She sprang back from his touch, hot tears in her eyes.
"Believe you! I did till I learnt better. I believed you for four months, sittin' round waiting for you and your goings-on. You ain't been out with Cutty—you ain't been out with him one night this week. You been—you—"
Mrs. Trimp's voice rose to a hysterical crescendo. Her hair, yellow as corn-silk, and caught in a low chignon at her back, escaped its restraint of pins and fell in a whorl down her shirt-waist. She was like a young immortal eaten by the corroding acids of earlier experiences—raw with the vitriol of her deathless destiny.
"You ain't been out with Cutty. You been—"
The piano-salesman in the first-floor back knocked against the closed folding-door for the stilly night that should have been his by right. A distant night-stick struck the asphalt, and across Harry Trimp's features, like filmy clouds across the moon, floated a composite death-mask of Henry the Eighth and Othello, and all their alimony-paying kith. His mouth curved into an expression that did not coincide with pale hair and light eyes.
He slid from his greatcoat, a black one with an astrakan collar and bought in three payments, and inclined closer to his wife, a contumelious quirk on his lips.
"Well, whatta you going to do about it, kiddo—huh?"
"I—I'm going to—quit!"
He laughed and let her squirm from his hold, strolled over to the dresser mirror, pulled his red four-in-hand upward from its knot and tugged his collar open.
"You're not going to quit, kiddo! You ain't got the nerve!"
He leaned to the mirror and examined the even rows of teeth, and grinned at himself like a Hallowe'en pumpkin to flash whiter their whiteness.
"Ain't I! Which takes the most nerve, I'd like to know, stickin' to you and your devilishness or strikin' out for myself like I been raised to do? I was born a worm, and I ain't never found the cocoon that would change me into a butterfly. I—I had as swell a job up at Gregory's as a girl ever had. I'm an expert stenographer, I am! I got a diploma from—"
"Why don't you get your job back, baby? You been up there twice to my knowin'; maybe the third time'll be a charm. Don't let me keep you, kiddo."
The sluice-gates of her fear and anger opened suddenly, and tears rained down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her bare palm.
"It's because you took the life and soul out of me! They don't want me back because I ain't nothin' but a rag any more. I guess they're ashamed to take me back cause I'm in—in your class. Ten months of standing for your funny business and dodging landladies, and waitin' up nights, and watchin' you and your crooked starvation game would take the life out of any girl. It would! It would!"
"Don't fuss at me any more, Goldie-eyes. It's gettin' hard for me to keep down; and I don't want—want to begin gettin' ugly."
Mr. Trimp advanced toward his wife gently—gently.
"Don't come near me! I know what's coming; but you ain't going to get me this time with your oily ways. You're the kind that, walks on a girl with spiked heels and tries to kiss the sores away. I'm going to quit!"
Mr. Trimp plucked at the faint hirsute adornment of his upper lip and folded his black-and-white waistcoat over the back of a chair. He fumbled it a bit.
"Stay where you're put, you—you bloomin' vest, you!"
"I—I got friends that'll help me, I have—even if I ain't ever laid eyes on 'em since the day I married you. I got friends—real friends! Addie'll take me in any minute, day or night. Eddie Bopp could get me a job in his firm to-morrow if—if I ask him. I got friends! You've kept me from 'em; but I ain't afraid to look 'em up. I'm not!"
He advanced to where she stood beneath the waving gas-flame, a pet phrase clung to his lips, and he stumbled over it.
"My—my little—pussy-cat!"
"You're drunk!"
"No, I ain't, baby—only dog-tired. Dog-tired! Don't fuss at me! You just don't know how much I love you, baby!"
"Who wouldn't fuss, I'd like to know?"
Her voice was like ice crackling with thaw. He took her lax waist in his embrace and kissed her on the brow.
"Don't, honey—don't! Me and Cutty had a sucker out, I tell you."
"You—you always get your way with me. You treat me like a dog; but you know you can wind me round—wind me round."
"Baby! Baby!"
He smoothed her hair away from her salt-bitten eyes, laid his cheek pat against hers, and murmured to her through the scratch in his throat, like a parrakeet croons to its mate.
"Pussy-cat! Pussy!"
The river of difference between them dried in the warm sun of her forgiveness, and she sobbed on his shoulder with the exhaustion of a child after a tantrum.
"You won't leave me alone nights no more, Harry?"
"Thu—thu—thu—such a little Goldie-eyes!"
"I can't stand for the worry of the board no more, Harry. McCaskys are gettin' ugly. I ain't got a decent rag to my back, neither."
"I'm going to take a shipping-room job next week, honey, and get back in harness. Bill's going to fix me up. There ain't nothin' in this rotten game, and I'm going to get out."
"Sure?"
"Sure, Goldie."
"You ain't been drinking, Harry?"
"Sure I ain't. Me and Cutty had a rube out, I tell you."
"You'll keep straight, won't you, Harry? You're killin' me, boy, you are."
"Come, dry your face, baby."
He reached to his hip-pocket for his handkerchief, and with it a sparse shower of red and green and pink and white and blue confetti showered to the floor like snow through a spectrum. Goldie slid from his embrace and laughed—a laugh frappéd with the ice of scorn and chilled as her own chilled heart.
"Liar!" she said, and trembled as she stood.
His lips curled again into the expression that so ill-fitted his albinism.
"You little cat! You can bluff me!"
"I knew you was up at the Crescent Cotillon! I felt it in my bones. I knew you was up there when I read on the bill-boards that the Red Slipper was dancing there. I knew where you was every night while I been sittin' here waitin'! I knew—I knew—"
The piano-salesman rapped against the folding-doors thrice, with distemper and the head of a cane. At that instant the lower half of Mr. Trimp's face protruded suddenly into a lantern-jawed facsimile of a blue-ribbon English bull; his hand shot out and hurled the chair that stood between them half-way across the room, where it fell on its side against the wash-stand and split a rung.
"You—you little devil, you!"
The second-floor front beat a tattoo of remonstrance; but there was a sudden howling as of boiling surf in Mr. Trimp's ears, and the hot ember of an oath dropped from his lips.
"You little devil! You been hounding me with the quit game for eight months. Now you gotta quit!"
"I—I—"
"There ain't a man livin' would stand for your long face and naggin'! If you don't like my banking-hours and my game and the company I keep you quit, kiddo! Quit! Do you hear?"
"Will—I—quit? Well—"
"Yeh; I been up to the Crescent Confetti—every night this week, just like you say! I been round live wires, where there ain't no long, white faces shoving board bills and whining the daylights out of me."
"Oh, you—you ain't nothing but—"
"Sure, I been up there! I can get two laughs for every long face you pull on me. You quit if you want to, kiddo—there ain't no strings to you. Quit—and the sooner the better!" Mr. Trimp grasped his wife by her taut wrists and jerked her to him until her head fell backward and the breath jumped out of her throat in a choke. "Quit—and the sooner the better!"
"Lemme go! Lem-me-go!"
He tightened his hold and inclined toward her, so close that their faces almost touched. With his hot clutches on her wrists and his hot breath in her face it seemed to her that his eyes fused into one huge Cyclopean circle that spun and spun in the center of his forehead, like a fiery Catharine Wheel against a night sky.
"Bah! You little whiteface, you! You played a snide trick on me, anyway—lost your looks the second month and went dead like a punctured tire! Quit when you want to—there ain't no strings. Quit now!"
He flung her from him, so that she staggered backward four steps and struck her right cheek sharply against the mantel corner. A blue-glass vase fell to the hearth and was shattered. With the salt of fray on his lips, he kicked at the overturned chair and slammed a closet door so that the windows rattled. A carpet-covered hassock lay in his path, and he hurled it across the floor. Goldie edged toward the wardrobe, hugging the wall like one who gropes in the dark.
"If you're right bright, kiddo, you'll keep out of my way. You got me crazy to-night—crazy! Do you hear me, you little—"
"My hat!"
He flung it to her from its peg, with her jacket, so that they fell crumpled at her feet.
"You're called on your bluff this time, little one. This is one night it's quits for you—and I ain't drunk, neither!"
She crowded her rampant hair, flowing as Ophelia's, into her cheap little boyish hat and fumbled into her jacket. A red welt, shaped like a tongue of flame, burned diagonally down her right cheek.
"Keep out of my way—you! You got me crazy to-night—crazy to-night!"
He watched her from the opposite side of the room with lowered head, like a bull lunging for onslaught.
She moved toward the door with the rigidity of an automaton doll, her magnetized eyes never leaving his reddening face and her hands groping ahead. Her mouth was moist and no older than a child's; but her skin dead, as if coated over with tallow. She opened the door slowly, fearing to break the spell—then suddenly slipped through the aperture and slammed it after her. Then the slam of another door; the scurrying of feet down cold stone steps that sprung echoes in the deserted street.
The douse of cold air stung her flaming cheek; a policeman glanced after her; a drunken sailor staggered out of a black doorway, and her trembling limbs sped faster—a labyrinth of city streets and rows of blank-faced houses; an occasional pedestrian, who glanced after her because she wheezed in her throat, and ever so often gathered her strength and broke into a run; then a close, ill-smelling apartment house, with a tipsy gas-light mewling in the hall, and a dull-brown door that remained blank to her knocks and rings. The sobs were rising in her throat, and the trembling in her limbs shook her as with ague.
A knock that was more of a pound and a frenzied rattling of the knob! Finally from the inside of the door a thump-thump down a long hallway—and the door creaked open cautiously, suspiciously!
In its frame a pale figure, in the rumpled clothes of one always sitting down and hunched on a pair of silver-mounted mahogany crutches that slanted from her sides like props.
"Goldie! Little Goldie!"
"Oh, Addie! Addie!"
Youth has rebound like a rubber ball. Batted up against the back fence, she bounces back into the heart of a rose-bush or into the carefully weeded, radishless radish-bed of the kitchen garden.
Mrs. Trimp rose from the couch-bed davenport of the Bopp sitting-dining-sleeping-room, with something of the old lamps burning in her eyes and a full-lipped mouth to which clung the memory of smiles. Even Psyche, abandoned by love, smiled a specious smile when she posed for the scalpel.
Eddie Bopp reached out a protective arm and drew Goldie by the sleeve of her shirt-waist down to the couch-bed davenport again.
"Take it easy there, Goldie. Don't get yourself all excited again."
"But it's just like you say, Eddie—I got the law on my side. I got him on the grounds of cruelty if—if I show nothin' but—but this cheek."
"Sure, you have, Goldie; but you just sit quiet. Addie, come in here and make Goldie behave her little self."
"I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!"
Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk.
"You poor little kid!"
Addie hobbled in from the kitchen.
"I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too."
God alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fashioned her in clay and water, even as you and me—from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes.
He fashioned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender—broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit shining through—Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was sunshine on dew.
"You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie. You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?"
"Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!"
"Eat, Goldie—gwan."
"I ain't hungry—honest!"
"Quit standing over her, Eddie; you make her nervous. Let me feed you, Goldie."
"Gee! Ain't you swell to me!" Ready tears sprang to her eyes.
"Like you ain't my old chum, Goldie! It don't seem so long since we were working in the same office and going to Recreation Pier dances together, does it?"
"Addie! Addie!"
"Do you remember how you and me and Ed and Charley Snuggs used to walk up and down Ninth Avenue summer evenings eating ice-cream cones?"
"Do I? Oh, Addie, do I?"
"I'm glad we had them ice-cream days, Goldie. They're melted, but the flavor ain't all gone." Addie's face was large and white and calm-featured, like a Botticelli head.
"You two girls sure was cut-ups! Remember the night Addie first introduced us, Goldie? You came over to call for her, and us three went to the wax-works show on Twenty-third Street. Lordy, how we cut up!"
"And I started to ask the wax policeman if we was allowed to go past the rail!" They laughed low in their throats, as if they feared to raise an echo in a vale of tears. "It's like old times for me to be staying all night with you again, Addie. It's been so long! He—he used to get mad like anything if I wanted to see any of the old crowd. He knew they didn't know any good of him. He was always for the sporty, all-night bunch."
"Poor kid!"
"Don't get her to talking about it again, Eddie; it gets her all excited."
"He could have turned me against my own mother, I was that crazy over him."
"That," said Addie, softly, "was love! And only women can love like that; and women who do love like that are cursed—and blessed."
"I'm out of it now, Addie. You won't never send me back to him—you won't ever?"
"There now, dearie, you're gettin' worked up again. Ain't you right here, safe with us?"
"That night at Hinkey's was the worst, Goldie," said Eddie. "It makes my blood boil! Why didn't you quit then; why?"
"I ain't told you all, neither, Eddie. One night he came home about two o'clock, and I had been—"
"Just quit thinking and talking about him, Goldie. You're right here, safe with me and Eddie; and he's going to get you a job when you're feeling stronger. And then, when you're free—when you're free—"
Addie regarded her brother with the tender aura of a smile on her lips and a tender implication in her eyes that scurried like a frightened mouse back into its hole. Eddie flamed red; and his ears, by a curious physiological process, seemed to take fire and contemplate instant flight from his head.
"Oh, look, Ad. We got to get a new back for your chair. The stuffin's all poking through the velvet."
"So it is, Eddie. It's a good thing you got your raise, with all these new-fangled dangles we need."
"To-night's his lodge night. He never came home till three—till three o'clock, lodge nights."
"There you go, Goldie—back on the subject, makin' yourself sick."
"Gee!"
"What's the matter, Goldie?"
"To-night's his lodge. I could go now and get my things while he ain't there—couldn't I?"
"Swell! I'll take you, Goldie, and wait outside for you."
"Eddie, can't you see she ain't in any condition to go running round nights? There's plenty time yet, Goldie. You can wear my shirt-waists and things. Wait till—"
"I got to get it over with, Addie; and daytimes Eddie's working, and I'd have to go alone. I—I don't want to go alone."
"Sure; she can't go alone, Addie; and she's got to have her things."
Eddie was on his feet and beside Goldie's palpitating figure, as though he would lay his heart, a living stepping-stone, at her feet.
"We better go now, Addie; honest we had! Eddie'll wait outside for me."
"You poor kid! You want to get it over with, don't you? Get her coat, Eddie, and bring her my sweater to wear underneath. It's getting colder every minute."
"I ain't scared a bit, Addie. I'll just go in and pack my things together and hustle out again."
"Here's a sweater, Goldie, and your coat and hat."
"Take care, children; and, Goldie, don't forget all the things you need. Just take your time and get your things together—warm clothes and all."
"I'll be waiting right outside for you, Goldie."
"I'm ready, Eddie."
"Don't let her get excited and worked up, Eddie."
"I ain't scared a bit, Addie."
"Sure you ain't?"
"Not a bit!"
"Good-by, Addie. Gee, but you're swell to me!"
"Don't forget to bring your rubbers, Goldie; going to work on wet mornings you'll need them."
"I—I ain't got none."
"You can have mine. I—I don't need them any more."
"Good-by, Ad—leave the dishes till we come back. I can do 'em swell myself after you two girls have gone to bed."
"Yes. I'll be waiting, Goldie; and we'll talk in bed like old times."
"Yes, yes!" It was as if Addie's frail hands were gripping Goldie's heart and clogging her speech.
"Good-by, children!"
"Good-by."
"S'long!"
The night air met them with a whoop and tugged and pulled at Goldie's hat.
"Take my arm, Goldie. It's some howler, ain't it?"
Their feet clacked on the cold, dry pavement, and passers-by leaned into the wind.
"He was a great one for hating the cold, Eddie. Gee, how he hated winter!"
"That's why he wears a fur-collared coat and you go freezing along in a cheese-cloth jacket, I guess."
"It always kind of got on his chest and gave him fever."
"What about you? You just shivered along and dassent say anything!"
"And I used to fix him antiphlogistin plasters half the night. When he wasn't mad or drunk he was just like a kid with the measles! It used to make me laugh so—he'd—"
"Humph!"
"But one night—one night I got the antiphlogistin too hot while I was straightening up—'cause he never liked a messy-looking room when he was sick—and he was down and out from one of his bad nights; and it—and it got too hot, and—" She turned away and finished her sentence in the teeth of the wind; but Eddie's arm tightened on hers until she could feel each distinct finger.
"God!" he said.
"I ain't scared a bit, Eddie."
"For what, I'd like to know! Ain't I going to be waiting right here across the street?"
"See! That's the room over there—the dark one, with the shade half-way up. Gee, how I hate it!"
"I'll be waiting right here in front of Joe's place, Goldie. If you need me just shoot the shade all the way up."
"I won't need you."
"Well, then, light the gas, pull the shade all the way down, and that'll mean all's well."
"Swell!" she said. "Down comes the shade—and all's well!"
"Good!"
They smiled, and their breaths clouded between them; and down through the high-walled street the wind shot javelin-like and stung red into their cheeks, and in Eddie's ears and round his heart the blood buzzed.
Goldie crossed the street and went up the steps lightly, her feet grating the brown stone like fine-grained sandpaper. When she unlocked the front door the cave-like mustiness and the cold smell of unsunned hallways and the conglomerate of food smells from below met her at the threshold. Memories like needle-tongued insects stung her.
The first-floor front she opened slowly, pausing after every creak of the door; and the gas she fumbled because her hand trembled, and the match burned close to her fingers before she found the tip.
She turned up the flame until it sang, and glanced about her fearfully, with one hand on her bruised cheek and her underlip caught in by her teeth.
Mr. Trimp's room was as expressive as a lady's glove still warm from her hand. He might have slipped out of it and let it lie crumpled, but in his own image.
The fumes of bay-rum and stale beer struggled for supremacy. The center-table, with a sickening litter of empty bottles and dead ashes, was dreary as cold mutton in its grease, or a woman's painted face at crack o' dawn, or the moment when the flavor of love becomes as tansy.
A red-satin slipper, an unhygienic drinking-goblet, which has leaked and slopped over full many a non-waterproof romance, lay on the floor, with its red run into many pinks and its rosette limp as a wad of paper. Goldie picked her careful way round it. Fear and nausea and sickness at the heart made her dizzy.
The dresser, with its wavy mirror, was strewn with her husband's neckties; an uncorked bottle of bay-rum gave out its last faint fumes.
She opened the first long drawer with a quivering intake of breath and pulled out a shirt-waist, another, and yet another, and a coarse white petticoat with a large-holed embroidery flounce. Then she dragged a suit-case, which was wavy like the mirror, through the blur of her tears, out from under the bed; and while she fumbled with the lock the door behind her opened, and her heart rose in her throat with the sudden velocity of an express elevator shooting up a ten-story shaft.
In the dresser mirror, and without turning her head or gaining her feet, she looked into the eyes of her husband.
"Pussy-cat!" he said, and came toward her with his teeth flashing like Carrara marble in sunlight.
She sprang to her feet and backed against the dresser.
"Don't! Don't you come near me!"
"You don't mean that, Goldie."
She shivered in her scorn.
"Don't you come near me! I came—to get my things."
"Oh!" he said, and tossed his hat on the bed and peeled off his coat. "Help yourself, kiddo. Go as far as you like."
She fell to tearing at the contents of her drawer without discrimination, cramming them into her bag and breathing furiously, like a hare in the torture of the chase. The color sprang out in her cheeks, and her eyes took fire.
Her husband threw himself, in his shirt-sleeves and waistcoat, across the bed and watched her idly. Only her fumbling movements and the sing of the too-high gas broke the silence. He rose, lowered the flame, and lay down again.
Her little box of poor trinkets spilled its contents as she packed it; her hair-brush fell from her trembling fingers and clattered to the floor.
"Can I help you, Goldie-eyes?"
Silence. He coughed rather deep in his chest, and she almost brushed his hand as she passed to the clothes wardrobe. He reached out and caught her wrist.
"Now, Goldie, you—"
"Don't—don't you touch me! Let go!"
He drew her down to the bed beside him.
"Can't you give a fellow another chance, baby? Can't you?" She tugged for her freedom, but his clasp was tight as steel and tender as love. "Can't you, baby?"
"You!" she said, kicking at the sloppy satin slipper at her feet, as if it were a loathsome thing that crawled. "I—I don't ever want to see you again, you—you—"
"You drove me to it, pussy; honest you did!"
"You didn't need no driving. You take to it like a fish to water—nobody can drive you. You just ain't—no—good!"
"You drove me to it. When you quit I just went crazy mad. I kicked the skylight—I tore things wide open. I was that sore for you—honest, baby!"
"I've heard that line of talk before. I ain't forgot the night at Hinkey's. I ain't forgot nothing. You or horses can't hold me here!" She wrenched at her wrists.
"I got a job yesterday, baby. Bill made good. Eighty dollars, honey! Me and Cutty are quits for good. Ain't that something—now, ain't it?"
"Let me go!"
"Pussy-cat!"
"Let me go, I say!"
He coughed and turned on his side toward her.
"You don't mean it."
"I do! I do! Let go! Let go!"
She tore herself free and darted to the wardrobe door. He closed his eyes and his lashes lay low on his cheeks.
"Before you go, Goldie, where's the antiphlogistin? I got a chest on me like an ice-wagon."
"Sure, you have. That's the only time you ever show up before crack of dawn."
He reached out and touched her wrist.
"I'm hot, ain't I?"
She placed a reluctant hand on his brow.
"Fever?"
"It ain't nothing much. I'll be all right."
"It's just one of your spells. Stay in bed a couple of days, and you'll soon be ready for another jamboree!"
"Don't fuss at me, baby."
"It's in the wash-stand drawer in a little tin can. Don't make the plaster too hot."
"Sure, I won't. I'll get along all righty."
She threw a shabby cloth skirt over her arm and a pressed-plush coat that was gray at the elbows and frayed at the hem. He reached out for the dangling empty sleeve as she passed.
"You was married in that coat, wasn't you, hon?"
"Yes," she said, and her lips curled like burning paper; "I was married in that coat."
"Goldie-eyes, you know I can't get along without my petsie; you know it. There ain't no one can hold a candle to you, baby!"
"Yes, yes!"
"There ain't! I wish I was feelin' well enough to tell you how sorry, baby—how sorry a fellow like me can get. I just wish it, baby—baby—"
She surrendered like a reed to the curve of a scythe and crumpled in a contortional heap beside the bed.
"You—you always get me!"
He gathered her up and laid her head backward on his shoulder, so that her face was foreshortened and close to his.
"Goldie-eyes," he said, "I'll make it up to you! I'll make it up to you!" And he made a motion as though to kiss her where the curls lay on her face, but drew back as if sickened.
"Good God!" he said. "Poor little baby!"
Quick as a throb of a heart she turned her left cheek, smooth as a lily petal, to his lips.
"It's all right, Harry!" she said, in a voice that was tight. "I'm crazy, I guess; but, gee, it's great to be crazy!"
"I'll make it up to you, baby. See if I don't! I'll make it up to you."
She kissed him, and his lips were hot and dry.
"Lemme fix your plaster, dearie; you got one of your colds."
"Don't get it too hot, hon."
"Gee! Lemme straighten up. Say, ain't you a messer, though! Look at this here wash-stand and those neckties! Ain't you a messer, though, dearie!"
She crammed the ties into a dresser drawer, dragged a chair into place, removed a small tin can from the wash-stand drawer, hung her hat and jacket on their peg, and lowered the shade.
MARKED DOWN
ALONG with radium, parcels post, wireless telegraphy, and orchestral church music came tight skirts and the hipless movement.
Adolph Katzenstein placed his figurative ear to the ground, heard the stealthy whisper of soft messalines and clinging charmeuse, and sold out the Empire Shirt-waist Company for twenty-five hundred dollars at a slight loss.
Five years later the Katzenstein Neat-Fit Petticoat was flaunted in the red and white electric lights in the lightest part of Broadway, and the figure of an ecstatic girl in an elastic-top, charmeuse-ruffled petticoat had become as much of an epic in street-car advertising as the flakiest breakfast food or the safest safety razor.
Then the Katzensteins moved from a simplex to a complex apartment, furnished the dining-room in Flemish oak and the bedroom in white mahogany; Mrs. Katzenstein telephoned to her fancy grocer's for artichokes instead of buying cabbages from the street-vender, and Mr. Katzenstein walked with the four fingers of each hand thrust into the distended front pockets of his trousers.
On the first Tuesday of each month Mrs. Katzenstein entertained at whist—an antediluvian survival of a bridgeless era.
At eight o'clock in the morning of one of these first Tuesdays she entered her daughter's white-mahogany bedroom, raised the shades with a clatter, and drew back the curtains.
"Birdie, get up! It's late, and we got house-cleaning this morning. Papa's been gone already an hour."
The pink-and-white flowered comforter on the bed stirred, and two plump arms, with frills of lace falling backward, raised up like sturdy monoliths in the stretch that accompanies a yawn.
"Aw—yaw—yaw—mamma! Can't you let a girl sleep after she's been up late? Tell Tillie she should begin her sweeping in the hall."
"I should know what time you got home last night. You sneak in like you was afraid it would give me some pleasure to wake up and hear about it! Who was there? What did Marcus have to say?"
"Aw, mamma, let me sleep—can't you? I'll get up in a minute."
"So close-mouthed she is—goes to the party with a grand boy like Marcus and comes home like she was muzzled! Nothing to say! If I was out with a young man so often I could talk."
"Please, mamma, pull down the shade."
"'Please, mamma, pull down the shade!'" mimicked Mrs. Katzenstein, in a high falsetto. "After I rush round all day yesterday for the pink wreath for her hair, that's what I hear the next morning—that's the thanks I get!"
Birdie pulled the comforter up closer about her ears, and the head on the rumpled pillow burrowed deeper.
"And such laziness! I been up two hours with my Küchen and cheese-pie fixed already for this afternoon, and my daughter sleeps like a lady! The man that gets her I don't envy!"
The pink-and-white mound on the bed heaved like a ship at sea.
"In a minute, mamma!"
Mrs. Katzenstein jerked up a filmy gown from across the back of a chair and held it from her at arm's-length.
"Anybody's too good for a girl that ain't got no order! I wonder what Marcus Gump would say if he knew how you treat your things? Her good pink dress that I paid twenty dollars for the making alone she throws round like it cost nothing! Sack-cloth is too good! I don't put it away—you can wait on yourself."
However, as she spoke Mrs. Katzenstein folded the pink gown, with an avalanche of lace flowing from the bodice, lengthwise in a drawer and smothered it with tissue-paper.
"That a girl like that shouldn't be ashamed to let her poor old mother wait on her!"
"I'd put it away, mamma, if you'd just give me time."
"Tuesday, when I have the ladies and my card party, she sleeps! No consideration that girl has got for her mother!"
Birdie swung herself to the side of the bed; her wealth of crow-blue hair fell over her shoulders; sleep trembled on her lashes.
"I'm up, ain't I? Now are you satisfied?"
"For all the help you are to me you might as well stay in bed the rest of the morning. A girl that can come home from a party and have nothing to say! But for my part I don't want to know. I guess they had a big blow-out, didn't they?"
Birdie, high-chested as Juno, with wide, firm shoulders that sloped as must have sloped the shoulders of Artemis when they tempted Actæon, coiled her hair before the mirror with the gesture that has belonged to women since first they coiled their hair. Her cheeks, fleshly but fruit-like in their freshness, might have belonged to a buxom nymph of the grove.
"I wish you could have seen the spread Jeanette had, mamma! I brought home the recipe for her lobster chops. I'll bet if she had one she had six different kinds of ice-cream."
With one swoop Mrs. Katzenstein flung the snowy avalanche of pillows and sheets over the footboard of the bed and opened wide both the windows.
"Tillie," she cried, "bring me the broom. I'll start in Miss Birdie's room while you finish the breakfast dishes."
"Such an affair as she had! I said to Marcus, on the way home, it could have been at Delmonico's and not have been finer."
"You don't say so! Such is life, ain't it? We knew Simon Lefkowitz when he used to come to papa and buy for his stock six shirt-waists at a time. Then they didn't live in no eighty-dollar apartment. Many's the morning I used to meet the old lady at market. Who else was there?"
"Who? Let me see! Gertie Glauber was there. She had on that dress Laevitt made; and, believe me, I liked mine better. Tekla Stein and Morris Adler—you know those Adlers in the millinery business?"
"Nice people!"
"You couldn't get a pin between Tekla and him—honest, how that girl worked for him! Selma Blumenthal was there, too, and I must say she looked grand—those eyes of hers and that figure! But what those fellows can see in her so much I don't know. Honest, mamma, she's such a dumbhead she can't talk ten words to a boy."
"Girls don't need so much brains. I always say it scares the men off. Look at Gussie Graudenheimer—high school she had to have yet! What good does it do? Not a thing does that girl have—and her mother worries enough about it, too."
"That's what Marcus says about her—he says she's too smart for him; he says he'd rather have a girl nice and sweet than too smart."
Mrs. Katzenstein leaned her broom in a corner, daubed at the mantelpiece with a flannel cloth, and regarded her daughter surreptitiously through the mirror.
"You had a nice time with Marcus last night? You've been out with him five times and still have nothing to say."
"What's there to say, mamma? He's a fine boy and shows a girl a grand time. Last night it was sleeting just a little, and he had to have a taxi-cab. Honest, it was a shame for the money! Take it from me, Morris Adler walked Tekla. I saw them going to the Subway."
"Well, what's what? Is that the end of it?"
"Aw, mamma, how should I know? I can't read a fellow's mind! All I know is he—he's coming over to-night."
"Don't you bother with putting those slippers away, Birdie; you just lie round and take it easy this morning. When a girl's going to have company in the evening she should rest up—me and Tillie can do this little work."
Birdie wrapped herself in a crimson kimono plentifully splotched with large pink and blue and red and green chrysanthemums and snuggled into a white wicker rocking-chair. Her lips, warmly curved like a child's, were parted in a smile.
"I don't want breakfast," she announced. "Irma Friedman quit it and lost five pounds in two weeks."
"Papa and me were saying last night, Birdie, we aren't in a hurry to get rid of you; but such a young man as Marcus Gump any girl can be lucky to get. Aunt Batta said she heard for sure Loeb Brothers are going to make him manager of their new factory—think once, manager and three thousand a year!—just double his salary! Think of putting a young man like him in that big Newark factory!"
"It's surely grand; but for what does it have to be in a place like Newark?"
"Papa says that boy put March Hare boys' pants on the market for the Loebs. How grand for his mother and all, her a widow, to have such a son! Wasn't I right to invite her this afternoon?"
"I'm the last one to say a word against Marcus. You ought to heard them last night talking on the side about him and his new position he might get—just grand! Jeanette's got a new stitch, mamma. It's not like eyelet or French, but sort of between the two, and grand for centerpieces. I could embroider a dresser-cover in a week."
"I thought I'd have sardines this afternoon instead of cold tongue. For why should I make Mrs. Cohen feel bad that we don't buy at their delicatessen?"
"I'll fix the cut-glass bowl with fruit for the center of the table."
"It's like papa and me said last night, Birdie—a girl makes no mistake when she follows her parents' advice. Marcus Gump's own mother told me when I was introduced to her at Hirsch's yesterday afternoon, you're the first girl he ever took out more than two or three times."
Birdie snuggled deeper in her chair and stretched her arms with the gesture of Aurora greeting the day.
"Mamma," she said, softly, "what do you think he—he said I looked like last night?"
"What?"
"He said—he said—"
Mrs. Katzenstein paused in her dusting.
"He—said—Aw, mamma, I can't go telling it—so silly it sounds."
"Ach! For nonsense I got no time—such silliness for two grown-up children! That gets you nowhere. Plain talking is what does it."
But suddenly the thridding and thudding of Mrs. Katzenstein's machinations died down. It was as if a steamboat had turned off its power and drifted quietly into its slip. She tiptoed to the table and straightened the cover, arranged the shades until they were precisely even one with the other, gave the new-made bed a final pat, and tiptoed to the door.
"I forgot to order my finger-rolls for this afternoon," she said.
At two o'clock guests began to arrive. A heavy sleet clattered against the windows; the sky and the apartment houses across the way were shrouded in cold gray. Birdie drew the shades and tweaked on the electric lights; tables were grouped about the parlor, laid out with decks of cards, pencils and paper, and small glass dishes of candies.
Mother and daughter had emerged from the morning like moths out of a chrysalis. Mrs. Katzenstein's black crêpe-de-Chine, with cut-jet trimmings, trailed after her when she walked. She greeted her guests with effulgence and enthusiasm.
"Come right in, Carrie! Tillie, take Mrs. Ginsburg's umbrella. I bet you got your winning clothes on to-day, Carrie; I can always tell it when you wear your willow plume and furs."
Carrie Ginsburg flopped a remonstrating and loose-wristed hand at Mrs. Katzenstein.
"Go 'way! That glass pickle-dish I won at Silverman's three weeks ago is the last luck I had. Your mamma's the winner—ain't she, Birdie? At my house she always carries off the prize. I bet I helped furnish her china-closet."
"You should worry, Mrs. Ginsburg, when your husband owns the Cut-Glass Palace!"
"You can believe me or not, Birdie, but Aaron's that particular if I take so much as a pin-tray out of stock he charges it up! When you get such an honest husband it's almost as bad as the other way. He don't get thanks for it."
"Birdie, take Mrs. Ginsburg in the middle room and help off with her things. Hello, Mrs. Silverman! You're a sight for sore eyes. Why wasn't you down at the Ladies' Auxiliary on Wednesday? It was grand! Doctor Lippman spoke so beautiful, and there was coffee in the Sunday-school rooms after."
Mrs. Silverman deposited a large and elaborate muff on the table and unbuttoned her full-length fur coat.
"Such a day as it was Wednesday! Even to-day my Meena begged me not to come out. 'Mamma,' she said, 'to go out in such sleet and rain for a card party—it's a shame!' Then my Louis telephoned up from the store that if I went out I should take a cab. What that boy don't think of!"
"He's a fine boy, Mrs. Silverman; and such a sweet girl he married."
"It ain't for the money, Mrs. Katzenstein—believe me, it ain't; but why should I take a cab when it's only one block away to the Subway? I leave that to my children. Meena's the stylish one of our family—when it so much as sprinkles that girl has to have a cab."
"Come right in, Mrs. Gump; I knew you wouldn't be afraid of a little weather. Here, let me take your umbrella."
"It's a fine weather for ducks, Mrs. Katzenstein."
"Just you go right in the middle room with Birdie and make yourself at home."
"Come right with me, Mrs. Gump; me and mamma was so afraid maybe you wouldn't come."
Birdie flitted in and out from parlor to bedroom; the languor of the morning had fallen from her.
"Now, mamma, you and the ladies sit down at your tables. That's right, Mrs. Mince—you and Mrs. Kronfeldt play opposites, and Mrs. Ginsburg and Aunt Batta. Don't get excited, mamma. I'll fix the ladies in their places. Here, Mrs. Weissenheimer, you sit here between Mrs. Gump and mamma."
"Look at that goil!" exclaimed Mrs. Mince, seating herself and taking a pinch of Birdie's firmly molded arm between thumb and forefinger. "I wish you'd look how thin she's got. Ain't that grand, though! I bet you don't drink water with your meals?"
"Not a drop, Mrs. Mince; and no starchy food; no—"
"Mrs. Mince," interrupted Mrs. Ginsburg, dealing the cards with skill and rapidity, "Doctor Adelberg told my sister-in-law that rolling on the floor two hundred times morning and night had got this diet business beat. All he says you got to be careful about is no water at meals. But with me it's like Aaron says—I keep him busy filling up my glass at the table."
"I wish you'd see my Birdie diet, Carrie! The grandest things she won't eat! Last night for supper we had potato Pfannküchen, that would melt in your mouth. Not one will she touch! Her papa says how she lives he don't know."
"I wish my Marcus would diet a little. I always say to him he's just a little bit too stout—he takes after his poor father," said Mrs. Gump.
"You can believe me or not, Mrs. Gump; but, so sure as my name is Mince, I got down from a hundred and ninety-two to a hundred and seventy-four in two months! Reducing ain't so bad when you get used to it."
"Honest now, Mrs. Mince, how I wish my Marcus had such a determination! But that boy loves to eat—Didn't you see me discard, Mrs. Weissenheimer?"
"Say, it wasn't so easy! How I worked you can ask my husband. I bend for thirty minutes when I get up in the morning; and if you think it's easy, try it—a cup of hot water and a piece of dry toast for breakfast; lettuce salad, no oil, for lunch; and a chop with dry toast for supper. What I suffered nobody knows!"
"Batta, don't you see I lead from weakness?"
"I wish you could see my husband's partner's daughter!" quoth Mrs. Kronfeldt. "I met her on Fifty-third Street last week, and she was so thin I didn't know her—massage and diet did it. She ain't feeling so well; but she looks grand—not a sign of hips!"
From an adjoining table Mrs. Silverman waved a plump and deprecatory hand.
"Ladies, don't talk to me about dieting! I know, because I've tried it. Now I eat what I please. It's standing up twenty minutes after meals that does the reducing. Last summer at Arverne every lady in the hotel did it, and never did I see anything like it! Take my word for it that when my husband came down for Saturday and Sunday he didn't know me!"
"Ach, Mrs. Silverman, that was almost a grand slam! You should watch my discard!"
"When I came home I had to have two inches taken out of every skirt-band."
"You don't mean it!"
"Feel, Birdie, my arm. Last summer your thumbs wouldn't have met."
"I said to mamma when we saw you at the matinée last week, Mrs. Silverman, you're grand and thin!"
"You try a little lemon in your hot water, Birdie. But you're not too stout—I should say not! You're grand and tall and can stand it."
"Grand and tall!" echoed Mrs. Gump.
"It's a wonder she isn't as thin as a match, Mrs. Gump, the way that girl does society! Last night it was two o'clock when she got home from Jeanette Lefkowitz's party."
"I wish you'd heard the grand things Marcus said about you this morning at breakfast, Miss Birdie! I bet your ears were ringing. It's not often that he talks, either, when he's been out."
"What's this grand news I hear, Mrs. Gump, about your son being taken in the firm and made manager of the new Loeb factory? It's wonderful for a boy to work himself up with a firm like that."
"There's nothing sure about it yet, Mrs. Silverman. How such things get out I don't know. Marcus is a good boy; and, believe me or not, we think he's got a future with the firm. But you know how it is—there's nothing settled yet, and I don't believe in counting your chickens before they are hatched."
"I wish it to you, Mrs. Gump," purred Mrs. Katzenstein. "I wish the good luck to you."
"You don't make it diamonds, Mrs. Kronfeldt, unless you got to."
"Who made that dress for you, Birdie? It fits fine."
"That's the dressmaker on Lenox Avenue I was telling you about, Mrs. Adler," replied Mrs. Katzenstein, answering for her daughter. "Me and Birdie go to her for everything. Look at that fit and all!"
"Grand!"
"I'll give you her address if you don't tell everybody. You know how it is when you begin to recommend a dressmaker—up in their prices they go, and that's all the thanks you get."
"You are safe with me, Mrs. Katzenstein."
"Come here, Birdie! Turn round for Mrs. Adler—only twelve dollars to make with findings!"
"I'll take her my blue cloth," said Mrs. Adler.
"You won't regret it. Just tell her I sent you. If you want you can have the address, too, Mrs. Gump."
"I got a compliment for you about the dress you wore last night, Miss Birdie. Wonderful! No trump! This morning at breakfast Marcus said lots about your pretty dress and pretty ways; and for him to say that is a lot; not ten words can I get out of him, as a rule."
"I wish you could hear Birdie, too, Mrs. Gump! Believe me, she thinks he's a fine boy—and how hard that girl is to suit you wouldn't believe it!"
"Aw, mamma!"
"Change partners, ladies!"
Birdie hurried out into the dining-room; a flush branded her cheeks—Daphne fleeing from Apollo could not have been more deliciously agitated.
"Tillie," she directed, "you can make the coffee now and put the finger-rolls on."
A snowy round table was spread beneath a large, opaline dome of lights, which showered over the feast like a spray of stars; and in the center a mammoth cut-glass bowl of fruit, overflowing its sides with trailing bunches of hothouse grapes, and piled to a fitting climax of oranges, peeled in fanciful flower designs; fat bananas, with half the skin curled backward; and apples so firm and red that they might have been lacquered. The guests filed in.
"We haven't got much, ladies—Tillie, bring in some of the chairs from the parlor—but Birdie says it isn't style to have such big lunches any more. Sit right down here, Mrs. Gump, between me and Birdie. Now, ladies, help yourselfs and don't be bashful. Start the sardines round, Batta."
"What a pretty centerpiece, Mrs. Katzenstein!"
"Do you like it, Mrs. Kronfeldt? Birdie made it when the whip-stitch first came out. We got the doilies, too."
"I think it's good for a girl to be so practical," said Mrs. Gump, squeezing an arc of a lemon over her sardine. "If I had a daughter she should know how to do things round the house, even if she didn't have to use it."
"I'm not the kind to brag on my children; but, if I do say so myself, my girls can turn their hands to anything. If the day ever comes—God forbid!—when they should need it they'll know how."
"Exactly."
"When my Ray got engaged she made every monogram for her trousseau. I can prove it by Batta what a trousseau that girl had—and she made every monogram for every piece. She never comes home with the children to visit that she don't say: 'Mamma, thank Heaven, Abe is doing so grand and I don't need to—but there ain't a woman in Kansas City can beat me on housekeeping.'"
"This is delicious grape-jelly, Mrs. Katzenstein."
"That's some more of Birdie's doings. Honest, you may believe me or not, Mrs. Gump, but I have to fight to keep that girl away from the kitchen and housework! Yesterday it was all I could do to get her to go to Rosie Freund's linen shower; she wanted to stay home and help me with to-day's Küchen. This morning, after last night, she was up before eight! Such a child!"
"I suppose you heard of poor Flora Freund's trouble, didn't you, Salcha?"
"Yes, Batta; you could have knocked me down with a feather! But Mr. Katzenstein always said the new store was too big. And such a failure, too!"
"I guess Flora won't have so many airs now! Down to her feet she got a sealskin coat this winter."
"I always say to Mr. Katzenstein we ain't such high-fliers, but we are steady. Try some of that pickled herring, Mrs. Gump. I put it up myself."
"I guess you heard of Stella Loeb's engagement, Birdie, didn't you?" inquired Mrs. Mince, spreading the grape-jelly atop a finger-roll. "To a Mr. Steinfeld from Cleveland."
"Yes, I hear she's doing grand; but so is he. To get in with the Loeb Brothers' crowd ain't so bad."
"Yes, they're all grand matches!" exclaimed Mrs. Ginsburg. "It's just like Meena says; they're all gold pocket-book and automobile matches when they're with out-of-town men; but Cleveland—I don't wish it to her to live in Cleveland—not that I've ever been there, but I don't envy girls that marry out of New York."
"My Ray's got it grand in Kansas City! I wish you could see her closet room and her pantry—as big as my whole kitchen! A girl could do worse than Kansas City or Cleveland."
"I always say," remarked Birdie, "when I get engaged it makes no difference where he goes."
"That's the right way to feel, Miss Birdie. Some day, if Marcus should ever marry—and I'm the last one to stand in his way—if he gets his promotion to the Newark factories and the girl he picks out don't like Newark, then she's not the right girl," said Mrs. Gump.
"Newark," said Mrs. Katzenstein, "is a grand little town. Whenever we pass through on our way to Kansas City Birdie always says what a sweet little town it is. Mrs. Silverman, have another cup of coffee."
The short winter day sloughed off suddenly, and it was dark when they rose from the table. "So late!" exclaimed Mrs. Mince. "I got a girl that can't so much as put on the potatoes. Honest, the servant problem gets woise and woise."
"Sh-h-h!" cautioned Mrs. Katzenstein, placing her forefinger across her lips and glancing warningly toward the kitchen. "Tillie," she whispered, "ain't such a jewel neither; but she's honest, and I'm glad enough to have anybody these days. Birdie, she's always fussing with me because I do too much in the kitchen; but why should my husband have his coffee so it don't suit him? Children don't understand—they're too much for style."
"In my little flat, with Etta married and gone," chimed in Mrs. Adler, "I'm better off without a girl. I got a woman to come in and clean three times a week, and me and Ike go out for our supper. I got it better without the worry of a girl."
"I give you right. If I'd listen to Marcus I'd keep a servant, too—a servant when I got my troubles without one!"
"Ain't that jus' like papa, Birdie? He always says: 'Salcha, you take it easy now; when one girl isn't enough keep two'—as if I didn't have enough troubles already!"
"Good-by, Mrs. Katzenstein!" Mrs. Kronfeldt inserted a tissue-paper-wrapped package carefully within her muff. "You got good taste in prizes—salts and peppers always come in handy."
"That's the way me and Birdie felt when we picked them out—you can't have too many of them."
"And, Birdie, you come over with your mamma some afternoon when Ruby's home. That girl with her society and engagements—I never see her myself! This afternoon she saw vaudeville with Sol Littleberger. He's in off the road."
"Birdie had an engagement this afternoon, too, with a traveling-man; but I always like to have her home when I entertain."
"I had a lovely afternoon, Mrs. Katzenstein. You and Miss Birdie must come and see me—One Hundred and Forty-first Street ain't so far away that you can't get to us."
"Me and Birdie can come almost any afternoon, Mrs. Gump, except Saturday we go to the matinée—we're great ones for Saturday matinée."
"That's what I call too bad! On Saturday Marcus comes home early, and he could see you home."
"Well," said Mrs. Katzenstein, plucking a thread off Mrs. Gump's coat-sleeve, "it's not like there weren't plenty more Saturdays in the year. I got enough vaudeville shows this year anyway."
"After the third number I always say, 'Mamma, let's go!'—don't I, mamma?" said Birdie.
"We can come next Saturday, all right, Mrs. Gump; but mind, don't you go to any trouble for us—Birdie's on a diet, and all I want is a cup of coffee. It makes my husband so mad when I come home and got no appetite."
"Good-by, Mrs. Ginsburg. Ach, that's right—I forgot; Birdie, write down Maggie's address for Mrs. Ginsburg. You try her once. She brings home the clothes so white it's a pleasure to put them away. Tell her I recommended her. I wish you could see Birdie's shirt-waists come home from the wash—just like new!"
"I'll try her next week," said Mrs. Ginsburg, buckling her fur neckpiece.
"Give Adolph my love, Batta. Birdie, help Aunt Batta with her coat. Come over some evening soon. Good-by, ladies! Come again. Good-by! Be careful of that step there, Mrs. Gump. Good-by!"
Mrs. Katzenstein clicked the door softly shut and turned to her daughter. There were high red spots on her cheeks.
"Well," she sighed, "I'm glad that's over."
"Me, too; and I'm sorry enough that Mrs. Gump didn't win those salt-cellars."
"Such a grand woman as she is—plain and unassuming! He left her real comfortable, too—not much, but enough for herself. But, to look at her in that plain black dress, you wouldn't think that she had a son that might be made manager of the Loeb factory, would you?"
"It is so," agreed Birdie, nibbling from a half-emptied candy-dish on one of the tables; "and that's just the way with Marcus last night—it was only accident that he let out that him and Louis Epstein might have an automobile."
"Plain and unassuming people!" Mrs. Katzenstein exclaimed.
"I says to him when we were in the taxi, I says: 'Automobile-riding sure is grand!' Then he says: 'If something I'm hoping for happens in a couple of days, me and Louis Epstein are going to buy one of those five-hundred-dollar roadsters together. Then we can have a swell time together, Birdie!' Just like that he said it."
"You're a good girl, Birdie, and you deserve the best. To-night you wear your blue. Tillie, come in and set the chairs straight—nice—Miss Birdie's going to have company. How that Mrs. Ginsburg got on my nerves, I can't tell you, with her Meena and her brag!"
"I should say so!"
At eight o'clock Birdie again posed before her mirror. Her robin's-egg-blue dress where it fell away from her rather splendid and carefully powdered chest was spangled with small sequins, which glinted like stars. There was a corresponding galaxy of spangles arranged bandeau-fashion in her hair. The Blessed Damozel, when she leaned out from the golden bar of Heaven, wore seven significant stars in her hair. Birdie also wore stars in her hair, in her eyes, and in her heart and on her bosom.
"I think this dress makes me look grand and thin, mamma."
"It cost enough."
"Do you like those silver spangles in my hair? That's the way Bella Block wore hers at the theater the other night."
"I don't believe in such fussiness for girls! Your mother before you didn't have it. If you want you can wear my diamond bow-knot. Have Tillie come in and pin it on you with the safety-catch. I'm so nervous like a cat!"
"What are you so nervous about, mamma?"
"Say, Birdie, you know I'm the last one to talk about such things—but the Gumps don't start things without intentions. Flora told me herself that Ben Gump got engaged to her sister the second time he called."
"Aw, mamma!"
"Believe me, if it should come to us we got no cause to complain. Grand prospects! Grand boy! And what more do you want? Papa and me, with such a son-in-law, can enjoy our old age."
"Such talk!"
"You think I let on to anybody! All I say is to you; but a girl needs advice from her parents. Look at your sister Ray—she was a smart and sensible girl."
"Abe, with his stuttering and all!"
"Just the same he is a good husband to her and makes her a good living. You think she would have got him if she hadn't fixed things for herself—kind of! Believe me, it was hard enough for us, then, before papa went into petticoats."
"She can have him!"
"I always say Ray was a smart girl. She wasn't no beauty, and the chances didn't come so thick; and now to walk in her house you wouldn't think she did the courting! A more devoted boy than Abe I don't know."
"Do you like that bow at the belt, mamma?"
"Yes.... Tillie," called Mrs. Katzenstein, raising her voice, "turn on the lights in the parlor, and then tell Mr. Katzenstein I said to put on his coat."
"I don't want the lights on, mamma—it looks better that way."
"You want it to look like we was stingy with light yet! How does that look—just the gas-logs going! You tell Mr. Katzenstein, Tillie, that I insist that he should put on his coat to meet Birdie's company—his newspaper will keep. There's the bell! Tillie, go to the door."
After a well-timed interval Birdie entered the soft-lighted parlor; the gas-logs gave out a mellow but uncertain light. It was as if the spirit of fire were doing an elf dance about the room—glinting on the polished surface of the floor, glancing on and off the gilt frame of a wall-picture, and gleaming at its own reflection in the mahogany table-legs and glass doors of the curio cabinet.
Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.
"Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap to sit in the light," said Birdie.
He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.
"What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?"
"Sure I'm not," he said. "I'm just catching up on sleep."
They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers abruptly.
"Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated how Mr. Latz sells cigars."
"To-night," he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair and exhaling loudly, "I feel as funny as a funeral."
"Marcus," she said, "honest, you don't look right; you're pale!"
He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate vis-à-vis. The light played over them.
"You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you."
Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump. He was a well-set-up young man—solidly knit and close packed—but five inches short of the stuff that matinée idols and policemen are made of. Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.
This facetious mood, however, was further emphasized in the large, well-formed ears, which flared away from his head as if alarmed, and in a wide, heavy-set mouth, which seemed straining to meet those respective ears; yet when Mr. Gump smiled he showed a double deck of large white teeth, dazzling as snow, and his eyes illuminated, and small-rayed wrinkles spread out from the corners and gave them geniality.
"Your mamma was here at the whist this afternoon, Marcus. We think she's a grand woman!"
His face lighted.
"I was afraid she wouldn't come on account of the weather. I meant to telephone from the factory to take a cab, but I had a hard day of it. What's the difference, I always say in a case like that, whether it costs a little more or a little less? Recreation is good for her."
"It's a terrible night, isn't it? Papa says even the horses can't walk—it's so slippery."
"I care a lot how slippery it is when I come to see you, Birdie." He sighed and regarded her nervously.
"Aw, Marcus! Jollier!" She colored the red of the deepest peony in the garden and giggled like water purling over stones.
"You can believe me, I wish I was jollying! Until I met you it was all right to say that about me; but now—but—Oh, well, what's the use of talking?"
He rose from the divan in some agitation, thrust his hands into his pockets, hitched his trousers upward, and walked away.
Birdie remained on the divan, observing the rules of the oldest game, clasped her hands on her knees, and held the silence. When she finally spoke her voice was filtered by the benign process of understanding.
"Look how easy he gets mad," she said, querulously; "just like I'm not glad he wasn't jollying!"
There was a pause; the large onyx clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly and impersonally, as if its concern were solely with time and not with man.
Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses—a sloe black and a virgin white—rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.
"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway. It's like I said to you last night—if a fellow can't give you what you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."
"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like that!"
Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood fizzing through their veins.
"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell—"
At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate in low seas, hove in.
"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well—ain't it?"
"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."
"Just like Mr. Katzenstein—ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works! Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less, I tell him."