Part 23

"I've made up my mind, Loo. There's a whole lot of sense in what you've been saying—an' I'm going to do it."

"Now remember, Lil, I ain't buttin' in—I ain't the kind that butts into other people's business; but, when you come down to the store the other day and I seen how blue you was I got to talkin' before I meant to. That's the way with me when I get to feelin' sorry for anybody; I ain't always understood."

"You're just right in everything you said. It ain't like I was a girl that wasn't used to anything. If I do say so myself, there never was a more popular girl in the gloves than I was—you know what refined and genteel friends I had, Loo."

"That's what I always say—some girls could put up with this all right; but a person that had the swell time an' friends you did—to marry an' have to settle down like this—it just don't seem right. I always said, the whole time we was chumming together, you was cut out for a society life if ever a girl was. Of course, I ain't saying nothing against Charley, but no fellow can expect a girl like you to stick to this."

Miss Tracy fanned herself with a folded newspaper; her large, even-featured face glistened with tiny globules of perspiration; her blond hair had lost some of its crimp.

"Nobody can say I haven't done my duty by Charley, Loo. If ever a girl had a slow time it's been me; but I have been holdin' off, hoping he might get into something else. He ain't never wanted to stick himself; but it just seems like poundin' ragtime is all he's cut out for."

"A girl's gotta have life—that's what I always say. Just because you're married ain't no sign you're an old woman; but I don't want to poke into your business. If you make up your mind just you come over tonight after he leaves, and you can bunk with me in the old room, just like we used to. Lordy! wasn't them good old times?"

"Don't be surprised to see me, Loo. I ain't never let on to Charley, but it's been in my head a long time. I'd a whole lot rather be back in the department again than watchin' these four walls—I would."

"It's a darn shame! Why, I'd go clean daffy, Lil, if I had to stick round the way you do. What's the use o' bein' married, I'd like to know!"

"It won't be so easy to get back in the department, I'm afraid."

"Easy? Why, you can get your old job back like that!" Miss Tracy snapped her fingers with gusto. "It was only yesterday that an ancient dame with a glass eye bought a pair of chamois and asked for you—and Skinny heard her, too. He knows you had a good, genteel trade—and watch him grab you back! You ain't no dead one if you have been buried nearly two years."

"Ain't it so, Loo? Here I have been married going on two years! I ain't never let on even to you what I've been through. Charley's all right, but—"

"Yes, but I could tell. You can ask any of the girls down at the store if I wasn't always sayin' it was a shame for a girl with your looks to 'a' throwed herself away."

Lilly dabbed and swabbed at the inside of a stew-pan; the irises of her eyes were unnaturally large—a wisp of hair, dry and electric, drifted across her face. She blew at it, pursing out her lower lip.

"I've been a fool!" she said.

"There's Maisie—been married just as long as you; and honest, Lil, I ain't been to a dance that I ain't seen her and Buck. Of course, Buck has got his faults, but when he's sober there ain't nothin' he won't do to give Maisie a swell time."

Lilly bristled. "One thing I will say for Charley—I believe in givin' everybody his dues—Charley's never laid a hand on me; and that's more'n Maisie Cloot can say!" She finished with some asperity.

"I guess there ain't none of them perfect when it comes right down to it—ain't it so? I seen Maisie the week after she had that bad eye, and I never see a sweller seal-ring than she was wearin'. Buck's rough, but he tries to make up for it—not that I got anything against Charley."

Miss Tracy took a few steps that were suggestive of departure.

"I always say, Lil, it ain't so much the feller as how he treats you. It ain't none of my put-in, but I'd like to see the man that could make me sit at home alone seven nights in the week—that's what I would!"

"Well, if you gotta go, Loo, you gotta go. I'm so excited-like I kind o' hate to have you leave."

"There's nothin' to get excited about. It's just like you say: you've been thinkin', and now you've made up your mind. Now all you got to do is act—you got the note written, ain't you?"

Lilly took a small square of yellow paper from her blouse and passed it to her friend.

"Are you sure it reads all right, Loo?"

Miss Tracy read carefully:

DEAR CHARLIE,—You do not need to come after me, as I am not coming back. I could not stand it—no girl could. Yours truly, LIL.

"Yes; that's great. So long as you ain't sore at him for no other reason, there ain't no use kickin' up. That just shows him where he stands. There ain't no use fightin'—just quit!"

Lilly slipped the bit of paper back into her blouse.

"I'll see you later," she said, with new determination.

"Now don't let me influence you. Make up your mind and do what you think is best. Then don't be a quitter—when I start a thing I always see it through. Give me a girl with backbone every time. I glory in your spunk!"

"Oh, I got the spunk, all right, Loo." They linked arms and went through the little bedroom into the parlor. At the door Miss Tracy lingered.

"Your flat's got the room beat by a long shot; but I always say it don't make no difference whether you live in a palace or a cottage, just so you're happy. Gimme one room and what I want, and you can have all your swell marble-entrance apartments. Ain't that right?"

"You've hit it, Loo. Take this here red parlor set—when me and Charley went down to pick it out I couldn't hardly wait till we got it up in the flat; and now just look! I can't look red plush in the face no more."

"That's the way of the world," said Loo. She sucked in her breath and cluck-clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

"I'll be over about eight, then—after he goes."

"All right. Bring what you need, and send for the other stuff. You better put in a party dress; we might get a date for to-night, for all I know. You know you always brought me luck when it come to dates. I ain't had a chum since that could bring them round like you."

"Oh, Loo! I ain't thinkin' about such things."

"Sure you ain't; but it won't hurt you to know you're livin', will it?—and to chaperon your friend?"

"No," admitted Lil.

"Well, so long! I'll see you later. Don't let on to Charley I was over. He ain't got no truck for me."

They embraced.

"Good-by for a little while, Loo."

"Good-by, dearie."

Lilly watched her friend pass down the narrow hall, then she closed the door. Left alone, she crossed to the window and leaned out well beyond the casement—a Demoiselle whose three lilies were despair, anger, and fear. The stagnant air, savored with frying pork, weighted her down with its humidity; her brow puckered into tiny lines.

Do not, reader, construe this setting too lightly. The most pungent essay in all literature is devoted to the succulency of roast pig; Sappho was most lyric after she had rubbed her wine goblet with garlic-flavored ewe meat. But such kindly reflection was not Lilly's—fleshpots and life alike were unsavory.

The Nottingham lace curtains hung limp and motionless round her, and waves of heat deflected from the asphalt came up heavy as fog. Three stories beneath, Third Avenue spluttered on the griddle of a merciless August—an exhausted day was duskening into a scarcely less kind twilight; she could feel the brick wall of the building exhaling like a furnace.

It was characteristic of Lilly that, with the thermometer up in three figures and her own mental mercury well toward the top of the tube, she should strike the one note of relief in a Saharan aridness. She suggested the drip of clear water in a grotto or the inmost petals of a tight-closed rose. If her throat ached and strained to keep down the tears, her neck, where the sheer white collar fell away, was cold and chaste; if anger and resentment were pounding through her veins the fresh firmness of her flesh did not betray it.

She leaned her head against the window-frame and looked down with a certain remoteness upon the human caldron three stories removed. Lights were beginning to prick out wanly; the bang and clang of humanity, distant, but none the less insistent, came up to her in a medley of street-car clangs, shouts, and hum-hum. Children cried.

Upon a fire-escape level with her own window a child, with bare feet extended over the iron rail, slept on an improvised bed; from the interior of that same apartment came the wail of a sick infant. A woman nude to the waist passed to and fro before the open window, crooning to the bundle she carried in the crook of her arm. Lilly's mouth hung at the corners.

Came darkness, she passed out into the kitchen and covered the slow-cooking chops with a tin lid, lighted the gas-jet, turning the flame down into a mere bead, and resumed her watch at the front window.

Clear like a clarion a familiar whistle ripped through the din of the street and came up to her sharp and undiverted—two clean calls and a long, quavering ritornelle. At that signal, for the year and a half of their married life, Lilly had unfailingly fluttered a white handkerchief of greeting from the three flights up. Her arm contracted reflexly, but she stayed it and stepped back into the frame of the window, leaning straight and tense against the jamb. Her pulse leaped into the hundreds as she stood there, her arms hugging her sides and her blouse rising and falling with the heave of her bosom, her handkerchief a tight little wad in the palm of her hand.

Again the call, tearing straight and true to its destination! She remained taut as stretched elastic. There was a wondering interim—and a third time the signal split the air, sharp-questioning, insistent. Then a silence.

Lilly darted into the kitchen and stooped absorbed over the burbling coffee. A key rattled the front-room lock, and she bent lower over the stove. She heard her name called sharply; a door slammed, and her husband bounded into the kitchen, his face streaming perspiration and his collar like a rag about his neck.

"Hello, honey! Gee! You gimme a scare there fer a minute. I thought the heat might 'a' got you."

He gathered her in his arms, pushed back her head, and looked into her reluctant eyes.

"What's the matter, hon? You ain't sick, are you?"

She wriggled herself free of his arms and turned to the stove.

"No," she said, in a monotone, "I ain't sick."

He regarded her with a worried pucker between his eyes.

"Aw, come on, Lil—tell a fellow what's the matter, can't you? It ain't like you to be like this."

"Nothin'!" she insisted.

"You gimme a swell turn there fer a minute. They're droppin' like flies to-day—hottest day in five summers."

Silence.

"Whew!" He peeled off his coat and hung it, with his imitation Panama hat, behind the door; his pink shirt showed dark streaks of perspiration; and he tugged at the rear button of his limp collar.

"Be-e-lieve me, the pianner business ain't what it's cracked up to be! There ain't a picture house in town got the Gem beat when it comes to heat. Had to take off the Flyin' Papinta act to-day and run in an extry picture because two of the kids give out with the heat. I've played to over ten thousand feet o' films to-day; and be-e-lieve me, it was some stunt!"

He sluiced his face with cold water at the sink, and slush-slushed his head in a roller-towel, talking the while.

"I never seen the—extry picture—they—run in to cover the—Papinta act; and before I—could keep up—with the film—I was givin' ragtime fer a funeral. You oughta heard Joe squeal!" He laughed and threw his arms affectionately across his wife's shoulder. "Eh—ragtime fer a funeral! Fine pianner-player you got fer a husband, honey!"

Given a checked suit, a slender bamboo cane, and a straw Katy slightly askew, Charley might have epitomized vaudeville. He had once won a silver watch-fob for pre-eminent buck-dancing at a Coney Island informal, and could sing "Oh, You Great Big Beautiful Doll!" with nasal perfection.

"Yes, sirree, Lil; you got a fine pianner-player fer a husband!"

She squirmed away from his touch and carried the coffee-pot to the little set-for-two table. The chops steamed from a blue-and-white plate. Her husband, unburdened with subtleties, straddled his chair and scraped up to the table; his collapsed collar, with two protruding ends of red necktie, lay on the window-sill; the sleeves of his pink shirt were rolled back to the elbow.

The meal opened in a silence broken only by the clat-clat of dishes and the wail of suffering babies.

"Poor kiddies, they ain't got a chance in a hundred. Gee! If I had the coin, wouldn't I give them a handout of fresh air and milk? I'd give every one of the durn little things a Delmonico banquet. I'd jest as soon get hit in the head as hear them kids bawl."

Suddenly he glanced up from his plate and pushed himself from the table; his wife was making bread-crumbs out of her bread.

"Say, Lil, I ain't never seen you like this before! Ain't you feeling good? Come on—tell a feller what's the matter with you."

He rose and came round to her chair, leaning over its back and taking her cheeks between thumb and forefinger.

"Come on, Lil; what's the matter? You ain't sore at me, are you?"

"Can't a girl get tired once in a while?" she said.

"Poor little pussy!" He patted her hair and returned to his place. "Guess what I got!" groping significantly in the direction of his hip-pocket. "Something you been havin' your heart set on fer a long time. Guess!"

"I dunno," she said.

"Aw, gwan, kiddo! Give a guess."

"I can't guess, Charley."

"Well, then, I'll give you three guesses."

"I dunno."

"Look—now can you?"

He showed her the top of a small, square box tied with blue cord. It bore a jeweler's mark.

"Can you guess now, Lil? It's something you been aching fer."

"Lemme alone!" she said.

He looked at her in frank surprise, slowly replacing the box in his hip-pocket.

"Durned if I know what's got you!" he muttered.

"Nothing ain't got me," she insisted.

He brightened.

"Poor little girl! Never mind; next summer I'm goin' to grab that Atlantic City job I been tellin' you about. The old man said again yesterday that, jest as sure as he opens his sheet-music bazar down there next season, it's me fer the keyboard."

"His schemes don't ever turn out. I know his talk," his wife objected.

"Sure they will this time, Lil; he's got a feller to back it. He dropped in special to hear me play the 'Louisanner Rusticanner Rag' to-day; an' honest, Lil, he couldn't keep his feet still! I sprung that new one on him, too—the 'Giddy Glide'—an' I had to laugh; the old man nearly jumped over the pianner—couldn't sit quiet! Just you wait, Lil. I got that job cinched—no more picture-show stuff fer me! It'll be us fer the board-walk next summer!"

"That's jest what you said about grabbin' that Coney Island job this season."

"I couldn't help it that they cut out the pianner at the Concession, could I? The films ain't no more fun fer me than fer you, honey."

"It's pretty lonesome for a girl sitting here alone every night. It was bad enough before you took the twelve-to-two job; but I never have no evenin's nohow."

He looked at her with wide-open eyes.

"I didn't know you were sore, Lil—on the real, I didn't! I jest took that cafe job fer a few weeks to help along the surprise." His hand went to his hip-pocket.

"Oh," she said, her lips curling, "I'm sick of that line of talk."

"Lil!"

There was a count-five pause; and then the old cheeriness came back into his voice.

"I'm going to cut out the cafe job, anyway, now that—"

"Oh, never mind," she said, indifferently. "What's it matter whether you are home at twelve or two? I ain't had no evenin's for a good long time, anyhow."

"I guess you're right. Don't I wish I had some steady clerkin' job, like Bill! But it don't seem like I am cut out fer anything but pounding ragtime—you knew that, honey, before we was—" He stopped, reddening.

"No, I didn't! If I'd known before we was married what I know now, things might be different. How was I to know that you was goin' to be changed from matinee work to all-night shows? How was I to know you was goin' to make me put up with a life like this? When I see other girls that's married out of the department, and me, I jest wanna die! Look at Sally Lee and Jimmy—they go to vaudyville every week and to Coney Saturdays. You even kick if I wanna go over to Loo's to spend a evening!"

"I don't kick, Lil; I jest don't like to have you running round with that live wire. She ain't your style."

"That's right—run down my friends that I worked next to in the gloves fer four years! She was good enough fer me then. Me and her is old friends, and jest 'cause I'm married don't make me better'n her."

"I'm sorry I kicked up about it, honey. Maybe I was wrong."

"She can tell you that I had swell times when I was in the gloves—even when I was in the notions, too. There wasn't a night I didn't have a bid for some dance or something."

"Well, if this ain't a darn sight better'n pushing gloves at six per I'll—I'll—"

"I'll give you to understand, Charley Harkins, that I was making eight dollars when I married you, and everybody said that I'd 'a' been promoted to the jewelry in another year."

She rose, gathered a pyramid of dishes, and clattered them into the dish-pan as he talked. He followed after her.

"Aw, quit your foolin', Lil, can't you? Don't treat a feller like this when he comes home at night. I'll get Shorty to take the piano next Saturday, and we'll do Coney from one end to the other. We only live once, anyway. Come on, Lil; be nice and see what I got fer you, too."

"Don't treat me like I was a kid! When I was in the gloves I didn't think nothin' of goin' to Coney every other night, and you know it, all right."

The red surged back into his face.

"Yes, you had a swell time shooting gloves! You used to tell me yourself you was ready to drop at night."

"Ain't I ready to drop here?" she flashed back at him. "Am I any better off here doin' my work in the hottest flat on Third Avenue?"

"Things'll come out all right, honey. Come on and kiss me before I go."

She submitted to his embrace passively enough, and at his request retied his necktie round a fresh collar for him.

"Good night, pussy! I'll come in soft so as not to wake you—there ain't goin' to be no more of this two-o'clock business. I'm goin' to cut out the cafe. Put a glass of milk out fer me, honey. I'm near dead when I get in."

He struggled into his coat before the little dressing-table mirror of their bedroom and with a sly smile slipped the blue-corded box into a top drawer.

"I got a surprise fer you, Lil—only you ain't in no mood fer it right now."