lamps. + +"Afraid? That's the beautiful _part_, Henry. I'm not. Only happy. Why +afraid, Henry--if others dare it at--forty-three--You mean because it +was her second?" + +He faced her with a scorch of embarrassment in his face. + +"You--We--Well, we're not spring chickens any more, Em. If you are sure +it's not too--" + +She hugged him, laughing her tears. + +"I'm all right, Henry--we've been too happy not to--to--perpetuate--it." + +This time he did not answer. His cheek was against the crochet of her +yoke and she could hear his sobs with her heart. + + * * * * * + +Miraculously, like an amoeba reaching out to inclose unto itself, the +circle opened with a gasp of astonishment that filled Mrs. Peopping's O +to its final stretch and took unto its innermost Emma Jett. + +Nor did she wear her initiation lightly. There was a new tint out in her +long cheeks, and now her chair, a rocker, was but one removed from Mrs. +Peopping's. + +Oh, the long, sweet afternoons over garments that made needlework +sublime. No longer the padded rose on the centerpiece or the futile +doily, but absurd little dresses with sleeves that she measured to the +length of her hand, and yokes cut out to the pattern of a playing card, +and all fretted over with feather-stitching that was frailer than +maidenhair fern and must have cost many an eye-ache, which, because of +its source, was easy to bear. + +And there happened to Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimes +comes to men and women in middle life. She who had enjoyed no particular +youth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before her +birth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquire +comeliness which her youth had never boasted. + +The round-shouldered, long-cheeked girl had matured gingerly to rather +sparse womanhood that now at forty relented back to a fulsome thirty. + +Perhaps it was the tint of light out in her face, perhaps the splendor +of the vision; but at any rate, in those precious months to come, Mrs. +Jett came to look herself as she should have looked ten years back. + +They were timid and really very beautiful together, she and Henry Jett. +He came to regard her as a vase of porcelain, and, in his ignorance, +regarded the doctor's mandates harsh; would not permit her to walk, but +ordered a hansom cab every day from three to four, Mrs. Jett alternating +punctiliously with each of the boarding-house ladies for driving +companion. + +Every noon, for her delectation at luncheon, he sent a boy from the +store with a carton of her special favorites--Blue Point oysters. She +suddenly liked them small because, as she put it, they went down easier, +and he thought that charming. Lynnhavens for mortals of tougher growth. + +Long evenings they spent at names, exercising their pre-determination +as to sex. "Ann" was her choice, and he was all for canceling his +preference for "Elizabeth," until one morning she awakened to the white +light of inspiration. + +"I have it! Why not Ann Elizabeth?" + +"Great!" And whistled so through his shaving that his mouth was rayed +with a dark sunburst of beard where the razor had not found surface. + +They talked of housekeeping, reluctantly, it is true, because Mrs. Plush +herself was fitting up, of hard-to-spare evenings, a basinette of pink +and white. They even talked of schools. + +Then came the inevitable time when Mrs. Jett lost interest. Quite out of +a clear sky even the Blue Points were taboo, and instead of joining this +or that card or sewing circle, there were long afternoons of stitching +away alone, sometimes the smile out on her face, sometimes not. + +"Em, is it all right with you?" Henry asked her once or twice, +anxiously. + +"Of course it is! If I weren't this way--now--it wouldn't be natural. +You don't understand." + +He didn't, so could only be vaguely and futilely sorry. + +Then one day something quite horrible, in a small way, happened to Mrs. +Jett. Sitting sewing, suddenly it seemed to her that through the very +fluid of her eyeballs, as it were, floated a school of fish. Small +ones--young smelts, perhaps--with oval lips, fillips to their tails, and +sides that glisted. + +She laid down her bit of linen lawn, fingers to her lids as if to +squeeze out their tiredness. She was trembling from the unpleasantness, +and for a frightened moment could not swallow. Then she rose, shook out +her skirts, and to be rid of the moment carried her sewing up to +Mrs. Dang's, where a euchre game was in session, and by a few adroit +questions in between deals gained the reassurance that a nervous state +in her "condition" was highly normal. + +She felt easier, but there was the same horrid recurrence three times +that week. Once during an evening of lotto down in the front parlor she +pushed back from the table suddenly, hand flashing up to her throat. + +"Em!" said Mr. Jett, who was calling the numbers. + +"It's nothing," she faltered, and then, regaining herself more fully, +"nothing," she repeated, the roundness out in her voice this time. + +The women exchanged knowing glances. + +"She's all right," said Mrs. Peopping, omnipotently. "Those things +pass." + +Going upstairs that evening, alone in the hallway, they flung an arm +each across the other's shoulder, crowding playfully up the narrow +flight. + +"Emmy," he said, "poor Em, everything will be all right." + +She restrained an impulse to cry. "Poor nothing," she said. + +But neither the next evening, which was Friday, nor for Fridays +thereafter, would she venture down for fish dinner, dining cozily up +in her room off milk toast and a fluffy meringue dessert prepared +especially by Mrs. Plush. It was floating-island night downstairs. + +Henry puzzled a bit over the Fridays. It was his heaviest day at the +business, and it was upsetting to come home tired and feel her place +beside him at the basement dinner table vacant. + +But the women's nods were more knowing than ever, the reassuring +insinuations more and more delicate. + +But one night, out of one of those stilly cisterns of darkness that +between two and four are deepest with sleep, Henry was awakened on the +crest of such a blow and yell that he swam up to consciousness in a +ready-made armor of high-napped gooseflesh. + +A regrettable thing had happened. Awakened, too, on the high tide of +what must have been a disturbing dream, Mrs. Jett flung out her arm as +if to ward off something. That arm encountered Henry, snoring lightly in +his sleep at her side. But, unfortunately, to that frightened fling of +her arm Henry did not translate himself to her as Henry. + +That was a fish lying there beside her! A man-sized fish with its mouth +jerked open to the shape of a gasp and the fillip still through its +enormous body, as if its flanks were uncomfortably dry. A fish! + +With a shriek that tore a jagged rent through the darkness Mrs. Jett +began pounding at the slippery flanks, her hands sliding off its +shininess. + +"Out! Out! Henry, where are you? Help me! O God, don't let him get me. +Take him away, Henry! Where are you? My hands--slippery! Where are +you--" + +Stunned, feeling for her in the darkness, he wanted to take her +shuddering form into his arms and waken her out of this horror, but with +each groping move of his her hurtling shrieks came faster, and finally, +dragging the bedclothing with her, she was down on the floor at the +bedside, blobbering. That is the only word for it--blobbering. + +He found a light, and by this time there were already other lights +flashing up in the startled household. When he saw her there in the ague +of a huddle on the floor beside the bed, a cold sweat broke out over him +so that he could almost feel each little explosion from the pores. + +"Why, Emmy--Emmy--my Emmy--my Emmy--" + +She saw him now and knew him, and tried in her poor and already +burningly ashamed way to force her chattering jaws together. + +"Hen-ery--dream--bad--fish--Hen-ery--" + +He drew her up to the side of the bed, covering her shivering knees as +she sat there, and throwing a blanket across her shoulders. Fortunately +he was aware that the soothing note in his voice helped, and so he sat +down beside her, stroking her hand, stroking, almost as if to hypnotize +her into quiet. + +"Henry," she said, closing her fingers into his wrists, "I must have +dreamed--a horrible dream. Get back to bed, dear. I--I don't know what +ails me, waking up like that. That--fish! O God! Henry, hold me, hold +me." + +He did, lulling her with a thousand repetitions of his limited store of +endearments, and he could feel the jerk of sobs in her breathing subside +and she seemed almost to doze, sitting there with her far hand across +her body and up against his cheek. + +Then came knocks at the door, and hurried explanations through the slit +that he opened, and Mrs. Peopping's eye close to the crack. + +"Everything is all right.... Just a little bad dream the missus had.... +All right now.... To be expected, of course.... No, nothing anyone can +do.... Good night. Sorry.... No, thank you. Everything is all right." + +The remainder of the night the Jetts kept a small light burning, after a +while Henry dropping off into exhausted and heavy sleep. For hours Mrs. +Jett lay staring at the small bud of light, no larger than a human eye. +It seemed to stare back at her, warning, Now don't you go dropping off +to sleep and misbehave again. + +And holding herself tense against a growing drowsiness, she didn't--for +fear-- + + * * * * * + +The morning broke clear, and for Mrs. Jett full of small reassurances. +It was good to hear the clatter of milk deliveries, and the first bar +of sunshine came in through the hand-embroidered window curtains like a +smile, and she could smile back. Later she ventured down shamefacedly +for the two cups of coffee, which she drank bravely, facing the +inevitable potpourri of comment from this one and that one. + +"That was a fine scare you gave us last night, Mrs. Jett." + +"I woke up stiff with fright. Didn't I, Will? Gracious! That first yell +was a curdler!" + +"Just before Jeanette was born I used to have bad dreams, too, but +nothing like that. My!" + +"My mother had a friend whose sister-in-law walked in her sleep right +out of a third-story window and was dashed to--" + +"Shh-h-h!" + +"It's natural, Mrs. Jett. Don't you worry." + +She really tried not to, and after some subsequent and private +reassurance from Mrs. Peopping and Mrs. Keller, went for her hansom ride +with a pleasant anticipation of the Park in red leaf, Mrs. Plush, in a +brocade cape with ball fringe, sitting erect beside her. + +One day, in the presence of Mrs. Peopping, Mrs. Jett jumped to her feet +with a violent shaking of her right hand, as if to dash off something +that had crawled across its back. + +"Ugh!" she cried. "It flopped right on my hand. A minnow! Ugh!" + +"A what?" cried Mrs. Peopping, jumping to her feet and her flesh seeming +to crawl up. + +"A minnow. I mean a bug--a June bug. It was a bug, Mrs. Peopping." + +There ensued a mock search for the thing, the two women, on all-fours, +peering beneath the chairs. In that position they met levelly, eye to +eye. Then without more ado rose, brushing their knees and reseating +themselves. + +"Maybe if you would read books you would feel better," said Mrs. +Peopping, scooping up a needleful of steel beads. "I know a woman who +made it her business to read all the poetry books she could lay hands +on, and went to all the bandstand concerts in the Park the whole time, +and now her daughter sings in the choir out in Saginaw, Michigan." + +"I know some believe in that," said Mrs. Jett, trying to force a smile +through her pallor. "I must try it." + +But the infinitesimal stitching kept her so busy. + + * * * * * + +It was inevitable, though, that in time Henry should begin to shoulder +more than a normal share of unease. + +One evening she leaned across the little lamplit table between them as +he sat reading in the Persian-design dressing gown and said, as rapidly +as her lips could form the dreadful repetition, "The fish, the fish, the +fish, the fish." And then, almost impudently for her, disclaimed having +said it. + +He urged her to visit her doctor and she would not, and so, secretly, he +did, and came away better satisfied, and with directions for keeping her +diverted, which punctiliously he tried to observe. + +He began by committing sly acts of discretion on his own accord. Was +careful not to handle the fish. Changed his suit now before coming +home, behind a screen in his office, and, feeling foolish, went out and +purchased a bottle of violet eau de Cologne, which he rubbed into his +palms and for some inexplicable reason on his half-bald spot. + +Of course that was futile, because the indescribably and faintly rotten +smell of the sea came through, none the less, and to Henry he was +himself heinous with scent. + +One Sunday morning, as was his wont, Mr. Jett climbed into his dressing +gown and padded downstairs for the loan of little Jeanette Peopping, +with whom he returned, the delicious nub of her goldilocks head showing +just above the blanket which enveloped her, eyes and all. + +He deposited her in bed beside Mrs. Jett, the little pink feet peeping +out from her nightdress and her baby teeth showing in a smile that Mr. +Jett loved to pinch together with thumb and forefinger. + +"Cover her up quick, Em, it's chilly this morning." + +Quite without precedent, Jeanette puckered up to cry, holding herself +rigidly to Mr. Jett's dressing gown. + +"Why, Jeanette baby, don't you want to go to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No!" Trying to ingratiate herself back into Mr. Jett's arms. + +"Baby, you'll take cold. Come under covers with Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! Take me back." + +"Oh, Jeanette, that isn't nice! What ails the child? She's always so +eager to come to me. Shame on Jeanette! Come, baby, to Aunty Em?" + +"No! No! No! My mamma says you're crazy. Take me back--take me." + +For a frozen moment Henry regarded his wife above the glittering fluff +of little-girl curls. It seemed to him he could almost see her face +become smaller, like a bit of ice under sun. + +"Naughty little Jeanette," he said, shouldering her and carrying her +down the stairs; "naughty little girl." + +When he returned his wife was sitting locked in the attitude in which he +had left her. + +"Henry!" she whispered, reaching out and closing her hand over his so +that the nails bit in. "Not that, Henry! Tell me not that!" + +"Why, Em," he said, sitting down and trembling, "I'm surprised at you, +listening to baby talk! Why, Em, I'm surprised at you!" + +She leaned over, shaking him by the shoulder. + +"I know. They're saying it about me. I'm not that, Henry. I swear I'm +not that! Always protect me against their saying that, Henry. Not +crazy--not that! It's natural for me to feel queer at times--now. +Every woman in this house who says--that--about me has had her nervous +feelings. It's not quite so easy for me, as if I were a bit younger. +That's all. The doctor said that. But nothing to worry about. Mrs. +Peopping had Jeanette--Oh, Henry promise me you'll always protect me +against their saying that! I'm not that--I swear to you, Henry--not +that!" + +"I know you're not, Emmy. It's too horrible and too ridiculous to talk +about. Pshaw--pshaw!" + +"You do know I'm not, don't you? Tell me again you do know." + +"I do. Do." + +"And you'll always protect me against anyone saying it? They'll believe +you, Henry, not me. Promise me to protect me against them, Henry. +Promise to protect me against our little Ann Elizabeth ever thinking +that of--of her mother." + +"Why, Emmy!" he said. "Why, Emmy! I just promise a thousand times--" and +could not go on, working his mouth rather foolishly as if he had not +teeth and were rubbing empty gums together. + +But through her hot gaze of tears she saw and understood and, satisfied, +rubbed her cheek against his arm. + +The rest is cataclysmic. + +Returning home one evening in a nice glow from a January out-of-doors, +his mustache glistening with little frozen drops and his hands (he never +wore gloves) unbending of cold, Mrs. Jett rose at her husband's entrance +from her low chair beside the lamp. + +"Well, well!" he said, exhaling heartily, the scent of violet denying +the pungency of fish and the pungency of fish denying the scent of +violet. "How's the busy bee this evening?" + +For answer Mrs. Jett met him with the crescendo yell of a gale sweeping +around a chimney. + +"Ya-a-ah! Keep out--you! Fish! Fish!" she cried, springing toward him; +and in the struggle that ensued the tubing wrenched off the gas lamp and +plunged them into darkness. "Fish! I'll fix you! Ya-a-ah!" + +"Emmy! For God's sake, it's Henry! Em!" + +"Ya-a-ah! I'll fix you! Fish! Fish!" + + * * * * * + +Two days later Ann Elizabeth was born, beautiful, but premature by two +weeks. + +Emma Jett died holding her tight against her newly rich breasts, for a +few of the most precious and most fleeting moments of her life. + +All her absurd fears washed away, her free hand could lie without spasm +in Henry's, and it was as if she found in her last words a secret +euphony that delighted her. + +"Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful." + +Later in his bewildered and almost ludicrous widowerhood tears would +sometimes galumph down on his daughter's face as Henry rocked her of +evenings and Sunday mornings. + +"Sweet-beautiful," came so absurdly from under his swiftly graying +mustache, but often, when sure he was quite alone, he would say it over +and over again. + +"Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth. Sweet-beautiful. Ann-Elizabeth." + + * * * * * + +Of course the years puttied in and healed and softened, until for Henry +almost a Turner haze hung between him and some of the stark facts of +Emma Jett's death, turping out horror, which is always the first to fade +from memory, and leaving a dear sepia outline of the woman who had been +his. + +At seventeen, Ann Elizabeth was the sun, the sky, the west wind, and the +shimmer of spring--all gone into the making of her a rosebud off the +stock of his being. + +His way of putting it was, "You're my all, Annie, closer to me than I am +to myself." + +She hated the voweling of her name, and because she was so nimble with +youth could dance away from these moods of his rather than plumb them. + +"I won't be 'Annie.' Please, daddy, I'm your Ann Elizabeth." + +"Ann Elizabeth, then. My Ann Elizabeth," an inner rhythm in him echoing: +Sweet-Beautiful. Sweet-Beautiful. + +There was actually something of the lark about her. She awoke with a +song, sometimes kneeling up in bed, with her pretty brown hair tousling +down over her shoulders and chirruping softly to herself into the little +bird's-eye-maple dressing-table mirror, before she flung her feet over +the side of the bed. + +And then, innate little housekeeper that she was, it was to the +preparing of breakfast with a song, her early morning full of antics. +Tiptoeing in to awaken her father to the tickle of a broom straw. +Spreading his breakfast piping hot, and then concealing herself behind a +screen, that he might marvel at the magic of it. And once she put salt +in his coffee, a fresh cup concealed behind the toast rack, and knee to +knee they rocked in merriment at his grimace. + +She loved thus to tease him, probably because he was so stolid that each +new adventure came to him with something of a shock. He was forever +being taken unawares, as if he could never become entirely accustomed to +the wonder of her, and that delighted her. Even the obviousness of his +slippers stuffed out with carrots could catch him napping. To her dance +of glee behind him, he kept poking and poking to get into them, only +the peck of her kiss upon his neck finally initiating him into the +absurdity. + +There was a little apartment of five rooms, twenty minutes removed by +Subway from the fish store; her bedroom, all pink and yellow maple; his; +a kitchen, parlor, and dining room worked out happily in white-muslin +curtains, spindle-legged parlor chairs, Henry's newfangled chifferobe +and bed with a fine depth of mattress, and a kitchen with eight shining +pots above the sink and a border of geese, cut out to the snip of Ann's +own scissors, waddling across the wall. + +It was two and a half years since Mrs. Plush had died, and the boarders, +as if spilled from an ark on rough seas, had struck out for diverse +shores. The marvel to them now was that they had delayed so long. + +"A home of our own, Ann. Pretty sweet, isn't it?" + +"Oh, daddy, it is!" + +"You mustn't overdo, though, baby. Sometimes we're not so strong as we +think we are. A little hired girl would be best." The fish business had +more than held its own. + +"But I love doing it alone, dad. It--it's the next best thing to a home +of--my own." + +He looked startled into her dreaming eyes. + +"Your own? Why, Annie, isn't this--your own?" + +She laid fingers against his eyes so that he could not see the pinkiness +of her. + +"You know what I mean, daddy--my--very--own." + +At that timid phrasing of hers Henry felt that his heart was actually +strangling, as if some one were holding it back on its systolic swing, +like a caught pendulum. + +"Why, Annie," he said, "I never thought--" + +But inevitably and of course it had happened. + +The young man's name was Willis--Fred E. Willis--already credit man in +a large wholesale grocery firm and two feet well on the road to +advancement. A square-faced, clean-faced fellow, with a clean love of +life and of Ann Elizabeth in his heart. + +Henry liked him. + +Ann Elizabeth loved him. + +And yet, what must have been a long-smoldering flame of fear shot up +through the very core of Henry's being, excoriating. + +"Why, Ann Elizabeth," he kept repeating, in his slow and always +inarticulate manner, "I--You--Mine--I just never thought." + +She wound the softest of arms about his neck. + +"I know, daddy-darlums, and I'll never leave you. Never. Fred has +promised we will always be together. We'll live right here with you, or +you with us." + +"Annie," he cried, "you mustn't ever--marry. I mean, leave daddy--that +way--anyway. You hear me? You're daddy's own. Just his by himself. +Nobody is good enough for my girl." + +"But, daddy," clouding up for tears, "I thought you liked Fred so much!" + +"I do, but it's you I'm talking about. Nobody can have you." + +"But I love him, daddy. This is terrible. I love him." + +"Oh, Ann, Ann! daddy hasn't done right, perhaps, but he meant well. +There are _reasons_ why he wants to keep his little girl with him +always--alone--his." + +"But, daddy dear, I promise you we'll never let you be lonely. Why, I +couldn't stand leaving you any more than you could--" + +"Not those reasons alone, Ann." + +"Then what?" + +"You're so young," he tried to procrastinate. + +"I'll be eighteen. A woman." + +All his faculties were cornered. + +"You're--so--Oh, I don't know--I--" + +"You haven't any reasons, dad, except dear silly ones. You can't keep me +a little girl all the time, dear. I love Fred. It's all planned. Don't +ruin my life, daddy--don't ruin my life." + +She was lovely in her tears and surprisingly resolute in her mind, and +he was more helpless than ever with her. + +"Ann--you're not strong." + +"Strong!" she cried, flinging back her curls and out her chest. "That is +a fine excuse. I'm stronger than most. All youngsters have measles and +scarlet fever and Fred says his sister Lucile out in Des Moines had St. +Vitus' dance when she was eleven, just like I did. I'm stronger than you +are, dad. I didn't get the flu and you did." + +"You're nervous, Annie. That's why I want always to keep you at +home--quiet--with me." + +She sat back, her pretty eyes troubled-up lakes. + +"You mean the dreams and the scared feeling, once in a while, that I +can't swallow. That's nothing. I know now why I was so frightened in my +sleep the other night. I told Fred, and he said it was the peach sundae +on top of the crazy old movie we saw that evening. Why, Jeanette +Peopping had to take a rest cure the year before she was married. Girls +are always more nervous than fellows. Daddy--you--you frighten me when +you look at me like that! I don't know what you mean! What-do-you-mean?" + +He was helpless and at bay and took her in his arms and kissed her hair. + +"I guess your old daddy is a jealous pig and can't bear to share his +girl with anyone. Can't bear to--to give her up." + +"You won't be giving up, daddums. I couldn't stand that, either. It +will be three of us then. You'll see. Look up and smile at your Ann +Elizabeth. Smile, now, smile." + +And of course he did. + +It was typical of her that she should be the busiest of brides-to-be, +her complete little trousseau, every piece down to the dishcloths, +monogrammed by her--A.E.W. + +Skillful with her needle and thrifty in her purchases, the outfit when +completed might have represented twice the outlay that Henry expended +on it. Then there were "showers,"--linen, stocking, and even a tin one; +gifts from her girl friends--cup, face, bath and guest towels; all the +tremendous trifles and addenda that go to gladden the chattel-loving +heart of a woman. A little secret society of her erstwhile school +friends presented her with a luncheon set; the Keller twins with a +silver gravy boat; and Jeanette Peopping Truman, who occupied an +apartment in the same building, spent as many as three afternoons a week +with her, helping to piece out a really lovely tulip-design quilt of +pink and white sateen. + +"Jeanette," said Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in +a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel that +time when you had the nerv--the breakdown?" + +Jeanette, pretty after a high-cheek-boned fashion and her still bright +hair worn coronet fashion about her head, bit off a thread with sharp +white teeth, only too eager to reminisce her ills. + +"I was just about gone, that's what I was. Let anybody so much as look +at me twice and, pop! I'd want to cry about it." + +"And?" + +"For six weeks I didn't even have enough interest to ask after Truman, +who was courting me then. Oh, it was no fun, I can tell you, that +nervous breakdown of mine!" + +"What--else?" + +"Isn't that enough?" + +"Did it--was it--was it ever hard to swallow, Jeanette?" + +"To swallow?" + +"Yes. I mean--did you ever dream or--think--or feel so frightened you +couldn't swallow?" + +"I felt lots of ways, but that wasn't one of them. Swallow! Who ever +heard of not swallowing?" + +"But didn't you ever dream, Jeanette--terrible things--such terrible +things--and get to thinking and couldn't stop yourself? Silly, +ghostly--things." + +Jeanette put down her sewing. + +"Ann, are you quizzing me about--your mother?" + +"My mother? Why my mother? Jeanette, what do you mean? Why do you ask me +a thing like that? What has my mother got to do with it? Jeanette!" + +Conscious that she had erred, Jeanette veered carefully back. + +"Why, nothing, only I remember mamma telling me when I was just a kiddie +how your mamma used to--to imagine all sorts of things just to pass the +time away while she embroidered the loveliest pieces. You're like her, +mamma used to say--a handy little body. Poor mamma, to think she had to +be taken before Truman, junior, was born! Ah me!" + +That evening, before Fred came for his two hours with her in the little +parlor, Ann, rid of her checked apron and her crisp pink frock saved +from the grease of frying sparks, flew in from a ring at the doorbell +with a good-sized special-delivery box from a silversmith, untying it +with eager, fumbling fingers, her father laying aside his newspaper to +venture three guesses as to its contents. + +"Another one of those syrup pitchers." + +"Oh dear!"--plucking the twine--"I hope not!" + +"Some more nut picks." + +"Daddy, stop calamity howling. Here's the card. Des Moines, Iowa. 'From +Lucile Willis, with love to her new sister.' Isn't that the sweetest! +It's something with a pearl handle." + +"I know. Another one of those pie-spade things." + +"Wrong! Wrong! It's two pieces. Oh!" + +It was a fish set of silver and mother-of-pearl. A large-bowled spoon +and a sort of Neptune's fork, set up in a white-sateen bed. + +"Say now, that _is_ neat," said Henry, appraising each piece with a show +of critical appreciation not really his. All this spread of the gewgaws +of approaching nuptials seemed meaningless to him; bored him. Butter +knives. Berry spoons. An embarrassment of nut picks and silver pitchers. +A sliver of silver paper cutter with a hilt and a dog's-head handle. And +now, for Fred's delectation this evening, the newly added fish set, so +appropriately inscribed from his sister. + +Tilting it against the lamp in the place of honor, Ann Elizabeth turned +away suddenly, looking up at her father in a sudden dumb panic of which +he knew nothing, her two hands at her fair, bare throat. It was so hard +again to swallow. Impossible. + +But finally, as was always the case, she did swallow, with a great surge +of relief. A little later, seated on her father's knee and plucking at +his tie in a futile fashion that he loved, she asked him: + +"Daddy--about mother--" + +They seldom talked of her, but always during these rare moments a +beautiful mood shaped itself between them. It was as if the mere breath +of his daughter's sweetly lipped use of "mother" swayed the bitter-sweet +memory of the woman he carried so faithfully in the cradle of his heart. + +"Yes, baby--about mother?" + +"Daddy"--still fingering at the tie--"was mother--was everything all +right with her up--to the very--end? I mean--no nerv--no pain? Just all +of a sudden the end--quietly. Or have you told me that just to--spare +me?" + +She could feel him stiffen, but when his voice came it was even. + +"Why, Ann, what a--question! Haven't I told you so often how mother just +peacefully passed on, holding a little pink you." + +Sweet-Beautiful--his heart was tolling through a sense of +panic--Sweet-Beautiful. + +"I know, daddy, but before--wasn't there any nerv--any sickness?" + +"No," he said, rather harshly for him. "No. No. What put such ideas into +your head?" + +You see, he was shielding Emma way back there, and a typhoon of her +words was raging through his head: + +"Oh, Henry, protect me against anyone ever saying--that. Promise me." + +And now, with no sense of his terrible ruthlessness, he was protecting +her with her own daughter. + +"Then, daddy, just one more thing," and her underlip caught while she +waited for answer. "There is no other reason except your own dear silly +one of loneliness--why you keep wanting me to put off my marriage?" + +"No, baby," he said, finally, his words with no more depth than if his +body were a hollow gourd. "What else could there be?" + +Immediately, and with all the resilience of youth, she was her happy +self again, kissing him through his mustache and on his now frankly bald +head, which gave off the incongruous odor of violet eau de Cologne. + +"Old dude daddy!" she cried, and wanted to kiss his hands, which he held +suddenly very still and far from her reach. + +Then the bell rang again and Fred Willis arrived. All the evening, +long after Henry lay on his deep-mattressed bed, staring, the little +apartment trilled to her laughter and the basso of Fred's. + + * * * * * + +A few weeks later there occurred a strike of the delivery men and truck +drivers of the city, and Henry, especially hard hit because of the +perishable nature of his product, worked early and late, oftentimes +loading the wagons himself and riding alongside of the precariously +driving "scab." + +Frequently he was as much as an hour or two late to dinner, and upon one +or two occasions had tiptoed out of the house before the usual hour +when Ann opened her eyes to the consciousness of his breakfast to be +prepared. + +They were trying days, the scheme of his universe broken into, and Henry +thrived on routine. + +The third week of the strike there were street riots, some of them +directly in front of the fish store, and Henry came home after a day of +the unaccustomed labor of loading and unloading hampers of fish, really +quite shaken. + +When he arrived Ann Elizabeth was cutting around the scalloped edge of +a doily with embroidery scissors, the litter of cut glass and silver +things out on the table and throwing up quite a brilliance under the +electric lamp, and from the kitchen the slow sizzle of waiting chops. + +"Whew!" he said, as he entered, both from the whiff he emanated as he +shook out of his overcoat, and from a great sense of his weariness. +Loading the hampers, you understand. "Whew!" + +Ann Elizabeth started violently, first at the whiff which preceded him +and at his approach into the room; then sat forward, her hand closing +into the arm of the chair, body thrust forward and her eyes widening +like two flowers opening. + +Then she rose slowly and slyly, and edged behind the table, her two +hands up about her throat. + +"Don't you come in here," she said, lowly and evenly. "I know you, but +I'm not afraid. I'm only afraid of you at night, but not by light. You +let me swallow, you hear! Get out! Get out!" + +Rooted, Henry stood. + +"Why, Annie!" he said in the soothing voice from out of his long ago, +"Annie--it's daddy!" + +"No, you don't," she cried, springing back as he took the step forward. +"My daddy'll kill you if he finds you here. He'll slit you up from your +tail right up to your gill. He knows how. I'm going to tell him and Fred +on you. You won't let me swallow. You're slippery. I can't stand it. +Don't you come near me! Don't!" + +"Annie!" he cried. "Good God! Annie, it's daddy who loves you!" Poor +Henry, her voice was still under a whisper and in his agony he committed +the error of rushing at her. "Annie, it's daddy! See, your own dear +daddy!" + +But she was too quick. Her head thrown back so that the neck muscles +strained out like an outraged deer's cornered in the hunt and her +eyes rolled up, Ann felt for and grasped the paper knife off the +trinket-littered table. + +"Don't you touch me--slit you up from tail to your gills." + +"Annie, it's daddy! Papa! For God's sake look at daddy--Ann! God!" And +caught her wrist in the very act of its plumb-line rush for his heart. + +He was sweating in his struggle with her, and most of all her strength +appalled him, she was so little for her terrible unaccountable power. + +"Don't touch me! You can't! You haven't any arms! Horrible gills!" + +She was talking as she struggled, still under the hoarse and frantic +whisper, but her breath coming in long soughs. "Slit-you-up-from-tail. +Slit--you--up--from--tail--to--gills." + +"Annie! Annie!" still obsessed by his anguished desire to reassure +her with the normality of his touch. "See, Annie, it's daddy. Ann +Elizabeth's daddy." With a flash her arm and the glint of the paper +cutter eluded him again and again, but finally he caught her by the +waist, struggling, in his dreadful mistake, to calm her down into the +chair again. + +"Now I've got you, darling. Now--sit--down--" + +"No, you haven't," she said, a sort of wild joy coming out in her +whisper, and cunningly twisting the upper half of her body back from +his, the hand still held high. "You'll never get me--you fish!" + +And plunged with her high hand in a straight line down into her throat. + +It was only when the coroner withdrew the sliver of paper knife from its +whiteness, that, coagulated, the dead and waiting blood began to ooze. + + * * * * * + +"Do you," intoned the judge for the third and slightly more impatient +time, "plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of murder against you?" + +This time the lips of the prisoner's wound of a mouth moved stiffly +together: + +"Guilty." + + + + +ROULETTE + + +I + +Snow in the village of Vodna can have the quality of hot white plush +of enormous nap, so dryly thick it packs into the angles where fences +cross, sealing up the windward sides of houses, rippling in great seas +across open places, flaming in brilliancy against the boles of ever so +occasional trees, and tucking in the houses up to the sills and down +over the eaves. + +Out in the wide places it is like a smile on a dead face, this snow +hush, grateful that peace can be so utter. It is the silence of a broody +God, and out of that frozen pause, in a house tucked up to the sills and +down to the eaves, Sara Turkletaub was prematurely taken with the pangs +of childbirth, and in the thin dawn, without even benefit of midwife, +twin sons were born. + +Sturdy sons, with something even in their first crescendo wails that +bespoke the good heritage of a father's love-of-life and a mother's +life-of-love. + +No Sicilian sunrise was ever more glossy with the patina of hope +than the iced one that crept in for a look at the wide-faced, +high-cheek-boned beauty of Sara Turkletaub as she lay with her sons to +the miracle of her full breasts, her hair still rumpled with the agony +of deliverance. So sweetly moist her eyes that Mosher Turkletaub, his +own brow damp from sweat of her writhings, was full of heartbeat, even +to his temples. + +Long before moontime, as if by magic of the brittle air, the tidings had +spread through the village, and that night, until the hand-hewn rafters +rang, the house of Turkletaub heralded with twofold and world-old fervor +the advent of the man-child. And through it all--the steaming warmth, +the laughter through bushy beards, the ministering of women wise and +foolish with the memory of their own pangs, the shouts of vodka-stirred +men, sheepish that they, too, were part custodians of the miracle of +life--through it all Sara Turkletaub lay back against her coarse bed, so +rich--so rich that the coves of her arms trembled each of its burden and +held tighter for fear somehow God might repent of his prodigality. + +That year the soil came out from under the snow rich and malmy to the +plow, and Mosher started heavy with his peddler's pack and returned +light. It was no trick now for Sara to tie her sons to an iron ring in +the door jamb and, her strong legs straining and her sweat willing, +undertake household chores of water lugging, furniture heaving, +marketing with baskets that strained her arms from the sockets as she +carted them from the open square to their house on the outskirts, her +massive silhouette moving as solemnly as a caravan against the sky line. + +Rich months these were and easy to bear because they were backed by a +dream that each day, however relentless in its toil, brought closer to +reality. + +"America!" + +The long evenings full of the smell of tallow; maps that curled under +the fingers; the well-thumbed letters from Aaron Turkletaub, older +brother to Mosher and already a successful pieceworker on skirts in +Brooklyn. The picture postcards from him of the Statue of Liberty! Of +the three of them, Aaron, Gussie, his wife, and little Leo, with donkey +bodies sporting down a beach labeled "Coney." A horrific tintype of +little Leo in tiny velveteen knickerbockers that fastened with large, +ruble-sized, mother-of-pearl buttons up to an embroidered sailor blouse. + +It was those mother-of-pearl buttons that captured Sara's imagination +so that she loved and wept over the tintype until little Leo quite +disappeared under the rust of her tears. Long after young Mosher, who +loved his Talmud, had retired to sway over it, Sara could yearn at this +tintype. + +Her sons in little knickerbockers that fastened to the waistband with +large pearl buttons! + +Her black-eyed Nikolai with the strong black hair and the virile little +profile that hooked against the pillow as he slept. + +Her red-headed Schmulka with the tight curls, golden eyes, and even +more thrusting profile. So different of feature her twins and yet so +temperamentally of a key. Flaming to the same childish passions, often +too bitter, she thought, and, trembling with an unnamed fear, would tear +them apart. + +Pull of the cruelties and the horrible torture complex of the young +male, they had once burned a cat alive, and the passion of their father +and their cries under flaying had beat about in her brain for weeks +after. Jealousies, each of the other, burned fiercely, and, aged three, +they scratched blood from one another over the favor of the shoemaker's +tot of a girl. And once, to her soul-sickness, Nikolai, the black one, +had found out the vodka and drunk of it until she discovered him in a +little stupor beside the cupboard. + +Yet--and Sara would recount with her eyes full of more tears than they +could hold the often-told tale of how Schmulka, who could bear no +injustice, championed the cause of little Mottke, the butcher's son, +against the onslaught of his drunken father, beating back the lumbering +attack with small fists tight with rage; of little Nikolai, who fell +down the jagged wall of a quarry and endured a broken arm for the six +hours until his father came home rather than burden his mother with what +he knew would be the agony of his pain. + +Red and black were Sara's sons in pigment. But by the time they were +four, almost identical in passion, inflammable both to the same angers, +the impulsive and the judiciary cunningly distributed in them. + +And so, to the solemn and Talmud teachings of Mosher and the +wide-bosomed love of this mother who lavishly nurtured them, these sons, +so identically pitched, grew steady of limb, with all the thigh-pulling +power of their parents, the calves of their little legs already tight +as fists. And from the bookkeeping one snow-smelling night, to the +drip-drip of tallow, there came the decisive moment when America looked +exactly four months off! + +Then one starlit hour before dawn the pogrom broke. Redly, from the very +start, because from the first bang of a bayonet upon a door blood began +to flow and smell. + +There had been rumors. For days old Genendel, the ragpicker, had +prophetically been showing about the village the rising knobs of his +knotting rheumatic knuckles, ill omen of storm or havoc. A star had shot +down one night, as white and sardonic as a Cossack's grin and almost +with a hiss behind it. Mosher, returning from a peddling tour to a +neighboring village, had worn a furrow between his eyes. Headache, he +called it. Somehow Sara vaguely sensed it to be the ache of a fear. + +One night there was a furious pink tint on the distant horizon, and +borne on miles of the stiffly thin air came the pungency of burning +wood and flesh across the snowlight. Flesh! The red sky lay off in the +direction of Kishinef. What was it? The straw roof of a burning barn? +The precious flesh of an ox? What? Reb Baruch, with a married daughter +and eleven children in Kishinef, sat up all night and prayed and swayed +and trembled. + +Packed in airtight against the bite of the steely out-of-doors, most of +the village of Vodna--except the children and the half-witted Shimsha, +the _ganef_--huddled under its none-too-plentiful coverings that night +and prayed and trembled. + +At five o'clock that red dawn, almost as if a bayonet had crashed into +her dream, Sara, her face smeared with pallor, awoke to the smell of +her own hair singeing. A bayonet _had_ crashed, but through the door, +terribly! + +The rest is an anguished war frieze of fleeing figures; of running +hither and thither in the wildness of fear; of mothers running with +babes at breasts; of men, their twisted faces steaming sweat, locked in +the Laocooen embrace of death. Banners of flame. The exultant belch of +iridescent smoke. Cries the shape of steel rapiers. A mouth torn back to +an ear. Prayers being moaned. The sticky stench of coagulating blood. +Pillage. Outrage. Old men dragging household chattels. Figures crumpling +up in the outlandish attitudes of death. The enormous braying of +frightened cattle. A spurred heel over a face in that horrible moment +when nothing can stay its descent. The shriek of a round-bosomed girl +to the smear of wet lips across hers. The superb daring of her lover to +kill her. A babe in arms. Two. The black billowing of fireless smoke. + +A child in the horse trough, knocked there from its mother's arms by the +butt end of a bayonet, its red curls quite sticky in a circle of its +little blood. A half-crazed mother with a singed eyebrow, blatting over +it and groveling on her breasts toward the stiffening figure for the +warmth they could not give; the father, a black-haired child in his +arms, tearing her by force out of the zone of buckshot, plunging back +into it himself to cover up decently, with his coat, what the horse +trough held. + +Dawn. A huddle of fugitives. Footsteps of blood across the wide open +places of snow. A mother, whose eyes are terrible with what she has left +in the horse trough, fighting to turn back. A husband who literally +carries her, screaming, farther and farther across the cruel open +places. A town. A ship. The crucified eyes of the mother always looking +back. Back. + +And so it was that Sara and Mosher Turkletaub sailed for America with +only one twin--Nikolai, the black. + + * * * * * + +The Turkletaubs prospered. Turkletaub Brothers, Skirts, the year after +the war, paying a six-figure excess-profit tax. + +Aaron dwelt in a three-story, American-basement house in West 120th +Street, near Lenox Avenue, with his son Leo, office manager of the +Turkletaub Skirt Company, and who had recently married the eldest +daughter of an exceedingly well-to-do Maiden Lane jewelry merchant. + +The Mosher Turkletaubs occupied an eight-room-and-two-baths apartment +near by. Sara, with much of the fleetness gone from her face and a smile +tempered by a look of unshed tears, marketing now by white-enameled desk +telephone or, on days when the limp from an old burn down her thigh was +not too troublesome, walked up to a plate-glass butcher shop on 125th +Street, where there was not so much as a drop of blood on the marble +counter and the fowl hung in white, plucked window display with +garnitures of pink tissue paper about the ankles and even the dangling +heads wrapped so that the dead eyes might not give offense. + +It was a widely different Sara from the water lugger of those sweaty +Russian days. Such commonplaces of environment as elevator service, +water at the turning of a tap, potatoes dug and delivered to her +dumbwaiter, had softened Sara and, it is true, vanquished, along with +the years, some of the wing flash of vitality from across her face. So +was the tough fiber of her skin vanquished to almost a creaminess, and +her hair, due perhaps to the warm water always on tap, had taken on +a sheen, and even through its grayness grew out hardily and was well +trained to fall in soft scallops over the singed place. + +Yes, all in all, life had sweetened Sara, and, except for the occasional +look of crucifixion somewhere back in her eyes, had roly-polied her +into new rotundities of hip and shelf of bosom, and even to what +mischievously promised to be a scallop of second chin. + +Sara Turkletaub, daughter of a ne'er-do-well who had died before her +birth with the shadow of an unproved murder on him; Sara, who had run +swiftly barefoot for the first dozen summers of her life, and married, +without dower or approval, the reckless son of old Turkletaub, the +peddler; Sara, who once back in the dim years, when a bull had got loose +in the public square, had jerked him to a halt by swinging herself from +his horns, and later, standing by, had helped hold him for the emergency +of an un-kosher slaughter, not even paling at the slitting noises of the +knife. + +Mosher Turkletaub, who had peddled new feet for stockings and calico for +the sacques the peasant women wore in the fields, reckoning no longer in +dozens of rubles but in dozens of thousands! Indeed, Turkletaub Brothers +could now afford to owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars! Mosher +dwelling thus, thighs gone flabby, in a seven-story apartment house with +a liveried lackey to swing open the front door and another to shoot him +upward in a gilded elevator. + +It was to laugh! + +And Sara and Mosher with their son, their turbulent Nikolai, now an +accredited Doctor of Law and practicing before the bar of the city of +New York! + +It was upon that realization, most of all, that Sara could surge tears, +quickly and hotly, and her heart seem to hurt of fullness. + +Of Nikolai, the black. Nicholas, now: + +It was not without reason that Sara had cried terrible tears over him, +and that much, but not all, of the struggle was gone from her face. +Her boy could be as wayward as the fling to his fierce black head, and +sickeningly often Mosher, with a nausea at the very pit of him, had +wielded the lash. + +Once even Nicholas in his adolescent youth, handsomely dark, had stood +in Juvenile Court, ringleader of a neighborhood gang of children on a +foray into the strange world of some packets of cocaine purloined from +the rear of a vacated Chinese laundry. + +Bitterly had Mosher stood in the fore of that court room, thumbing his +hat, his heart gangrening, and trying in a dumbly miserable sort of way +to press down, with his hand on her shoulder, some of the heaving of +Sara's enormous tears. + +There had followed a long, bitter evening of staying the father's lash +from descending, and finally, after five hours with his mother in his +little room, her wide bosom the sea wall against which the boiling +waywardness of him surged, his high head came down like a black swan's +and apparently, at least so far as Mosher knew, Sara had won again. + +And so it was that with the bulwark of this mother and a father who +spared not the wise rod even at the price of the sickness it cost +him, Nicholas came cleanly through these difficult years of the long +midchannel of his waywardness. + +At twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the city of New York, +although an event so perilous followed it by a year or two that the +scallops of strong hair that came down over the singed place of Sara's +brow whitened that year; although Mosher, who was beginning to curve +slightly of the years as he walked, as if a blow had been struck him +from behind, never more than heard the wind before the storm. + +Listen in on the following: + +The third year that Nicholas practiced law, junior member in the Broad +Street firm of Leavitt & Dilsheimer, he took to absenting himself from +dinner so frequently, that across the sturdy oak dining table, laid out +in a red-and-white cloth, gold-band china not too thick of lip, and a +cut-glass fern dish with cunningly contrived cotton carnations stuck in +among the growing green, Sara, over rich and native foods, came more and +more to regard her husband through a clutch of fear. + +"I tell you, Mosher, something has come over the boy. It ain't like him +to miss _gefuelte_-fish supper three Fridays in succession." + +"All right, then, because he has a few more or less _gefuelte_-fish +suppers in his life, let it worry you! If that ain't a woman every +time." + +"_Gefuelte_ fish! If that was my greatest worry. But it's not so easy to +prepare, that you should take it so much for granted. _Gefuelte_ fish, he +says, just like it grew on trees and didn't mean two hours' chopping on +my feet." + +"Now, Sara, was that anything to fly off at? Do I ever so much as eat +two helpings of it in Gussie's house? That's how I like yours better!" + +"Gussie don't chop up her onions fine enough. A hundred times I tell her +and a hundred times she does them coarse. Her own daughter-in-law, a +girl that was raised in luxury, can cook better as Gussie. I tell you, +Mosher, I take off my hat to those Berkowitz girls. And if you should +ask me, Ada is a finer one even than Leo's Irma." + +The sly look of wiseacre wizened up Mosher's face. + +"Ada!" she says. "The way you pronounce that girl's name, Sara, it's +like every tooth in your mouth was diamond filled out of Berkowitz's +jewelry firm." + +Quite without precedent Sara's lips began to quiver at this pleasantry. + +"I'm worried, Mosher," she said, putting down a forkful of untasted food +that had journeyed twice toward her lips. "I don't say he--Nicky--I +don't say he should always stay home evenings when Ada comes over +sometimes with Leo and Irma, but night after night--three times whole +nights--I--Mosher, I'm afraid." + +In his utter well-being from her warming food, Mosher drank deeply and, +if it must be admitted, swishingly, through his mustache, inhaling +copiously the draughts of Sara's coffee. + +Do not judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that +Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so +to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, +velour upholstery, and the marbelette Psyche. + +They had furnished newly three years before, the year the business +almost doubled, Sara and Gussie simultaneously, the two of them poring +with bibliophiles' fervor over Grand Rapids catalogic literature. + +Bravely had Sara, even more so than Gussie, sacrificed her old regime to +the dealer. Only a samovar remained. A red-and-white pressed-glass punch +bowl, purchased out of Nicholas's--aged fourteen--pig-bank savings. An +enlarged crayon of her twins from a baby picture. A patent rocker which +she kept in the kitchen. (It fitted her so for the attitude of peeling.) +Two bisque plaques, with embossed angels. Another chair capable of +metamorphosis into a ladder. And Mosher's cup. + +From this Mosher drank with gusto. His mustache, to Sara so thrillingly +American, without its complement of beard, could flare so above the +relishing sounds of drinking. It flared now and Mosher would share none +of her concern. + +"You got two talents, Sara. First, for being my wife; and second, for +wasting worry like it don't cost you nothing in health or trips to +Cold Springs in the Catskills for the baths. Like it says in Nicky's +Shakespeare, a boy who don't sow his wild oats when he's young will some +day do 'em under another name that don't smell so sweet." + +"I--It ain't like I can talk over Nicky with you, Mosher, like another +woman could with her husband. Either you give him right or right away +you get so mad you make it worse with him than better." + +"Now, Sara--" + +"But only this morning that Mrs. Lessauer I meet sometimes at Epstein's +fish store--you know the rich sausage-casings Lessauers--she says to me +this morning, she says with her sweetness full of such a meanness, like +it was knives in me--'Me and my son and daughter-in-law was coming out +of a movie last night and we saw your son getting into a taxicab with +such a blonde in a red hat!' The way she said it, Mosher, like a cat +licking its whiskers--'such a blonde in a red hat'!" + +"I wish I had one dollar in my pocket for every blond hat with red hair +her Felix had before he married." + +"But it's the second time this week I hear it, Mosher. The same +description of such a--a nix in a red hat. Once in a cabaret show Gussie +says she heard it from a neighbor, and now in and out from taxicabs with +her. Four times this week he's not been home, Mosher. I can't help it, +I--I get crazy with worry." + +A sudden, almost a simian old-age seemed to roll, like a cloud that can +thunder, across Sara's face. She was suddenly very small and no little +old. Veins came out on her brow and upon the backs of her hands, and +Mosher, depressed with an unconscious awareness, was looking into the +tired, cold, watery eyes of the fleet woman who had been his. + +"Why, Sara!" he said, and came around the table to let her head wilt in +unwonted fashion against his coat. "Mamma!" + +"I'm tired, Mosher." She said her words almost like a gush of warm blood +from the wound of her mouth. "I'm tired from keeping up and holding in. +I have felt so sure for these last four years that we have saved him +from his--his wildness--and now, to begin all over again, I--I 'ain't +got the fight left in me, Mosher." + +"You don't have to have any fight in you, Mamma. 'Ain't you got a +husband and a son to fight for you?" + +"Sometimes I think, except for the piece of my heart I left lying back +there, that there are worse agonies than even massacres. I've struggled +so that he should be good and great, Mosher, and now, after four years +already thinking I've won--maybe, after all, I haven't." + +"Why, Sara! Why, Mamma! Shame! I never saw you like this before. You +ain't getting sick for another trip to the Catskills, are you? Maybe you +need some baths--" + +"Sulphur water don't cure heart sickness." + +"Heart sickness, nonsense! You know I don't always take sides with +Nicky, Mamma. I don't say he hasn't been a hard boy to raise. But a man, +Mamma, is a man! I wouldn't think much of him if he wasn't. You 'ain't +got him to your apron string in short pants any more. Whatever troubles +we've had with him, women haven't been one of them. Shame, Mamma, the +first time your grown-up son of a man cuts up maybe a little nonsense +with the girls! Shame!" + +"Girls! No one would want more than me he should settle himself down to +a fine, self-respecting citizen with a fine, sweet girl like Ad--" + +"Believe me, and I ain't ashamed to say it, I wasn't an angel, neither, +every minute before I was married." + +"My husband brags to me about his indiscretioncies." + +"_Na, na_, Mamma, right away when I open my mouth you make out a +case against me. I only say it to show you how a mother maybe don't +understand as well as a father how natural a few wild oats can be." + +"L-Leo didn't have 'em." + +"Leo ain't a genius. He's just a good boy." + +"I--I worry so!" + +"Sara, I ask you, wouldn't I worry, too, if there was a reason? God +forbid if his nonsense should lead to really something serious, then +it's time to worry." + +Sara Turkletaub dried her eyes, but it was as if the shadow of +crucifixion had moved forward in them. + +"If just once, Mosher, Nicky would make it easy for me, like Leo did for +Gussie. When Leo's time comes he marries a fine girl like Irma Berkowitz +from a fine family, and has fine children, without Gussie has to cry her +eyes out first maybe he's in company that--that--" + +"I don't say, Sara, we didn't have our hard times with your boy. But we +got results enough that we shouldn't complain. Maybe you're right. With +a boy like Leo, a regular good business head who comes into the firm +with us, it ain't been such a strain for Gussie and Aaron as for us with +a genius. But neither have they got the smart son, the lawyer of the +family, for theirs. _We_ got a temperament in ours, Sara. Ain't that +something to be proud of?" + +She laid her cheek to his lapel, the freshet of her tears past staying. + +"I--I know it, Mosher. It ain't--often I give way like this." + +"We got such results as we can be proud of, Sara. A genius of a lawyer +son on his way to the bench. Mark my word if I ain't right, on his way +to the bench!" + +"Yes, yes, Mosher." + +"Well then, Sara, I ask you, is it nice to--" + +"I know it, Papa. I ought to be ashamed. Instead of me fighting you to +go easy with the boy, this time it's you fighting me. If only he--he was +the kind of boy I could talk this out with, it wouldn't worry me so. +When it comes to--to a girl--it's so different. It's just that I'm +tired, Mosher. If anything was to go wrong after all these years of +struggling for him--alone--" + +"Alone! Alone! Why, Sara! Shame! Time after time for punishing him I was +a sick man!" + +"That's it! That's why so much of it was alone. I don't know why I +should say it all to-night after--after so many years of holding in." + +"Say what?" + +"You meant well, God knows a father never meant better, but it wasn't +the way to handle our boy's nature with punishments, and a quick temper +like yours. Your way was wrong, Mosher, and I knew it. That's why so +much of it was--alone--so much that I had to contend with I was afraid +to tell you, for fear--for fear--" + +"Now, now, Mamma, is that the way to cry your eyes out about nothing? I +don't say I'm not sometimes hasty--" + +"Time and time again--keeping it in from you--after the Chinese laundry +that night after you--you whipped him so--you never knew the months of +nights with him afterward--when I found out he liked that--stuff! Me +alone with him--" + +"Sara, is now time to rake up such ten-year-old nonsense!" + +"It's all coming out in me now, Mosher. The strain. You never knew. That +time you had to send me to the Catskills for the baths. You thought +it was rheumatism. I knew what was the matter with me. Worry. The +nights--Mosher. He liked it. I found it hid away in the toes of his +gymnasium shoes and in the mouth to his bugle. He--liked that stuff, +Mosher. You didn't know that, did you?" + +"Liked what?" + +"It. The--the stuff from the Chinese laundry. Even after the Juvenile +Court, when you thought it was all over after the whipping that night. +He'd snuff it up. I found him twice on his bed after school. All +druggy-like--half sleeping and half laughing. The gang at school he was +in with--learned him--" + +"You mean--?" + +"It ain't so easy to undo with a day in Juvenile Court such a habit like +that. You thought the court was the finish. My fight just began then!" + +"Why, Sara!" + +"You remember the time he broke his kneecap and how I fighted the +doctors against the hypodermic and you got so mad because I wouldn't let +him have it to ease the pain. I knew why it was better he should suffer +than have it. _I knew!_ It was a long fight I had with him alone, +Mosher. He liked that--stuff." + +"That--don't--seem possible." + +"And that wasn't the only lead-pipe case that time, neither, Mosher. +Twice I had to lay out of my own pocket so you wouldn't know, and talk +to him 'til sometimes I thought I didn't have any more tears left +inside of me. Between you and your business worries that year of the +garment-workers' strike--and our boy--I--after all that I haven't got +the strength left. Now that he's come out of it big, I can't begin over +again. I haven't got what he would call the second wind for it. If +anything should keep him now from going straight ahead to make him count +as a citizen, I wouldn't have the strength left to fight it, Mosher. +Wouldn't!" + +And so Sara Turkletaub lay back with the ripple writing of stormy high +tides crawling out in wrinkles all over her face and her head, that he +had never seen low, wilting there against his breast. + +He could not be done with soothing her, his own face suddenly as +puckered as an old shoe, his chin like the toe curling up. + +"Mamma, Mamma, I didn't know! God knows I never dreamt--" + +"I know you didn't, Mosher. I ain't mad. I'm only tired. I 'ain't got +the struggle left in me. This feeling won't last in me, I'll be all +right, but I'm tired, Mosher--so tired." + +"My poor Sara!" + +"And frightened. Such a blonde in a red hat. Cabarets. Taxicabs. Night +after night. Mosher, hold me. I'm frightened." + +Cheek to cheek in their dining room of too-carved oak, twin shadow-boxed +paintings of Fruit and Fish, the cut-glass punch bowl with the hooked-on +cups, the cotton palm, casually rigid velour drapes, the elusive floor +bell, they huddled, these two, whose eyes were branded with the scars +of what they had looked upon, and a slow, a vast anger began to rise in +Mosher, as if the blood in his throat were choking him, and a surge of +it, almost purple, rose out of his collar and stained his face. + +"Loafer! Low-life! No-'count! His whole body ain't worth so much as your +little finger. I'll learn him to be a worry to you with this all-night +business. By God! I'll learn my loafer of a son to--" + +On the pistol shot of that, Sara's body jumped out of its rigidity, all +her faculties coiled to spring. + +"He isn't! You know he isn't! 'Loafer'! Shame on you! Whatever else he +is, he's not a loafer. Boys will be boys--you say so yourself. 'Loafer'! +You should know once what some parents go through with real _loafers_ +for sons--" + +"No child what brings you such worry is anything else than a loafer!" + +"And I say 'no'! The minute I so much as give you a finger in finding +fault with that boy, right away you take a hand!" + +"I'll break his--" + +"You don't know yet a joke when you hear one. I wanted to get you mad! I +get a little tired and I try to make myself funny." + +"There wasn't no funniness in the way your eyes looked when you--" + +"I tell you I didn't mean one word. No matter what uneasiness that child +has brought me, always he has given me more in happiness. Twice more. +That's what he's been. Twice of everything to make up for--for only +being half of my twins." + +"Then what the devil is--" + +"I don't envy Gussie her Leo and his steady ways. Didn't you say +yourself for a boy like ours you got to pay with a little uneasiness?" + +"Not when that little uneasiness is enough to make his mother sick." + +"Sick! If I felt any better I'd be ashamed of having so much health! If +you get mad with him and try to ask him where he stays every night is +all that can cause me worry. It's natural a handsome boy like ours +should sow what they call his wild oat. With such a matzos face like +poor Leo, from where he broke his nose, I guess it ain't so easy for him +to have his wild oat. Promise me, Mosher, you won't ask one question or +get mad at him. His mother knows how to handle her boy so he don't even +know he's handled." + +"I'll handle him--" + +"See now, just look at yourself once in the glass with your eyes full of +red. That's why I can't tell you nothing. Right away you fly to pieces. +I say again, you don't know how to handle your son. Promise me you won't +say nothing to him or let on, Mosher. Promise me." + +"That's the way with you women. You get a man crazy and then--" + +"I tell you it's just my nonsense." + +"If I get mad you're mad, and if I don't get mad you're mad! Go do me +something to help me solve such a riddle like you." + +"It's because me and his aunt Gussie are a pair of matchmaking old +women. That the two cousins should marry the two sisters, Irma and Ada, +we got it fixed between us! Just as if because we want it that way it's +got to happen that way!" + +"A pair of geeses, the two of you!" + +"I wouldn't let on to Gussie, but Ada, the single one, has got Leo's +Irma beat for looks. Such a complexion! And the way she comes over to +sew with me afternoons! A young girl like that! An old woman like me! +You see, Mosher? See?" + +"See, she asks me. What good does it do me if I see or I don't see when +his mother gets her mind made up?" + +"But does Nicky so much as look at her? That night at Leo's birthday I +was ashamed the way he right away had an engagement after supper, when +she sat next to him and all through the meal gave him the white meat off +her own plate. Why, the flowered chiffon dress that girl had on cost ten +dollars a yard if it cost a cent. Did Nicky so much as look at her? No." + +"Too many birthdays in this family." + +"I notice you eat them when they are set down in front of you!" + +"Eat what?" + +"The birthdays." + +"Ha! That's fine! A new dish. Boiled birthdays with horseradish sauce." + +"All right, then, the birthday _parties_. Don't be so exactly with me. +Many a turn in his grave you yourself have given the man who made the +dictionary. I got other worries than language. If I knew where he +is--to-night--" + +Rather contentedly, while Sara cleared and tidied, Mosher snapped open +his evening paper, drawing his spectacles down from the perch of his +forehead. + +"You women," he said, breathing out with the male's easy surcease from +responsibility--"you women and your worries. If you 'ain't got 'em, you +make 'em." + +"Heigh-ho!" sighed out Sara, presently, having finished, and diving +into her open workbasket for the placidity her flying needle could so +cunningly simulate. "Heigh-ho!" + +But inside her heart was beating over and over again to itself, rapidly: + + +"If--only-I--knew--where--he--is--to--night--if--only--I--knew--where +--he--is--to--night." + + +II + +This is where he was: + +In the Forty-fifth-Street flat of Miss Josie Drew, known at various +times and places as Hattie Moore, Hazel Derland, Mrs. Hazel, and--But +what does it matter. + +At this writing it was Josie Drew of whom more is to be said of than +for. + +Yet pause to consider the curve of her clay. Josie had not molded her +nose. Its upward fling was like the brush of a perfumed feather duster +to the senses. Nor her mouth. It had bloomed seductively, long before +her lip stick rushed to its aid and abetment, into a cherry at the +bottom of a glass for which men quaffed deeply. There was something +rather terrifyingly inevitable about her. Just as the tide is plaything +of the stars, so must the naughty turn to Josie's ankle have been +complement to the naughty turn of her mind. + +It is not easy for the woman with a snub nose and lips molded with a +hard pencil to bleed the milk of human kindness over the frailties of +the fruity chalice that contained Miss Drew. She could not know, for +instance, if her own gaze was merely owlish and thin-lashed, the +challenge of eyes that are slightly too long. Miss Drew did. Simply +drooping hers must have stirred her with a none-too-nice sense of +herself, like the swell of his biceps can bare the teeth of a gladiator. + +That had been the Josie Drew of eighteen. + +At thirty she penciled the droop to her eyebrows a bit and had a not +always successful trick of powdering out the lurking caves under her +eyes. There was even a scar, a peculiar pocking of little shotted spots +as if glass had ground in, souvenir of one out of dozens of such nights +of orgies, this particular one the result of some unmentionable jealousy +she must have coaxed to the surface. + +She wore it plastered over with curls. It was said that in rage it +turned green. But who knows? It was also said that Josie Drew's correct +name was Josie Rosalsky. But again who knows? Her past was vivid with +the heat lightning of the sharp storms of men's lives. At nineteen she +had worn in public restaurants a star-sapphire necklace, originally +designed by a soap magnate for his wife, of these her birthstones. + +At twenty her fourteen-room apartment faced the Park, but was on the +ground floor because a vice-president of a bank, a black-broadcloth +little pelican of a man, who stumped on a cane and had a pink tin roof +to his mouth, disliked elevators. + +At twenty-three and unmentionably enough, a son of a Brazilian coffee +king, inflamed with the deviltry of debauch, had ground a wine tumbler +against her forehead, inducing the pock marks. At twenty-seven it was +the fourth vice-president of a Harlem bank. At twenty-nine an interim. +Startling to Josie Drew. Terrifying. Lean. For the first time in eight +years her gasoline expenditures amounted to ninety cents a month instead +of from forty to ninety dollars. And then not at the garage, but at the +corner drug store. Cleaning fluid for kicked-out glove and slipper tips. + +The little jangle of chatelaine absurdities which she invariably +affected--mesh bag, lip stick, memorandum (for the traffic in telephone +numbers), vanity, and cigarette case were gold--filled. There remained +a sapphire necklace, but this one faithfully copied to the wink of the +stars and the pearl clasp by the Chemic Jewel Company. Much of the +indoor appeal of Miss Drew was still the pink silkiness of her, a +little stiffened from washing and ironing, it is true, but there was a +flesh-colored arrangement of intricate drape that was rosily kind to +her. Also a vivid yellow one of a later and less expensive period, all +heavily slashed in Valenciennes lace. This brought out a bit of virago +through her induced blondness, but all the same it italicized her, just +as the crescent of black court plaster exclaimed at the whiteness of her +back. + +She could spend an entire morning fluffing at these things, pressing +out, with a baby electric iron and a sleeve board, a crumple of chiffon +to new sheerness, getting at spots with cleaning fluid. Under alcoholic +duress Josie dropped things. There was a furious stain down the +yellow, from a home brew of canned lobster a la Newburg. The stain +she eliminated entirely by cutting out the front panel and wearing it +skimpier. + +In these first slanting years, in her furnished flat of upright, +mandolin-attachment piano, nude plaster-of-Paris Bacchante holding +a cluster of pink-glass incandescent grapes, divan mountainous with +scented pillows, she was about as obvious as a gilt slipper that has +started to rub, or a woman's kiss that is beery and leaves a red +imprint. + +To Nicholas Turkletaub, whose adolescence had been languid and who had +never known a woman with a fling, a perfume, or a moue (there had been +only a common-sense-heeled co-ed of his law-school days and the rather +plump little sister-in-law of Leo's), the dawn of Josie cleft open +something in his consciousness, releasing maddened perceptions that +stung his eyeballs. He sat in the imitation cheap frailty of her +apartment like a young bull with threads of red in his eyeballs, his +head, not unpoetic with its shag of black hair, lowered as if to bash at +the impotence of the thing she aroused in him. + +Also, a curious thing had happened to Josie. Something so jaded in +her that she thought it long dead, was stirring sappily, as if with +springtime. + +Maybe it was a resurgence of sense of power after months of terror that +the years had done for her. + +At any rate, it was something strangely and deeply sweet. + +"Nicky-boy," she said, sitting on the couch with her back against the +wall, her legs out horizontally and clapping her rubbed gilt slippers +together--"Nicky-boy must go home ten o'clock to-night. Josie-girl +tired." + +Her mouth, like a red paper rose that had been crushed there, was always +bunched to baby talk. + +"Come here," he said, and jerked her so that the breath jumped. + +"Won't," she said, and came. + +His male prowess was enormous to him. He could bend her back almost +double with a kiss, and did. His first kisses that he spent wildly. He +could have carried her off like Persephone's bull, and wanted to, so +swift his mood. His flare for life and for her leaped out like a flame, +and something precious that had hardly survived sixteen seemed to stir +in the early grave of her heart. + +"Oh, Nicky-boy! Nicky-boy!" she said, and he caught that she was +yearning over him. + +"Don't say it in down curves like that. Say it up. Up." + +She didn't get this, but, with the half-fearful tail of her eye for +the clock, let him hold her quiescent, while the relentlessly sliding +moments ticked against her unease. + +"I'm jealous of every hour you lived before I met you." + +"Big-bad-eat-Josie-up-boy!" + +"I want to kiss your eyes until they go in deep--through you--I don't +know--until they hurt--deep--I--want--to hurt you--" + +"Oh! Oh! Josie scared!" + +"You're like one of those orange Angora kittens. Yellow. Soft. Deep." + +"I Nicky's pussy." + +"I can see myself in your eyes. Shut me up in them." + +"Josie so tired." + +"Of me?" + +"Nicky so--so strong." + +"My poor pussy! I didn't mean--" + +"Nicky-boy, go home like good Nicky." + +"I don't want ever to go home." + +"Go now, Josie says." + +"You mean never." + +"Now!" + +He kissed his "No, No," down against each of her eyelids. + +"You must," she said this time, and pushed him off. + +For a second he sat quite still, the black shine in his eyes seeming to +give off diamond points. + +"You're nervous," he said, and jerked her back so that the breath jumped +again. + +The tail of her glance curved to the gilt clock half hidden behind a +litter of used highball glasses, and then, seeing that his quickly +suspicious eye followed hers: + +"No," she said, "not nervous. Just tired--and thirsty." + +He poured her a high drink from a decanter, and held it so that, while +she sipped, her teeth were magnified through the tumbler, and he thought +that adorable and tilted the glass higher against her lips, and when she +choked soothed her with a crush of kisses. + +"You devil," he said, "everything you do maddens me." + +There was a step outside and a scraping noise at the lock. It was only +a vaudeville youth, slender as a girl, who lived on the floor above, +feeling unsteadily, and a bit the worse for wear, for the lock that must +eventually fit his key. + +But on that scratch into the keyhole, Josie leaped up in terror, so that +Nicholas went staggering back against the Bacchante, shattering to a +fine ring of crystal some of the pink grapes, and on that instant she +clicked out the remaining lights, shoving him, with an unsuspected and +catamount strength, into an adjoining box of a kitchenette. + +There an uncovered bulb burned greasily over a small refrigerator, that +stood on a table and left only the merest slit of walking space. It was +the none too fastidious kitchen of a none too fastidious woman. A pair +of dress shields hung on the improvised clothesline of a bit of twine. +A clump of sardines, one end still shaped to the tin, cloyed in its own +oil, crumbily, as if bread had been sopped in, the emptied tin itself, +with the top rolled back with a patent key, filled now with old beer. +Obviously the remaining contents of a tumbler had been flung in. +Cigarette stubs floated. A pasteboard cylindrical box, labeled "Sodium +Bi-carbonate," had a spoon stuck in it. A rubber glove drooped deadly +over the sink edge. + +On the second that he stood in that smelling fog, probably for no longer +than it took the swinging door to settle, something of sickness rushed +over Nicholas. The unaired odors of old foods. Those horrific things on +the line. The oil that had so obviously been sopped up with bread. The +old beer, edged in grease. Something of sickness and a panoramic flash +of things absurdly, almost unreasonably irrelevant. + +Snow, somewhere back in his memory. A frozen silence of it that was +clean and thin to the smell. The ridges in the rattan with which his +father had whipped him the night after the Chinese laundry. The fine +white head of the dean of the law school. His mother baking for Friday +night in a blue-and-white gingham apron that enveloped her. Red +curls--some one's--somewhere. The string of tiny Oriental pearls that +rose and fell with the little pouter-pigeon swell of a bosom. Pretty +perturbation. His cousin's sister-in-law, Ada. A small hole in a +pink-silk stocking, peeping like a little rising sun above the heel of a +rubbed gilt slipper. Josie's slipper. + +Something seemed suddenly to rise in Nicholas, with the quick +capillarity of water boiling over. + +The old familiar star-spangled red over which Sara had time after time +laid sedative hand against his seeing, sprang out. The pit of his +passion was bottomless, into which he was tumbling with the icy laughter +of breaking glass. + +Then he struck out against the swinging door so that it ripped outward +with a sough of stale air, striking Josie Drew, as she approached it +from the room side, so violently that her teeth bit down into her lips +and the tattling blood began to flow. + +"Nicky! It's a mistake. I thought--my sister--It got so late--you +wouldn't go. Go now! The key--turning--Nervous--silly--mistake. Go--" + +He laughed, something exhilarant in his boiling over, and even in her +sudden terror of him she looked at his bare teeth and felt the unnice +beauty of the storm. + +"Nicky," she half cried, "don't be--foolish! I--" + +And then he struck her across the lip so that her teeth cut in again. + +"There is some one coming here to-night," he said, with his smile still +very white. + +She sat on the couch, trying to bravado down her trembling. + +"And what if there is? He'll beat you up for this! You fool! I've tried +to explain a dozen times. You know, or if you don't you ought to, that +there's a--friend. A traveling salesman. Automobile accessories. Long +trips, but good money. Good money. And here you walk in a few weeks ago +and expect to find the way clear! Good boy, you like some one to go +ahead of you with a snow cleaner, don't you? Yes, there's some one due +in here off his trip to-night. What's the use trying to tell Nicky-boy +with his hot head. He's got a hot head, too. Go, and let me clear the +way for you, Nicky. For good if you say the word. But I have to know +where I'm at. Every girl does if she wants to keep her body and soul +together. You don't let me know where I stand. You know you've got me +around your little finger for the saying, but you don't say. Only go +now, Nicky-boy. For God's sake, it's five minutes to eleven and he's due +in on that ten-forty-five. Nicky-boy, go, and come back to me at six +to-morrow night. I'll have the way clear then, for good. Quit blinking +at me like that, Nicky. You scare me! Quit! When you come back to-morrow +evening there won't be any more going home for Josie's Nicky-boy. +Nicky, go now. He's hotheaded, too. Quit blinking, Nicky--for God's +sake--Nicky--" + +It was then Nicholas bent back her head as he did when he kissed her +there on the swan's arch to her neck, only this time his palm was +against her forehead and his other between her shoulder blades. + +"I could kill you," he said, and laughed with his teeth. "I could bend +back your neck until it breaks." + +"Ni--i--Nic--ky--" + +"And I want to," he said through the star-spangled red. "I want you to +crack when I twist. I'm going to twist--twist--" + +And he did, shoving back her hair with his palm, and suddenly bared, +almost like a grimace, up at him, was the glass-shotted spot where +the wine tumbler had ground in, greenish now, like the flanges of her +nostrils. + +Somewhere--down a dear brow was a singed spot like that--singed with the +flame of pain-- + +"Nicky, for God's sake--you're--you're spraining my neck! Let go! Nicky. +God! if you hadn't let go just when you did. You had me croaking. +Nicky-boy--kiss me now and go! Go! To-morrow at six--clear for +you--always--only go--please, boy--my terrible--my wonderful. To-morrow +at six." + +Somehow he was walking home, the burn of her lips still against his, +loathsome and gorgeous to his desires. He wanted to tear her out by the +roots from his consciousness. To be rollickingly, cleanly free of her. +His teeth shone against the darkness as he walked, drenched to the skin +of his perspiration and one side of his collar loose, the buttonhole +slit. + +Rollickingly free of her and yet how devilishly his shoes could clat on +the sidewalk. + +To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. To-morrow at six. + + * * * * * + +It was some time after midnight when he let himself into the uptown +apartment. He thought he heard his mother, trying to be swift, padding +down the hallway as if she had been waiting near the door. That would +have angered him. + +The first of these nights, only four weeks before (it seemed years), +he had come in hotly about four o'clock and gone to bed. About five he +thought he heard sounds, almost like the scratch of a little dog at +his door. He sprang up and flung it open. The flash of his mother's +gray-flannelette wrapper turned a corner of the hall. She must have +been crying out there and wanting him to need her. None the less it had +angered him. These were men's affairs. + +But in his room to-night the light burned placidly on the little table +next to the bed, a glass of milk on a plate beside it. The bed was +turned back, snowy sheets forming a cool envelope for him to slip +in between. The room lay sedatively in shadow. A man's room. Books, +uncurving furniture, photographs of his parents taken on their +twenty-fifth anniversary standing on the chiffonier in a double leather +frame that opened like a book. Face down on the reading table beside the +glass of milk, quite as he must have left it the night before, except +where Sara had lifted it to dust under, a copy of Bishop's _New Criminal +Law_, already a prognosis, as it were, of that branch of the law he was +ultimately and brilliantly to bend to fuller justice. + +Finally, toward morning Nicholas slept, and at ten o'clock of a +rain-swept Sunday forenoon awoke, as he knew he must, to the grip of a +blinding headache, so called for want of a better noun to interpret the +kind of agony which, starting somewhere around his eyes, could prick +each nerve of his body into a little flame, as if countless matches had +been struck. + +As a youngster these attacks had not been infrequent, usually after a +fit of crying. The first, in fact, had followed the burning of the cat; +a duet of twin spasms then, howled into Sara's apron, And once after he +had fished an exhausted comrade out of an ice hole in Bronx Park. They +had followed the lead-pipe affairs and the Chinese-laundry episode with +dreadful inevitability. But it had been five years since the last--the +night his mother had fainted with terror at what she had found concealed +in the toes of his gymnasium shoes. + +Incredible that into his manhood should come the waving specter of those +early passions. + +At eleven o'clock, after she heard him up and moving about, his mother +carried him his kiss and his coffee, steaming black, the way he liked +it. She had wanted to bring him an egg--in fact, had prepared one, to +just his liking of two minutes and thirty seconds--but had thought +better of it, and wisely, because he drank the coffee at a quick gulp +and set down the cup with his mouth wry and his eyes squeezed tight. +From the taste of it he remembered horridly the litter of tall glasses +beside the gilt clock. + +With all her senses taut not to fuss around him with little jerks and +pullings, Sara jerked and pulled. Too well she knew that furrow between +his eyes and wanted unspeakably to tuck him back into bed, lower the +shades, and prepare him a vile mixture good for exactly everything that +did not ail him. But Sara could be wise even with her son. So instead +she flung up the shade, letting him wince at the clatter, dragged off +the bedclothes into a tremendous heap on the chair, beat up the pillows, +and turned the mattress with a single-handed flop. + +"The Sunday-morning papers are in the dining room, son." + +"Uhm!" + +He was standing in his dressing gown at the rain-lashed window, +strumming. Lean, long, and, to Sara, godlike, with the thick shock of +his straight hair still wet from the shower. + +"Mrs. Berkowitz telephoned already this morning with such a grand +compliment for you, son. Her brother-in-law, Judge Rosen, says you're +the brains of your firm even if you are only the junior partner yet, and +your way looks straight ahead for big things." + +"Uhm! Who's talking out there so incessantly, mother?" + +"That's your uncle Aaron. He came over for Sunday-morning breakfast with +your father. You should see the way he tracked up my hall with his wet +shoes. I'm sending him right back home with your father. They should +clutter up your aunt Gussie's house with their pinochle and ashes. I had +'em last Sunday. She don't need to let herself off so easy every week. +It's enough if I ask them all over here for supper to-night. Not?" + +"Don't count on me, dear. I won't be home for supper." + +There was a tom-tom to the silence against her beating ear drums. + +"All right, son," she said, pulling her lips until they smiled at him, +"with Leo and Irma that'll only make six of us, then." + +He kissed her, but so tiredly that again it was almost her irresistible +woman's impulse to drag down that fiercely black head to the beating +width of her bosom and plead from him drop by drop some of the bitter +welling of pain she could see in his eyes. + +"Nicky," she started to cry, and then, at his straightening back from +her, "come out in the dining room after I pack off the men. I got my +work to do. That nix of a house girl left last night. Such sass, too! +I'm better off doing my work alone." + +Sara, poor dear, could not keep a servant, and, except for the +instigation of her husband and son, preferred not to. Cooks rebelled +at the exactitude of her household and her disputative reign of the +kitchen. + +"I'll be out presently, mother," he said, and flung himself down in the +leather Morris chair, lighting his pipe and ostensibly settling down to +the open-faced volume of _Criminal Law_. + +Sara straightened a straight chair. She knew, almost as horridly as +if she had looked in on it, the mucky thing that was happening; the +intuitive sixth sense of her hovered over him with great wings that +wanted to spread. Josie Drew was no surmise with her. The blond head and +the red hat were tatooed in pain on her heart and she trembled in a bath +of fear, and, trembling, smiled and went out. + +Sitting there while the morning ticked on, head thrown back, eyes +closed, and all the little darting nerves at him, the dawn of Nicholas +Turkletaub's repugnance was all for self. The unfrowsy room, and himself +fresh from his own fresh sheets. His mother's eyes with that clean-sky +quality in them. The affectionate wrangling of those two decent voices +from the dining room. Books! His books, that he loved. His tastiest +dream of mother, with immensity and grandeur in her eyes, listening +from a privileged first-row bench to the supreme quality of his mercy. +_Judge_--Turkletaub! + +But tastily, too, and undeniably against his lips, throughout these +conjurings, lay the last crushy kiss of Josie Drew. That swany arch to +her neck as he bent it back. He had kissed her there. Countlessly. + +He tried to dwell on his aversions for her. She had once used an +expletive in his presence that had sickened him, and, noting its effect, +she had not reiterated. The unfastidious brunette roots to her light +hair. That sink with the grease-rimmed old beer! But then: her eyes +where the brows slid down to make them heavy-lidded. That bit of blue +vein in the crotch of her elbow. That swany arch. + +Back somewhere, as the tidy morning wore in, the tranced, the maddening +repetition began to tick itself through: + +"Six o'clock. Six o'clock." + +He rushed out into the hallway and across to the parlor pinkly lit with +velours, even through the rainy day, and so inflexibly calm. Sara might +have measured the distance between the chairs, so regimental they +stood. The pink-velour curlicue divan with the two pink, gold-tasseled +cushions, carelessly exact. The onyx-topped table with the pink-velour +drape, also gold-tasseled. The pair of equidistant and immaculate china +cuspidors, rose-wreathed. The smell of Sunday. + +"Nicky, that you?" + +It was his mother, from the dining room. + +"Yes, mother," and sauntered in. + +There were two women sitting at the round table, shelling nuts. One of +them his mother, the other Miss Ada Berkowitz, who jumped up, spilling +hulls. + +Nicholas, in the velveteen dressing gown with the collar turned up, +started to back out, Mrs. Turkletaub spoiling that. + +"You can come in, Nicky. Ada'll excuse you. I guess she's seen a man in +his dressing gown before; the magazine advertisements are full with +them in worse and in less. And on Sunday with a headache from all week +working so hard, a girl can forgive. He shouldn't think with his head so +much, I always tell him, Ada." + +"I didn't know he was here," said Miss Berkowitz, already thinking in +terms of what she might have worn. + +"I telephoned over for Ada, Nicky. They got an automobile and she don't +need to get her feet wet to come over to a lonesome old woman on a +rainy Sunday, to spend the day and learn me how to make those delicious +stuffed dates like she fixed for her mother's card party last week. Draw +up a chair, Nicky, and help." + +She was casual, she was matter-of-fact, she was bent on the business +of nut cracking. They crashed softly, never so much as bruised by her +carefully even pressure. + +"Thanks," said Nicholas, and sat down, not caring to, but with good +enough grace. He wanted his coat, somehow, and fell to strumming the +table top. + +"Don't, Nicky; you make me nervous." + +"Here," said Miss Berkowitz, and gave him a cracker and a handful of +nuts. The little crashings resumed. + +Ada had very fair skin against dark hair, slightly too inclined to curl. +There was quite a creamy depth to her--a wee pinch could raise a bruise. +The kind of whiteness hers that challenged the string of tiny Oriental +pearls she wore at her throat. Her healthily pink cheeks and her little +round bosom were plump, and across the back of each of her hands were +four dimples that flashed in and out as she bore down on the cracker. +She was as clear as a mountain stream. + +"A trifle too plumpy," he thought, but just the same wished he had wet +his military brushes. + +"Ada has just been telling me, Nicky, about her ambition to be an +interior decorator for the insides of houses. I think it is grand +the way some girls that are used to the best of everything prepare +themselves for, God forbid, they should ever have to make their own +livings. I give them credit for it. Tell Nicky, Ada, about the drawing +you did last week that your teacher showed to the class." + +"Oh," said Ada, blushing softly, "Mr. Turkletaub isn't interested in +that." + +"Yes, I am," said Nicholas, politely, eating one of the meats. + +"You mean the Tudor dining room--" + +No, no! You know, the blue-and-white one you said you liked best of +all." + +"It was a nursery," began Ada, softly. "Just one of those blue-and-white +darlingnesses for somebody's little darling." + +"For somebody's little darling," repeated Mrs. Turkletaub, silently. She +had the habit, when moved, of mouthing people's words after them. + +"My idea was--Oh, it's so silly to be telling it again, Mrs. +Turkletaub!" + +"Silly! I think it's grand that a girl brought up to the best should +want to make something of herself. Don't you, Nick?" + +"H-m-m!" + +"Well, my little idea was white walls with little Delft-blue borders +of waddling duckies; white dotted Swiss curtains in the brace of sunny +southern-exposure windows, with little Delft-blue borders of more +waddling duckies; and dear little nursery rhymes painted in blue on the +headboard to keep baby's dreams sweet." + +"--baby's dreams sweet! I ask you, is that cute, Nick? Baby's dreams she +even interior decorates." + +"My--instructor liked that idea, too. He gave me 'A' on the drawing." + +"He should have given you the whole alphabet. And tell him about the +chairs, Ada. Such originality." + +"Oh, Mrs. Turkletaub, that was just a--a little--idea--" + +"The modesty of her! Believe me, if it was mine, I'd call it a big one. +Tell him." + +"Mummie and daddie chairs I call them." + +Sara (mouthing): "Mummie and daddie--" + +"Two white-enamel chairs to stand on either side of the crib so when +mummie and daddie run up in their evening clothes to kiss baby good +night--Oh, I just mean two pretty white chairs, one for mummie and one +for daddie." Little crash. + +"I ask you, Nicky, is that poetical? 'So when mummie and daddie run up +to kiss baby good night.' I remember once in Russia, Nicky, all the +evening clothes we had was our nightgowns, but when you and your little +twin brother were two and a half years old, one night I--" + +"Mrs. Turkletaub, did you have twins?" + +"Did I have twins, Nicky, she asks me. She didn't know you were twins. +A red one I had, as red as my black one is black. You see my Nicky how +black and mad-looking he is even when he's glad; well, just so--" + +"Now, mother!" + +"Just so beautiful and fierce and red was my other beautiful baby. You +didn't know, Ada, that a piece of my heart, the red of my blood, I left +lying out there. Nicky--she didn't know--" + +She could be so blanched and so stricken when the saga of her motherhood +came out in her eyes, the pallor of her face jutting out her features +like lonely landmarks on waste land, that her husband and her son had +learned how to dread for her and spare her. + +"Now, mother!" said Nicholas, and rose to stand behind her chair, +holding her poor, quavering chin in the cup of his hand. "Come, one +rainy Sunday is enough. Let's not have an indoor as well as an outdoor +storm. Come along. Didn't I hear Miss Ada play the piano one evening +over at Leo's? Up-see-la! Who said you weren't my favorite dancing +partner?" and waltzed her, half dragging back, toward the parlor. "Come, +some music!" + +There were the usual demurrings from Ada, rather prettily pink, and Mrs. +Turkletaub, with the threat of sobs swallowed, opening the upright piano +to dust the dustless keyboard with her apron, and Nicholas, his sagging +pipe quickly supplied with one of the rose-twined cuspidors for +ash receiver, hunched down in the pink-velour armchair of enormous +upholstered hips. + +The "Turkish Patrol" was what Ada played, and then, "Who Is Sylvia?" and +sang it, as frailly as a bird. + +At one o'clock there was dinner, that immemorial Sunday meal of roast +chicken with its supplicating legs up off the platter; dressing to be +gouged out; sweet potatoes in amber icing; a master stroke of Mrs. +Turkletaub's called "_matzos klose_," balls of unleavened bread, +sizzling, even as she served them, in a hot butter bath and light-brown +onions; a stuffed goose neck, bursting of flavor; cheese pie twice the +depth of the fork that cut in; coffee in large cups. More cracking +of nuts, interspersed with raisins. Ada, cunningly enveloped in a +much-too-large apron, helping Mrs. Turkletaub to clear it all away. + +Smoking there in his chair beside the dining-room window, rain the +unrelenting threnody of the day, Nicholas, fed, closed his eyes to the +rhythm of their comings and goings through the swinging door that led to +the kitchen. Comings--and--goings--his mother who rustled so cleanly of +starch--Ada--clear--yes, that was it--clear as a mountain stream. Their +small laughters--comings--goings-- + +It was almost dusk when he awoke, the pink-shaded piano lamp already +lighted in the parlor beyond, the window shade at his side drawn and an +Afghan across his knees. It was snug there in the rosied dusk. The women +were in the kitchen yet, or was it again? Again, he supposed, looking +at his watch. He had slept three hours. Presently he rose and sauntered +out. There was coffee fragrance on the air of the large white kitchen, +his mother hunched to the attitude of wielding a can opener, and at the +snowy oilclothed table, Ada, slicing creamy slabs off the end of a cube +of Swiss cheese. + +"Sleepyhead," she greeted, holding up a sliver for him to nibble. + +And his mother: "That was a good rest for you, son? You feel better?" + +"Immense," he said, hunching his shoulders and stretching his hands down +into his pockets in a yawny well-being. + +"I wish, then, you would put another leaf in the table for me. There's +four besides your father coming over from Aunt Gussie's. I just wish you +would look at Ada. For a girl that don't have to turn her hand at home, +with two servants, and a laundress every other week, just look how handy +she is with everything she touches." + +The litter of Sunday-night supper, awaiting its transfer to the +dining-room table, lay spread in the faithful geometry of the cold, +hebdomadal repast. A platter of ruddy sliced tongue; one of noonday +remnants of cold chicken; ovals of liverwurst; a mound of potato salad +crisscrossed with strips of pimento; a china basket of the stuffed +dates, all kissed with sugar; half of an enormously thick cheese cake; +two uncovered apple pies; a stack of delicious raisin-stuffed curlicues, +known as _"schneken,"_ pickles with a fern of dill across them (Ada's +touch, the dill); a dish of stuffed eggs with a toothpick stuck in each +half (also Ada's touch, the toothpicks). + +She moved rather pussily, he thought, sometimes her fair cheeks +quivering slightly to the vibration of her walk, as if they had jelled. +And, too, there was something rather snug and plump in the way her +little hands with the eight dimples moved about things, laying the slabs +of Swiss cheese, unstacking cups. + +"No, only seven cups, Ada. Nicky--ain't going to be home to supper." + +"Oh," she said, "excuse me! I--I--thought--silly--" and looked up at him +to deny that it mattered. + +"Isn't that what you said this morning, Nicky?" Poor Sara, she almost +failed herself then because her voice ended in quite a dry click in her +throat. + +He stood watching the resumed unstacking of the cups, each with its +crisp little grate against its neighbor. + +"One," said Ada, "two-three-four-five-six--seven!" + +He looked very long and lean and his darkly nervous self, except that he +dilly-dallied on his heels like a much-too-tall boy not wanting to look +foolish. + +"If Miss Ada will provide another cup and saucer, I think I'll stay +home." + +"As you will," said Sara, disappearing into the dining room with the +mound of salad and the basket of sugar-kissed dates. + +She put them down rather hastily when she got there, because, sillily +enough, she thought, for the merest instant, she was going to faint. + + * * * * * + +The week that Judge Turkletaub tried his first case in Court of General +Sessions--a murder case, toward which his criminal-law predilection +seemed so inevitably to lead him, his third child, a little daughter +with lovely creamy skin against slightly too curly hair, was lying, just +two days old, in a blue-and-white nursery with an absurd border of blue +ducks waddling across the wallpaper. + +Ada, therefore, was not present at this inaugural occasion of his first +trial. But each of the two weeks of its duration, in a first-row bench +of the privileged, so that her gaze was almost on a dotted line with her +son's, sat Sara Turkletaub, her hands crossed over her waistline, her +bosom filling and waning and the little jet folderols on her bonnet +blinking. Tears had their way with her, prideful, joyful at her son's +new estate, sometimes bitterly salt at the life in the naked his eyes +must look upon. + +Once, during the recital of the defendant, Sara almost seemed to bleed +her tears, so poignantly terrible they came, scorching her eyes of a +pain too exquisite to be analyzed, yet too excruciating to be endured. + + +III + +Venture back, will you, to the ice and red of that Russian dawn when on +the snow the footsteps that led toward the horizon were the color of +blood, and one woman, who could not keep her eyes ahead, moaned as +she fled, prayed, and even screamed to return to her dead in the +bullet-riddled horse trough. + +Toward the noon of that day, a gray one that smelled charred, a fugitive +group from a distant village that was still burning faltered, as it too +fled toward the horizon, in the blackened village of Vodna, because a +litter had to be fashioned for an old man whose feet were frozen, and a +mother, whose baby had perished at her breast, would bury her dead. + +Huddled beside the horse trough, over a poor fire she had kindled of +charred wood, Hanscha, the midwife (Hanscha, the drunk, they called her, +fascinatedly, in the Pale of generations of sober women), spied Mosher's +flung coat and reached for it eagerly, with an eye to tearing it into +strips to wrap her tortured feet. + +A child stirred as she snatched it, wailing lightly, and the instinct of +her calling, the predominant motive, Hanscha with her fumy breath warmed +it closer to life and trod the one hundred and eight miles to the port +with it strapped to her back like a pack. + +Thus it was that Schmulka, the red twin, came to America and for the +first fourteen years of his life slept on a sour pallet in a sour +tenement he shared with Hanscha, who with filthy hands brought children +into the filthy slums. + +Jason, she called him, because that was the name of the ship that +carried them over. A rolling tub that had been horrible with the cries +of cattle and seasickness. + +At fourteen he was fierce and rebellious and down on the Juvenile Court +records for truancy, petty trafficking in burned-out opium, vandalism, +and gang vagrancy. + +In Hanscha's sober hours he was her despair, and she could be horrible +in her anger, once the court reprimanding her and threatening to take +Jason from her because of welts found on his back. + +It was in her cups that she was proud of him, and so it behooved Jason +to drink her down to her pallet, which he could, easily. + +He was handsome. His red hair had darkened to the same bronze of the +samovar and he was straight as the drop of an apple from the branch. He +was reckless. Could turn a pretty penny easily, even dangerously, and +spend it with a flip for a pushcart bauble. + +Once he brought home a plaster-of-Paris Venus--the Melos one with the +beautiful arch to her torso of a bow that instant after the arrow has +flown. Hanscha cuffed him for the expenditure, but secretly her old +heart, which since childhood had subjected her to strange, rather +epileptical, sinking spells, and had induced the drinking, warmed her +with pride in his choice. + +Hanscha, with her veiny nose and the dreadful single hair growing out of +a mole on her chin, was not without her erudition. She had read for the +midwifery, and back in the old days could recite the bones in the body. + +She let the boy read nights, sometimes even to dropping another coin +into the gas meter. Some of the books were the lewd penny ones of the +Bowery bookstands, old medical treatises, too, purchased three for a +quarter and none too nice reading for the growing boy. But there he had +also found a _Les Miserables_ and _The Confessions of St. Augustine_, +which last, if he had known it, was a rare edition, but destined for the +ash pit. + +Once he read Hanscha a bit of poetry out of a furiously stained old +volume of verse, so fragrantly beautiful, to him, this bit, that it +wound around him like incense, the perfume of it going deeply and +stinging his eyes to tears: + + Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting! + The soul that rises with us, our life's star, + Hath had elsewhere its setting, + And cometh from afar. + Not in entire forgetfulness, + And not in utter nakedness, + But trailing clouds of glory do we come + From God, who is our home: + Heaven lies about us in our infancy. + Shades of the prison house begin to close + Upon the growing boy, + But he beholds the light, and whence it flows + He sees it in his joy; + The youth who daily farther, from the East + Must travel, still is Nature's priest, + And by the vision splendid + Is on his way attended; + At length the man perceives it die away, + And fade into the light of common day. + +But Hanscha was drunk and threw some coffee-sopped bread at him, and so +his foray into poetry ended in the slops of disgust. + +A Miss Manners, a society social worker who taught poverty +sweet forbearance every Tuesday from four until six, wore a +forty-eight-diamond bar pin on her under bodice (on Tuesday from +four until six), and whose gray-suede slippers were ever so slightly +blackened from the tripping trip from front door to motor and back, took +him up, as the saying is, and for two weeks Jason disported himself on +the shorn lawns of the Manners summer place at Great Neck, where the +surf creamed at the edge of the terrace and the smell of the sea set +something beating against his spirit as if it had a thousand imprisoned +wings. + +There he developed quite a flair for the law books in Judge Manners's +laddered library. Miss Manners found him there, reading, on stomach and +elbows, his heels waving in the air. + +Judge Manners talked with him and discovered a legal turn of mind, and +there followed some veranda talk of educating and removing him from his +environment. But that very afternoon Jason did a horrid thing. It was no +more than he had seen about him all his life. Not as much. He kissed the +little pig-tailed daughter of the laundress and pursued her as she ran +shrieking to her mother's apron. That was all, but his defiant head and +the laundress's chance knowledge of his Juvenile Court record did for +him. + +At six o'clock that evening, with a five-dollar bill of which he made a +spitball for the judge's departing figure down the station platform, he +was shipped back to Hanscha. Secretly he was relieved. Life was easier +in the tenement under the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. The piece of its +arch which he could see from his window was even beautiful, a curve of a +stone into some beyond. + +That night he fitted down into the mold his body had worn on the pallet, +sighing out satisfaction. + +Environment had won him back. + +On the other hand, in one of those red star-spangled passions of +rebellion against his fetid days, he blindly cut Hanscha with the edge +of a book which struck against her brow as he hurled it. She had been +drunk and had asked of him, at sixteen, because of the handsomeness +that women would easily love in him, to cadet the neighborhood of Grand +Street, using her tenement as his refuge of vice and herself as sharer +of spoils. + +The corner of the book cut deeply and pride in her terror of him came +out redly in her bloodshot eyes. + +In the short half term of his high-school training he had already forged +ahead of his class when he attained the maturity of working papers. He +was plunging eagerly--brilliantly, in fact--into a rapid translation +of the _Iliad_, fired from the very first line by the epic of the +hexametered anger of Achilles, and stubbornly he held out against the +working papers. + +But to Hanscha they came with the inevitability of a summons rather +than an alternative, and so for a year or two he brought home rather +precocious wages from his speed in a canning factory. Then he stoked his +way to Sydney and back, returning fiery with new and terrible oaths. + +One night Hanscha died. He found her crumpled up in the huddle of her +skirts as if she had dropped in her tracks, which she had, in one of the +epileptic heart strictures. + +It was hardly a grief to him. He had seen red with passion at her +atrociousness too often, and, somehow, everything that she stood for had +been part of the ache in him. + +Yet it is doubtful if, released of her, he found better pasture. Bigger +pastures, it is true, in what might be called an upper stratum of the +lower East Side, although at no time was he ever to become party to any +of its underground system of crime. + +Inevitably, the challenge of his personality cleared the way for him. At +nineteen he had won and lost the small fortune of thirty-three hundred +dollars at a third-class gambling resort where he came in time to be +croupier. + +He dressed flashily, wore soft collars, was constantly swapping sporty +scarfpins for sportier ones, and was inevitably the center, seldom part, +of a group. + +Then one evening at Cooper Union, which stands at the head of the +Bowery, he enrolled for an evening course in law, but never entered the +place again. + +Because the next night, in a Fourteenth Street cabaret with adjacent +gambling rooms, he met one who called herself Winnie Ross, the beginning +of a heart-sickening end. + +There is so little about her to relate. She was the color of cloyed +honey when the sugar granules begin to show through. Pale, pimply in a +fashion the powder could cover up, the sag of her facial muscles showed +plainly through, as if weary of doling out to the years their hush +money, and she was quite obviously down at the heels. Literally so, +because when she took them off, her shoes lopped to the sides and could +not stand for tipsiness. + +She was Jason's first woman. She exhaled a perfume, cheap, tickling, +chewed some advertised tablets that scented her kisses, and her throat, +when she threw up her head, had an arch and flex to it that were +mysteriously graceful. + +Life had been swift and sheer with Winnie. She was very tired and, +paradoxically enough, it gave her one of her last remaining charms. Her +eyelids were freighted with weariness, were waxy white of it, and they +could flutter to her cheeks, like white butterflies against white, and +lay shadows there that maddened Jason. + +She called him Red, although all that remained now were the lights +through his browning hair, almost like the flashings of a lantern down a +railroad track. + +She pronounced it with a slight trilling of the R, and if it was left in +her of half a hundred loves to stir on this swift descent of her life +line, she did over Jason. Partly because he was his winged-Hermes self, +and partly because--because--it was difficult for her rather fagged +brain to rummage back. + +Thus the rest may be told: + +Entering her rooms one morning, a pair of furiously garish ones over a +musical-instrument store on the Bowery, he threw himself full length on +the red-cotton divan, arms locked under his always angry-looking head, +and watching her, through low lids, trail about the room at the business +of preparing him a surlily demanded cup of coffee. Her none too +immaculate pink robe trailed a cotton-lace tail irritatingly about her +heels, which slip-slopped as she walked, her stockings, without benefit +of support, twisting about her ankles. + +She was barometer for his moods, which were elemental, and had learned +to tremble with a queer exaltation of fear before them. + +"My Red-boy blue to-day," she said, stooping as she passed and wanting +to kiss him. + +He let his lids drop and would have none of her. They were curiously +blue, she thought, as if of unutterable fatigue, and then quickly +appraised that his luck was still letting him in for the walloping now +of two weeks' duration. His diamond-and-opal scarfpin was gone, and the +gold cuff links replaced with mother-of-pearl. + +She could be violently bitter about money, and when the flame of his +personality was not there to be reckoned with, ten times a day she +ejected him, with a venom that was a psychosis, out of her further +toleration. Not so far gone was Winnie but that she could count on the +twist of her body and the arch of her throat as revenue getters. + +At first Jason had been lavish, almost with a smack of some of the old +days she had known, spending with the easy prodigality of the gambler in +luck. There was a near-seal coat from him in her cupboard of near-silks, +and the flimsy wooden walls of her rooms had been freshly papered in +roses. + +Then his luck had turned, and to top his sparseness with her this new +sullenness which she feared and yet which could be so delicious to +her--reminiscently delicious. + +She gave him coffee, and he drank it like medicine out of a thick-lipped +cup painted in roses. + +"My Red-boy blue," she reiterated, trying to ingratiate her arms about +his neck. "Red-boy tells Winnie he won't be back for two whole days and +then brings her surprise party very next day. Red-boy can't stay away +from Winnie." + +"Let go." + +"Red-boy bring Winnie nothing? Not little weeny, weeny nothing?" drawing +a design down his coat sleeve, her mouth bunched. + +Suddenly he jerked her so that the breath jumped in a warm fan of it +against her face. + +"You're the only thing I've got in the world, Win. My luck's gone, but +I've got you. Tell me I've got you." + +He could be equally intense over which street car to take, and she knew +it, but somehow it lessened for her none of the lure of his nervosity, +and with her mind recoiling from his pennilessness her body inclined. + +"Tell me, Winnie, that I have you." + +"You know you have," she said, and smiled, with her head back so that +her face foreshortened. + +"I'm going far for you Winnie. Gambling is too rotten--and too easy. I +want to build bridges for you. Practice law. Corner Wall Street." + +This last clicked. + +"Once," she said, lying back, with her pupils enlarging with the +fleeting memories she was not always alert enough to clutch--"once--once +when I lived around Central Park--a friend of mine--vice-president he +was--Well, never mind, he was my friend--it was nothing for him to turn +over a thousand or two a week for me in Wall Street." + +This exaggeration was gross, but it could feed the flame of his passion +for her like oil. + +"I'll work us up and out of this! I've got better stuff in me. I want to +wind you in pearls--diamonds--sapphires." + +"I had a five-thousand-dollar string once--of star sapphires." + +"Trust me, Winnie. Help me by having confidence in me. I'm glad my luck +is welching. It will be lean at first, until I get on my legs. But +it's not too late yet. Win, if only I have some one to stand by me. To +believe--to fight with and for me! Get me, girl? Believe in me." + +"Sure. Always play strong with the cops, Red. It's the short cut to +ready money. Ready money, Red. That's what gets you there. Don't ask +any girl to hang on if it's shy. That's where I spun myself dirt many a +time, hanging on after it got shy. Ugh! That's what did for me--hanging +on--after it got shy." + +"No. No. You don't understand. For God's sake try to get me, Winnie. +Fight up with me. It'll be lean, starting, but I'll finish strong for +you." + +"Don't lean on me. I'm no wailing wall. What's it to me all your +highfaluting talk. You've been as slab-sided in the pockets as a cat all +month. Don't have to stand it. I've got friends--spenders--" + +There had been atrocious scenes, based on his jealousies of her, which +some imp in her would lead her to provoke, notwithstanding that even as +she spoke she regretted, and reached back for the words, + +"I mean--" + +"I know what you mean," he said, quietly, permitting her to lie back +against him and baring his teeth down at her. + +She actually thought he was smiling. + +"I'm not a dead one by a long shot," she said, kindling with what was +probably her desire to excite him. + +"No?" + +"No. I can still have the best. The very best. If you want to know it, +a political Indian with a car as long as this room, not mentioning any +names, is after me--" + +She still harbored the unfortunate delusion that he was smiling. + +"You thought I was up at Ossining this morning, didn't you?" he asked, +lazily for him. He went there occasionally to visit a friend in the +state prison who had once served him well in a gambling raid and was now +doing a short larceny term there. + +"You said you were--" + +"I _said_ I was. Yes. But I came back unexpectedly, didn't I?" + +"Y-yes, Red?" + +"Look at me!" + +She raised round and ready-to-be-terrified eyes. + +"Murphy was here last night!" he cracked at her, +bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, like so many pistol shots. + +"Why, Red--I--You--" + +"Don't lie. Murphy was here last night! I saw him leave this morning as +I came in." + +It was hazard, pure and simple. Not even a wild one, because all +too easily he could kiss down what would be sure to be only her +half-flattered resentment. + +But there was a cigar stub on the table edge, and certain of her +adjustments of the room when he entered had been rather quick. He could +be like that with her, crazily the slave of who knows what beauty he +found in her; jealous of even an unaccountable inflection in her voice. +There had been unmentionable frenzies of elemental anger between them +and she feared and exulted in these strange poles of his nature. + +"Murphy was here last night!" + +It had happened, in spite of a caution worthy of a finer finesse than +hers, and suddenly she seemed to realize the quality of her fear for him +to whom she was everything and who to her was not all. + +"Don't, Red," she said, all the bars of her pretense down and dodging +from his eyes rather than from any move he made toward her. "Don't, Red. +Don't!" And began to whimper in the unbeautifulness of fear, becoming +strangely smaller as her pallor mounted. + +He was as terrible and as swarthy and as melodramatic as Othello. + +"Don't, Red," she called still again, and it was as if her voice came to +him from across a bog. + +He was standing with one knee dug into the couch, straining her head +back against the wall, his hand on her forehead and the beautiful +flexing arch of her neck rising ... swanlike. + +"Watch out!" There was a raw nail in the wall where a picture had hung. +Murphy had kept knocking it awry and she had removed it. "Watch out, +Red! No-o--no--" + +Through the star-spangled red he glimpsed her once where the hair swept +off her brow, and for the moment, to his blurred craziness, it was as if +through the red her brow was shotted with little scars and pock marks +from glass, and a hot surge of unaccountable sickness fanned the +enormous silence of his rage. + +With or without his knowing it, that raw nail drove slowly home to the +rear of Winnie's left ear, upward toward the cerebellum as he tilted and +tilted, and the convex curve of her neck mounted like a bow stretched +outward. + + * * * * * + +There was little about Jason's trial to entitle it to more than a +back-page paragraph in the dailies. He sat through those days, that +were crisscrossed with prison bars, much like those drowned figures +encountered by deep-sea divers, which, seated upright in death, are +pressed down by the waters of unreality. + +It is doubtful if he spoke a hundred words during the lean, celled weeks +of his waiting, and then with a vacuous sort of apathy and solely upon +advice of counsel. Even when he took the stand, undramatically, his +voice, without even a plating of zest for life, was like some old drum +with the parchment too tired to vibrate. + +Women, however, cried over him and the storm in his eyes and the +curiously downy back of his neck where the last of his youth still +marked him. + +To Sara, from her place in the first row, on those not infrequent +occasions when his eyes fumbled for hers, he seemed to drown in her +gaze--back--somewhere-- + +On a Friday at high noon the jury adjourned, the judge charging it with +a solemnity that rang up to wise old rafters and down into one woman's +thirsty soul like life-giving waters. + +In part he told the twelve men about to file out, "If there has been +anything in my attitude during the recital of the defendant's story, +which has appeared to you to be in the slightest manner prejudiced one +way or another, I charge you to strike such mistaken impressions from +your minds. + +"I have tried honestly to wash the slate of my mind clean to take down +faithfully the aspects of this case which for two weeks has occupied +this jury. + +"If you believe the defendant guilty of the heinous crime in question, +do not falter in your use of the power with which the law has vested +you. + +"If, on the other hand and to the best of your judgment, there has been +in the defendant's life extenuating circumstances, er--a limitation +of environment, home influence, close not the avenues of your fair +judgment. + +"Did this man in the kind of er--a--frenzy he describes and to which +witnesses agree he was subject, deliberately strain back the Ross +woman's head until the nail penetrated? + +"If so, remember the law takes knowledge only of self-defense. + +"On the other hand, ask of yourselves well, did the defendant, in the +frenzy which he claims had hold of him when he committed this unusual +crime, know that the nail was there? + +"_Would Winnie Ross have met her death if the nail had not been there?_ + +"Gentlemen, in the name of the law, solemnly and with a fear of God in +your hearts, I charge you." + +It was a quick verdict. Three hours and forty minutes. + +"Not guilty." + +In the front row there, with the titillating folderols on her bonnet and +her hand at her throat as if she would tear it open for the mystery of +the pain of the heartbeat in it, Sara Turkletaub heard, and, hearing, +swooned into the pit of her pain and her joy. + +Her son, with brackets of fatigue out about his mouth, was standing over +her when she opened her eyes, the look of crucifixion close to the front +of them. + +"Mother," he said, pressing her head close to his robes of state and +holding a throat-straining quiver under his voice, "I--I shouldn't have +let you stay. It was too--much for you." + +It took her a moment for the mist to clear. + +"I--Son--did somebody strike? Hit? Strange. I--I must have been hurt. +Son, am I bleeding?" And looked down, clasping her hand to the bosom of +her decent black-silk basque. + +"Son, I--It was a good verdict, not? I--couldn't have stood it--if--if +it wasn't. I--Something--It was good, not?" + +"Yes, mother, yes." + +"Don't--don't let that boy get away, son. I think--those tempers--I can +help--him. You see, I know--how to handle--Somehow I--" + +"Yes, mother, only now you must sit quietly--" + +"Promise me, son, you won't let him get away without I see him?" + +"Yes, dear, only please now--a moment--quiet--" + +You see, the judge was very tired, and, looking down at the spot where +her hand still lay at her bosom as if to press down a hurt, the red of +her same obsession shook and shook him. + +Somehow it seemed to him, too, that her dear heart was bleeding. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vertical City, by Fannie Hurst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VERTICAL CITY *** + +***** This file should be named 12659.txt or 12659.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/6/5/12659/ + +Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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