Part 11

"Run along, you children," said Mr. Katzenstein. "Here, Marcus, put a cigar in your pocket—one of Goldstein's ten-cent specials."

"I don't smoke, paw," said Marcus.

He went out, his arm linked in Birdie's. Their laughter drifted backward.

Mrs. Katzenstein resumed her chair in the warm glow of the logs—her full face, with the scallop of double chin, was suddenly old and lined; her husband drew up his curved-back rocker beside her.

"Mamma, you shouldn't take on so. Everything comes for the best."

"You can talk, papa! Now I had even told Mrs. Ginsburg for sure she should have one of those Ninety-sixth Street apartments."

"You women folks make me sick! You should be glad we got our health, mamma, and good men for our girls."

"I guess you're right, papa. He's a grand young man!"

"A good boy—ach, how tired I am!"

"Stretch out your feet, papa. It's warm by the fire."

The light flickered over their faces and sent long shadows wavering and dancing back of them.

Mr. Katzenstein settled deeper in his chair; his head, bald on top and with a fringe of bristles over the ears, was hunched down between his shoulders.

"You've been a good mother, Salcha."

"Not such a mother as you've been a father—me and them girls never wanted for one thing, even when you couldn't afford it as now."

"Ah—ho!" sighed Mr. Katzenstein.

"You're tired, papa, and it's late. Here, I'll unlace your shoes for you."

"No; in a minute I go to bed—such a back-ache!"

"She's got a good man; and, like you say, that's the main thing," repeated Mrs. Katzenstein, intent on self-conviction. "It ain't always the money."

"Ya, ya!" said Mr. Katzenstein.

"Look at us when we was down on Grand Street! We was happy—You remember that green-plush dress I had, papa?"

"Yes, Salcha."

"Don't go to sleep sitting there, papa; you'll take cold."

Mr. Katzenstein's fingers, that were never straight, closed over the veined back of his wife's hand.

"In a minute I go to bed."

"If she had known what was coming when he asked her last night it might be different; but now it's too late, and everything is for the best."

"Yes, mamma."

"She's happy—and that's the main thing."

"Time flies," he said, with his eyes on the flames. "Only yesterday she was a baby!"

"Ain't it so, papa? We had 'em, and we suffered for 'em, and now we give 'em up; that's what it means to raise a family."

"Salcha," he said, his fingers stroking hers gently, "we're getting old—ain't it, old lady?"

"Yes," she said, rocking rhythmically; "twenty-eight years now! We've had good times, and we've had bad times."

"Good—and—bad—times," he repeated.

They watched the flames.

After a while Mr. Katzenstein's head fell forward on his chest and he dozed lightly.

The clock ticked somberly and with increasing loudness; twice it traveled its circle, and twice it tonged the hour. The gas-logs burned steadily and kept the shadows dancing. Off somewhere a dog bayed; a creak, which is one of the noises that belong solely to after midnight, came from the direction of one of the windows.

Mr. Katzenstein woke with a start and jerked his head up.

"Mamma!" he cried, dazed with sleep. "Mamma! Birdie! Mamma!"

"Yes, papa," she replied, smiling at him and with her hand still beneath his; "I'm here."

BREAKERS AHEAD

In the ink-blue shrieking trail of the twenty-two-hour Imperial flyer, Slateville lay stark alongside the singing tracks as if hurtled there like a spark off a speed-hot emery wheel.

The Imperial flyer swooped through the dun-colored village like the glance of a lovely coquette shoots through her victim's heart and leaves it bare.

At eight-one the far-off Imperial voice hallooed through the darkness like a conquering hero whose vanguard is a waving sword which flashes in the sunlight before he and his steed come up out of the horizon.

At eight-four a steam yodel shook the panes and lamp-chimneys of Slateville, a semaphore studded with a ruby stiffened out against the sky, and a white eye—the size of a bicycle-wheel—flashed down the tracks.

Then the howl of a fiend, and a mile-long checkerboard of lighted car-windows, and cinders rattling against them like hail.

A fire-boweled engine with a grimy-faced demon leaning out of his red-hot cab, and, on every alternate night, a green eye with a black pupil which winked a signal from that same heat-roaring cab and from a dirt-colored frame shanty in a dirt-brown yard, where a naked tree stretched its thin arms against the sky, an answering eye which gleamed through a bandana-bound lantern and outlined the Hebe-like silhouette of a woman in the window.

Then the flash of a mahogany-lined dining-car with nodding vis-a-vis, pink-shaded candles and white-coated, black-faded genii of the bowl and weal; an occasional vague figure peering through cupped hands out from an electric-lighted berth; a plate-glass observation-car with figures lounging in shallow leather chairs like oil-kings and merchant princes and only sons in a Fifth Avenue club, and a great trailing plume of smoke that lingered for a moment and died in the still tingling air.

For a full half-hour, even an hour, after the Imperial flyer had gouged through the village the yellow lights of Slateville burned on behind its unwashed windows, which were half opaque with train-dust and the grimy finger-prints of children. Then they began to flick out, here, there—here, there. In a slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, in an out-of-balance bookkeeper's office in the Slateville Varnish Factory, in the Red Trunk general store and post-office, the parson's study, a maiden's bedroom, in the dirt-colored frame house, another slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, another, and yet another. Here, there—here, there.

The clerk in the signal-tower slumped in his chair, the doctor's tin-tired buggy rattled up a hilly street that was shaped like a crooked finger, and away beyond the melancholy stretches of close-bitten grazing-land and runty corn-fields the flyer shrieked upward, and the miles scuttled the echoes back to Slateville.

On an alternate night that was as singingly still as the inside of a cup the flyer tore through the village with the cinders tattooing against its panes and the white eye searching like a near-sighted cylcopean monster.

But from the red fireman's cab the green lantern with the black bull's-eye painted on the outward side dangled unlit, and in the dirt-colored house, behind drawn shades, the Hebe-like figure was crouched in another woman's arms, and, in the room adjoining, John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.

Who-o-o-p! Who-o-o-p!

"Listen, Cottie, listen!"

"'Sh-h-h-h, darlin'."

The crouching women crouched closer together, a dove-note in the crooning voice of one like the coo of a mate. "'Sh-h-h, darlin'."

"There it goes, Cottie. Gawd, just like nothing had happened."

"'Sh-h-h, dearie; lay still!"

"Listen. The engine's playin' a different tune on the tracks; it's lighter and smoother."

"Yes—yes—'sh-h-h."

"Just hear, Cottie; they got the old diner on. I know her screech."

"I hear, dearie."

"And the Cleveland sleeper wasn't touched, neither. Hear her. They say she didn't even leave the tracks. He used to say she had a rattle like a dice-box. Just the same, it was the smooth-runnin' Washington sleeper lit on the engine. Listen, Cottie, oh, listen! Just like nothin' had happened."

"Don't tremble so, darlin'. That's life every time—it just rides over its dead."

"He hated the flyer, oh—oh—"

"Don't take on so, Della darlin'. He died on his job."

"He hated the flyer; he—"

"He could have jumped like Jim Dirkey did, and lived to face the shame of it, but he died on his job. You can always say your man died on his job, Della darlin'."

Della raised her crouching head and brushed the hair back from her eyes. Helen's face that launched a thousand ships was no more fair.

"That he did—didn't he, Cottie? He died on his job."

"Sure he did, darlin'—sure he did."

"You remember—you remember, Cottie, the first night they put him on the flyer?"

"Try to forget it, Della, and don't go gettin' all excited—there—there."

"I was over home that night with you and maw, and—and he came in for supper with the news and—and he was like a funeral about bein' promoted."

"Yes, I remember."

"Even with the extra pay he was for stickin' to the accommodation, because he loved her insides."

"And because it was a chance to spite you."

"But I—I was all for the flyer. I told him he was afraid of her speed, and he hauled off and nearly hit me for callin' him a coward before you and maw, and you up and—"

"He was rough with you, Della, but he wouldn't 'a' dared do it with me there. I had him bluffed, all righty; he wouldn't 'a' done it with me and maw there."

"Lots maw would 'a' cared. Poor maw! She never knew nothing else but abuse, herself."

"Paw wasn't so bad, Della—he always brought home the envelope."

"John—he made me eat the words when we got home that night; but, just the samey, he—he wouldn't 'a' took the Imperial, Cottie, if I hadn't nagged him to it—he wouldn't have!"

"Well, what if he wouldn't? You wouldn't 'a' married him, neither, if he hadn't nagged you to it when paw died, and he knew you had a stepmother that was devilin' and abusin' the life out of us—you."

"He used to say, when he came home with a face as black as a crazy devil's, that coaling the flyer was just like stoking hell. She ate and ate and bellowed for more. He hated the flyer, he did. He stoked her with more hate than coal, and I drove him to it, Cottie. I put the hole in his head."

"Aw, no, dearie! Nobody ever made John Blaney do nothing he didn't want to do. He's dead now and can't take up for hisself, but he was hard as nails—even if he was my brother-in-law."

"'Sh-h-h, Cottie, little sister."

"I always say, Della, Gawd knows I ain't got a cinch! I hate the factory like I hate a green devil, and you know what it is to live around maw's doggin' and abuse, but it's like I tole Joe the other night: I wouldn't marry the finest man livin' before I'd had my chance to try out what I had my heart set on. I told him he could save his breath. I'm goin' to take a chance on gettin' out of this dump—not on tyin' up to it."

"Joe's a good boy, Cottie. He's a saint alongside of what John was. Steady fellows and foremen ain't layin' around loose, dearie. He's a good boy, Cottie—none finer."

"Della! You ain't—"

"No; I ain't urgin' you, Cottie. I ain't sayin' you're not right to hold off, but Joe's the finest boy in these parts, ain't he?"

"That ain't sayin' much. You wasn't a big-enough gambler, Della. You remember how I begged you the night before the wedding to hold off. I ain't goin' to make your mistake. You ought 'a' done what Lily done—took a chance. Tessie says her pictures were all pasted up outside of Indianapolis last week. Lily Divette in the 'Twinkling Belles.' If Lily Maloney with her baby face and—"

"I—I stuck to John to the end, though—didn't I, Cottie? Nobody can say I didn't stick to him—can they, Cottie?"

"No, no! Now don't go gettin' excited again, dearie."

"Oh, Gawd, Gawd, Cottie. I—I feel—so—so—queer!"

"Yes, darlin', I know!"

The cryptic quiescence of death hung over the unpainted pine bedchamber and chilled their skin like damp in a cave seeps through clothing. From the far side of the bed a lamp wavered against a tin reflector and danced through their hair like firelight in copper; wind galloped over the flat country, shook the box-shaped house, and whinnied on every flue.

Cottie, whose head was Tiziano's Flora yet more radiant, held her sister's equally radiant head close to her warm bosom, and through the calico of her open-at-the-throat waist, her heart pumped the organ-prelude of Life—Life in the midst of Death.

"Della darlin'—don't—don't be afraid to talk to me. Ain't—ain't I your—sister?"

"What—what—"

"I—I know—what you're thinkin', Della—"

"'Sh-h-h; not now!"

"You're thinkin' that you're—that you're free, now, darlin'—free—ain't you?"

"'Sh-h-h-h!"

"Free, darlin'—think—there ain't nothin' can hold you! A hundred dollars' benefit-money and—"

"Gawd, Cottie—Cottie—'sh-h-h! Him layin' in there dead! It—it ain't no time to talk about that now. Anyways, you're the one to go. I'll stay with maw."

Her words tumbled, and her tones were galvanized with fear and fear's offspring, superstition. She glanced toward the half-open door with eyes two shades too dark.

"No, no, Della; you're the oldest. You go first, and I—I'll stick it out with maw till—she's gettin' feebler every day, Delia, and I'll be joinin' you some day not far off."

"'Sh-h-h; it ain't right. I—I'll give her—half the benefit-money, Cottie, but it's a sin to—"

"You and folks make me sick. If the devil hisself was to die you'd snivel and bury him in priest's robes. What John was he was—dyin' didn't change it. Ten days ago you were standin' at this very window answering his signal and hating him with every swing of the lantern."

"Cottie, you mustn't!"

"I used to see you sit across from him at the table, and when he yelled at you or wanted to pet you I've seen you run your finger-nails into you palms from hatin' him, clear in till they bled, like you used to do when you was a kid and hated any one, and now, just because he's dead—"

"Oh, Gawd, I never done the right thing by him! He was my husband. Look how bare I kept everything from him. He used to come home from a forty-eight-hour shift and say this house reminded him of hell with the fire gone out. I never did the right thing by him."

"He didn't by you, neither."

"He was my husband."

"He knew if we'd 'a' had the money to light out and do like Lily he wouldn't 'a' stood a show of bein' your husband, though. He knew, from the day they put the bandages on maw's eyes, thet he was just the only way out for us. He knew one of us had to quit the factory and stay home with her—and where was the money comin' from? He knew."

"Yes, he knew, Cottie. Even on the New York accommodation, that time on the wedding-trip, trouble began right off. When that fellow on the train got talkin' to me and told me he could give me a job in the biggest show on Broadway, he nearly hauled off and raised a row right there on the train when he came back and seen me talkin' to him."

"If only you'd got the fellow's name, Della, and his street in New York!"

"How could I, when John came back and began snarlin' like—"

"Would you know him if you seen him again, Della? Think, darlin', would you?"

"Would I? In my sleep I'd know him. He was a short fellow with eyes so little they didn't show when he laughed, and a mouth full of gold teeth that stuck out like a buck's. And say, Cottie, for diamonds! A diamond horseshoe scarf-pin as big as a dollar!"

"There's money in it, Della. Look at Lily. Tessie says she's diamond rings to her knuckles."

"John knew what took the life out of me, from that day on. He used to say if he ever laid eyes on that little bullet-headed, rat-eyed sport, as he called him, he'd shake the life out of him. Just like that!"

"Faugh! he wouldn't 'a' had the nerve!"

"Don't you forget he knew what was eatin' us, Cottie."

"Well, wasn't it our right—a beauty like you in this dump?"

"And you?"

Their faces, startlingly alike, were upturned, and in their eyes was the golden fluid of dawn.

"He knew. You remember that letter Lily wrote when you asked her to get you in her show?"

"Do I?"

"He found it in my pocket one night and read it, and laughed and laughed. He used to know it by heart, and he'd cackle it to me whenever he caught me red-eyed from cryin'."

"That letter she wrote out of jealousy? He seen that?"

"Yeh! 'Stay home, dearie,' he used to sing to me, laughin' to split his sides; 'stay home, like Della did, and make happiness and a home for yourself.'"

"Gawd!"

"Then he'd go off in a real fit of laughin' again. 'You ain't got no ideas of the breakers ahead, Cottie dearie,' he'd holler, 'and in this business there ain't many of us got the strength to fight 'em.'"

"Wasn't that like him—stealin' a letter!"

"Then he'd laugh some more, wag his finger at me and make me cry, and keep yellin' 'Breakers ahead! Breakers ahead!'"

"There, there, dearie; it's all over, now. He was too dumb and too mean to know that Lily was as jealous as a snake of me and you—always, even, when we was kids. Sure she don't want us in her show—we'd walk away with it. John was too dumb to see the letter was only—"

"'Sh-h-h; it's a sin to run down the dead."

"Anyway, you never lied to John like he did to you. I can still hear him that dark night, down by the quarry, trying to scare you. Lyin' to you about what girls got to buck up against in the city, that night, when they first put the bandages on maw's eyes, and he was beggin' and beggin' you to marry him."

"Gawd! I was ashamed to listen to some of the things he tried to scare me with that night."

"He couldn't answer when I piped up about his cousin, Tessie Hobbs, that went to St. Louis to learn millinery and sends home four dollars a week. He couldn't answer that, could he?"

"No, he couldn't, Cottie."

A silence—the great stone silence of a coliseum—closed in about them. Della shivered and burrowed her head deeper into her sister's lap.

"Aw, Gawd, us talkin' like this, with him layin' in there!"

"If he wasn't layin' in there we wouldn't be talkin'."

A shutter swung in on its hinges.

"There, there! It ain't nothin' but the wind, Della."

"He was goin' to fix that shutter to-day when he was off shift. Gawd, he didn't have no more idea of dyin' than I did!"

"That's just like maw. Sometimes in the night I can almost hear her stop breathin'—she's so weak, but she's always talkin' about next year—next year."

"It'll be awful for you, little sister, with me gone and you alone with her."

"It—it ain't a sin to say it, Delia. She—she ain't here for long, and I'll be comin' to join you soon. You'll tell 'em I'm comin'."

"Gawd, how I wish we was going together, little sister! Leavin' you is just like leavin' my heart. There's nobody I love like you, Cottie."

"Della darlin', look at Lily—she went alone."

"I—I ain't afraid—you got the best voice of us two, but I'll make the way for you, dearie. I'll make it easier for you to come."

"It won't be long."

"If I could only have got his name that time on the train, Cottie!"

"You got Lily's boardin'-house, dearie. Ain't that something?"

"Oh, darlin'—him layin' in there!"

"Don't begin that again, dearie."

"Listen, Cottie—listen—that can't be the six-thirty accommodation already, is it? It ain't the funeral-day already, is it?"

"Yes, dearie; but it's a long way off. See, it's just gettin' light through the crack in the shade."

"Don't raise it, Cottie. It's a sin to let in the light, with him layin' there and dead."

"Darlin', it ain't goin' to hurt him, and the lamp's low. See; there ain't no harm in raisin' it—look how light it's gettin'!"

Off toward the east dawn trembled on the edge of eternity and sent up, as if the earth were lighting the horizon, a pearlish light shotted with pink. A smattering of stars lingered and trembled as though cold. They paled; dawn grew pinker, and the black village, with its naked trees standing darkly against the sky, sent up wispy spirals of smoke. A derrick in the jagged bowl of the quarry moved its giant arms slowly, and a steam-whistle shrieked.

The New York accommodation hallooed to the trembling dawn and tore through Slateville.

The sisters pressed their white faces close to the cold pane and watched it rush into the sunrise. A cock crowed to the dawn, and, from afar, another. A dirt-team rumbled up the road, and the steam-whistle from the quarry blew a second reveille.

"You—you take the accommodation, darlin'. It's cheaper, and you'll be feelin' scary about the flyer for a while. You can catch it down by Terre Haute at five-thirty-one, Monday morning—eh, darlin'?"