She laid down her fork. "I thought you said he was in St. Louis?"
"He got back."
"Oh!"
"You lay down in the front room and read till I get back, hon, and maybe—maybe I'll bring you a surprise."
The meal continued in silence, but after a few seconds her throat seemed to close and she discarded the pretense of eating.
"Now don't you get sore, Mil; you never used to be like this. It's just because you're not right strong yet."
"I ain't—ain't sore."
"You are. You got a foolish idea in your head, Mil."
"Why should I have an idea? I guess I'm getting all that's coming to me for—for forcing things."
"Now, Mil, I bet anything you're still feeling sore about last night.Aren't you?"
"Sore? It ain't my business, Phonzie, if you can stay out till one o'clock one night and the next want to begin the same thing over again."
"We had to stick around last night, Mil. Gert was drawing off the models under her handkerchief and on the dance program. That's how we got the yellow charmeuse, just by keeping after it and drawing it line for line."
"I know, I know."
"Then give me a kiss and when I come back maybe—maybe I'll bring you a surprise up my sleeve, hon."
She sat beside her cold meal, tears scratching her eyes like blown grit. "It's like I told you this morning, Phonzie; when you get tired, all you got to do is remember I got the new trunk standing right behind the cretonne curtains, and I can pack my duds any day in the week and find a welcome over at—at Ida May's."
"Mil, ain't you ashamed!"
"Why, I could pack up and—and find a welcome there right to-night, if the kid wasn't too little for the night air."
"Mil, honest, I—I just don't know what to make of you. I—I've just lost my nerve about going now."
"I'm not going to be the one to say stay."
With his coat unhooked from the antlers and flung across his arm, he stood contemplating, a furrow of perplexity between his eyes.
"If I—I hadn't promised—"
"You go. I guess it won't be the last evening I spend alone."
"Yes it will, hon."
"I know, I know."
He buttoned his coat and stooped over her, the smell of damp exuding from his clothes.
"Just you lay down in the front room till I get back, Mil. Here, look at some of these new fashion books I brought home. I'll be back early, hon, and maybe wake you and the kid up with—with a surprise."
"Quit!"
"Just a French kiss, hon."
She raised a cold face. He tilted her head backward and pressed his lips to hers, then went out, closing the door lightly behind him.
For a breathing space she remained where he had left her, with her lips held in between her teeth and the sobbing breath fluttering in her throat. The pink rose lay on the table, its beautiful silk-velvet leaves concealing its cotton heart. She regarded it through a hot blur of tears that stung her eyeballs. Her throat grew tighter. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and to the hallway. A full-length coat hung from the antlers and a filmy scarf, carelessly flung. She slid into the coat, cramming the sleeves of her negligée in at the shoulders, wrapping the scarf about her head and knotting it at the throat in a hysteria of sudden decision. Then down the flight of stairs, her knees trembling as she ran. When she reached the bubbly sidewalk, cool rain slanted in her face. She gathered her strength and plunged against it.
At the corner, in the white flare of an arc-light, chin sunk on his chest against the onslaught of rain, and head leading, Alphonse Michelson stepped across the shining sea of asphalt. She broke into a run, the uneven careen of the weak, keeping to the shadow of the buildings; doubling her pace.
When he reached the hooded descent to the Subway, she was almost in his shadow; then cautiously after him down the iron stairs, and when he paused to buy his ticket, he might have touched her as she held herself taut against the wall and out of his vision. A passer-by glanced back at her twice. From the last landing of the stairway and leaning across the balustrade, she could follow him now with her eyes, through the iron gateway and on to the station platform.
From behind a pillar, a hen pheasant's tail in her hat raising her above the crowd, her shoulders rain-spotted and a dripping umbrella held well away from her, emerged Gertie Dobriner, a reproach in her expression, but meeting him with a pantomime of laughs and sallies. A tangle of passengers closed them in. A train wild with speed tore into the station, grinding to a stop on shrieking wheels. A second later it tore out again, leaving the platform empty.
Then Madam Moores turned her face to the rainswept street and retraced her steps, except that a vertigo fuddled her progress and twice she swayed. When she climbed the staircase to her apartment she was obliged to rest midway, sitting huddled against the banister, her soaked scarf fallen backward across her shoulders. She unlatched her door carefully, to save the squeak and to avoid the small maid who sang over and above the clatter of her dishes. The yellow lamp diffused its quiet light the length of the hallway, and she tottered down and into the bedroom at the far end.
A night lamp burned beside a basinette that might have been lined with the breast feathers of a dove, so downy was it. An imitation-ivory clock ticked among a litter of imitation-ivory dresser fittings. On the edge of the bed, and with no thought for its lacy coverlet, she sat down heavily, her wet coat dragging it awry. An hour ticked past. The maid completed her tasks, announced her departure, and tiptoed out to meet an appointment with a gas-fitter's assistant in the lower rear hall.
After a while Madam Moores fell to crying, but in long wheezes that came from her throat dry. The child in the crib uncurled a small, pink fist and opened his eyes, but with the gloss of sleep still across them and not forfeiting his dream. Still another hour and she rose, groping her way behind a chintz curtain at the far end of the room; fell to scattering and reassembling the contents of a trunk, stacking together her own garments and the tiny garments of a tiny white layette.
Toward midnight she fell to crying again beside the crib, and in audible jerks and moans that racked her. The child stirred. Cramming her handkerchief against her lips, she faltered down the hallway. In the front room and on the pillowed couch she collapsed weakly, eyes closed and her grief-crumpled face turned toward the door.
On the ground floor of a dim house in a dim street, which by the contrivance of its occupants had been converted from its original role of dark and sinister dining-room to wareroom for a dozen or more perambulators on high, rubber-tired wheels, Alphonse Michelson and Gertie Dobriner stood in conference with a dark-wrappered figure, her blue-checked apron wound muff fashion about her hands.
Miss Dobriner tapped a finger against her too red lips. "Seventy dollars net for a baby-carriage!"
"Yes'm, and a bargain at that. If he was home he'd show you the books hisself and the prices we get."
"Seventy dollars for a baby-carriage! For that, Phonzie, you can buy the kid a taxi."
In a sotto voice and with a flow of red suffusing his face, Alphonse Michelson turned to Gertie Dobriner, his hand curved blinker fashion to inclose his words.
"For Gawd's sake, cut the haggling, Gert. If this here white enamel is the carriage we want, let's take it and hike. I got to get home."
Miss Dobriner drew up her back to a feline arch. "The gentleman says we'll take it for sixty-five, spot cash."
"My husband's great for one price, madam. We don't cater to none but private trade and—"
"Sure you don't. If we could have got one of these glass-top carriages in a department store, we wouldn't be swimming over here to Brooklyn just to try out our stroke."
"Mrs. Nan Ness, who sent you here, knows the kind of goods we turn out. She says she's going to give us an order for a twin buggy yet, some of these days. If the Four Hundred believed in babies like the Four Million, we'd have a plant all over Brooklyn. Only my husband won't spread, he—he—"
Mr. Michelson waved aside the impending recitation with a sweep of his hand. "Is this the one you like, Gert?"
"Yes, with the folding top. Say, don't I want to see madam's face when she sees it. And say, won't the kid be a scream, Phonzie, all nestled up in there like a honey bunch?"
He slid his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a leather folder. "Here, we'll take this one with the folding top, but get us a fresh one out of stock."
"We'll make you this carriage up, sir, just as you see it now."
"Make it up! We've got to have it now. To-night!"
"But, sir, we only got these samples made up to show."
"Then we got to buy the sample."
"No, no. My husband ain't home and I—I can't sell the sample. We—"
"But I tell you we got to have it to-night. To-morrow's Sunday and the lady who—"
"No, no. With my husband not here, I can't let go no sample. As a special favor, sir, we'll make you one up in a week."
Miss Dobriner stooped forward, her eyes narrow as slits. "Seventy-five, spot down."
Indecision vanished as rags before Abracadabra.
"We make it a rule not to sell our samples, but—"
"That carriage has got to be delivered at my house to-night before ten."
"Sir, that can't go out to-night. It's got to be packed special and sent over on a flat-top dray. These carriages got to be packed like they was babies themselves."
"Can you beat that for luck?" He inserted two fingers in his tall collar as if it choked him. "Can you beat that?"
"The first thing Monday morning, sir, as a special favor, but that carriage can't go out to-night. We got one man does nothing but pack them for delivery."
He plunged his hands into his pockets and paced the narrow aisle down the center of the room. "We got to get that carriage over there to-night if—if we have to wheel it over!"
Miss Dobriner clapped her hands in an ecstasy of inspiration. "Good!We'll wheel it home. We can make it by midnight. What you bet?"
He turned upon her, but with a ray in his eyes. "Say, Gert, that ain't such a worse idea, but—"
"No buts. The night is young, and I know a fellow used to walk from theBronx to Brooklyn with his girl every Sunday."
"Sure! What's an eight-mile walk on a spring night like this? It's all cleared up and stopped raining. Only, gee! I—I hate to be getting home all hours again."
She flipped him a gesture. "Say, it's not my surprise party you're giving."
"It's not that, Gert, only I don't want to keep her waiting until she gets sore enough to have the edge taken off the surprise when it does come."
"Say, suit yourself. It's not my kid I'm going to wheel out to-morrow. I should worry."
"I'll do it."
"You're not doing me a favor. With my cold and my marcel, a three-hour walk ain't the one thing in life I'm craving."
"I'll roll it over the bridge and be home by twelve, easy. You take theSubway, Gert; it's too big a trot for you."
"Nix! I don't start anything I can't finish."
She cocked her hat to a forward angle, so that the hen pheasant's tail swung rakishly over her face, took an Hellenic stride through the aisle of perambulators, flung her arms across her bosom in an attitude of extravaganza, then tossed off a military salute.
"Ready, march!"
"You're a peach, Gert."
"I've tried pretty near everything in my life. Why not wheel another fellow's baby-carriage for another fellow's wife's baby across Brooklyn Bridge at midnight? Whoops! why not!"
"We're off, then, Gert."
"Forward, march!"
"Keep your eye on the steering-wheel, Phonzie, and remember, ten miles is speed limit on the Bridge. One, two, three! Gawd! if my friend from Carson City could only see me now!"
Out on the drying sidewalk they leaned to each other, and the duet of their merriment ran ahead of them down the meager street and found out its dark corners.
"Honest, Phonzie, won't the girls just bust when they hear this!"
"And Mil, poor old girl, she's right weak and full of nerves now, but she'll laugh loudest of all when she knows why I went with Slews."
"Yes. She-can-laugh-loudest-of-all."
"What?"
"Come on, or we won't get home until morning."
And on the crest of her insouciance she thrust out her arm, giving the shining white perambulator a running push from the rear, so that it went rolling lightly from her and with a perfect gear action down the slight incline of sidewalk. They were after it at a bound, light-heeled and full of laughter.
"Whoops, my dear!"
"Whoa!"
* * * * *
At a turn in the dark street the lights of the Bridge flashed suddenly upon them, swung in high festoons across an infinitude of night. Above, a few majestic stars, new coined, gleamed in a clear sky.
"What do you bet that with me at the wheel we can clear the Bridge in thirty minutes, Phonzie?"
"Sure we can; but here, let me shove."
She elbowed him aside, the banter gone suddenly from her voice.
"No, let me."
She fell to pushing it silently along. Stars came out in her eyes. He advanced to her pace, matching his stride to hers, fancies like colored beads slipping along the slender thread of his thoughts.
"Swell sight, ain't it, Gert, the harbor lights so bright and the sky so deep?"
Silence.
"Seeing so much sky all at once reminds me, Gert. You know about that midnight—blue satin Hertz had the brass to dump back on us because the skirt was too tight. Huh?"
Her eyes were far and away.
"Huh, whatta you know about that, Gert?"
Her hands, gripped around the handle-bars, were full of nerves; she could feel them jumping in her palm.
"Huh, Gert?"
"What you say, Phonzie?"
"All right, don't answer. Moon all you like, for my part." And he fell to whistling as he strode beside her, his eyes on the light-spangled outline of the city.
* * * * *
At twelve o'clock the lights in the lower hall of the up-town apartment-house had been extinguished. All but one, which burned like a tired eye beneath the ornate staircase. The misty quiet of midnight, which is as heavy as a veil, hung in the corridors. Miss Gertie Dobriner entered first and, holding wide the door between them, Alphonse Michelson at the front wheels, they tilted the white carriage up the narrow staircase, their whispers floating through the gloom.
"Easy there, Phonzie!"
"There!"
"Watch out!"
"Whew! that was a close shave!"
"Here, let me unlock the door. 'Sh-h-h!"
"Don't go, Gert. Come on in, and after the big show I'll send you home in a cab."
"Nix! After a three-hour walk, a street-car will look good enough to me."
"Well, then, come on in, just a minute, Gert. I want you to see the fun. What you bet she's asleep in the front room, sore as thunder, too? We'll sneak back and dump the kid in and wheel him in on her."
"Aw no! I—I got to go now, Phonzie."
"Come on, Gert, don't be a quitter. Don't you want to see her face when she knows that Slews has been all a fluke? Come on, Gert, I'll wake up the kid if I try to dump him in alone."
"Well, for just a minute. I—I don't want to butt in on your and—and her fun."
They entered with the stealthy espionage of thieves, and in the narrow hallway she waited while he tiptoed to the bedroom and back again, his lips pursed outward in a "'Sh-h-h."
"She must be in the front room. The kid's in his crib. Come on, Gert.'Sh-h-h!"
He was pink-faced and full of caution, raising each foot in exaggerated stealth. Between them they manoeuvered the carriage down the hallway.
"'Sh-h-h. If she's awake, she can hear every word in the front room."
From her wakeful couch Madam Moores raised herself on her elbow, cupping her ear in her palm, and straining her glance down the long hallway. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
"Here, Gert, you dump in these things and let me lift the kid."
"No, no; let me! Go 'way, Phonzie. You'll wake him! I just want her to be too surprised to open her mouth when she sees him sleeping in it like a top."
She threw back the net drapery and leaned to the heart of the crib, and the blood ran in a flash across her face.
"Little darling—little Phonzie darling!"
"Don't wake him, Gert."
She was reluctant to withdraw herself. "His little darling fists, so pink and curled up! Little Phonzie darling!"
He hung over each process, proud and awkward.
"Little darling—little darling—here, Phonzie help."
They transferred the burden, the child not moving on his pillow. In the shallow heart of the perambulator, the high froth of pillows about him, he lay like a bud, his soft profile against the lace, and his skin like the innermost petal of a rose.
"Phonzie, ain't he—ain't he the softest little darling! Gawd! how—how she'll love to—to be wheeling him!"
His fingers fumbled with excitement and fell to strapping and buckling with a great show and a great ineffectually.
"Here, help me let down the glass top."
"'Sh-h-h-h! Every word carries in this flat."
"Now!"
"Now!"
"You wheel him down and in on her, Gert."
She stiffened with a new diffidence. "No, no. It's your surprise."
"You done all the work on the job as much as me, and it's half your present, anyways. You roll him down the hall and stand next to her till she wakes up. She's a tight little sleeper, but if she don't wake soon I'll drop a book or something. Go on, Gert, roll it in."
"No, no, Phonzie. You and her have your fun out alone. It's your fun, anyways, not mine. This piece of rolling-stock will roll herself along home now."
"Aw, now—"
"Anyways, I'm dead. Look what a rag I am! Look at the hem of this skirt! The next time I do a crazy thing like walk from Brooklyn, I want to be burned in oil."
"Now, Gert, stick around and I'll send you home in a cab."
But she was out and past him craning her neck backward through the aperture of the open door. "Go to it, Phonzie! It's your fun, anyways. Yours and hers. S'long!"
He had already begun his triumphant passage down the hallway, and on her couch among her pillows Madam Moores closed her eyes in a simulation of sleep and against the tears that scalded her lids.
In a south-bound car Gertie Dobriner found a seat well toward the front. Across the aisle a day laborer on a night debauch threw her a watery stare and a thick-tongued, thick-brogued remark. A char-woman with a newspaper bundle hugged under one arm dozed in the seat alongside, her head lolling from shoulder to shoulder. Raindrops had long since dried on the window-pane. Gertie Dobriner cupped her chin in her palm and gazed out at the quiet street and the shuttered shops hurtling past.
Twice the conductor touched her shoulder, his hand outstretched for fare. She sprang about, fumbling in her purse for a coin, but with difficulty, because through the hot blur of her tears she could only grope ineffectually. When she finally found a five-cent piece, a tear had wiggle-waggled down her cheek and fell, splotching the back of her glove.
Across the aisle the day laborer leaned to her batting at the hen pheasant's tail in her hat, and a cold, alcoholic tear dripping from the corner of his own eye.
"Cheer up, my gir-rl," he said, through a beard like old moss—"cheer up and be a spor-r-rt!"
When Mound City began to experience the growing-pains of a Million Club, a Louisiana Exposition, and a block-long Public Library, she spread Westward Ho!—like a giant stretching and flinging out his great legs.
When rooming-houses and shoe-factories began to shove and push into richly curtained brown-stone-front Pine Street, reluctant papas, with urgent wives and still more urgent daughters, sold at a loss and bought white-stone fronts in restricted West End districts.
Subdivisions sprang up overnight. Two-story, two-doored flat-buildings, whole ranks and files of them, with square patches of front porch cut in two by dividing railings, marched westward and skirted the restricted districts with the formality of an army flanking. Grand Avenue, once the city's limit, now girded its middle like a loin-cloth. The middle-aged inhabitant who could remember it when it was a corn-field now beheld full-blasted breweries, cinematograph theaters, ten-story office-buildings, old mansions converted into piano-salesrooms and millinery emporiums, business colleges, and more full-blasted breweries up and down its length.
At Cook Street, which runs into Grand Avenue like a small tributary, a pall of smoke descended thick as a veil; and every morning, from off her second-story window-sills, Mrs. Shongut swept tiny dancing balls of soot; and one day Miss Rena Shongut's neat rim of tenderly tended geraniums died of suffocation.
Shortly after, the Adolph Shongut Produce Company signed a heavy note and bought out the Mound City Fancy Sausage and Poultry Company at a low figure. The spring following, large "To Let" signs appeared in the second-story windows of the modest house on Cook Street. And, hard pressed by the approaching first payment of the note and the great iron voice of the Middle West Shoe Company, which backed up against the woodshed; goaded by the no-less-insistent voice of Mrs. Shongut, whose soot balls increased, and by Rena, who developed large pores; shamed by the scorn of a son who had the finger-nails and trousers creases of a bank clerk—Adolph Shongut joined the great pantechnicon procession Westward Ho! and moved to a flat out on Wasserman Avenue—a six-room-and-bath, sleeping-porch, hot-and-cold-water, built-in-plate-rack, steam-heat, hardwood-floor, decorated-to-suit-tenant flat neatly mounted behind a conservative incline of a front terrace, with a square patch of rear lawn that backed imminently into the white-stone garages of Kingston Place.
Friedrichstrasse, Rue de la Paix, Fifth Avenue, Piccadilly, Princess Street and Via Nazionale are the highways of the world. Trod in literature, asterisked in guide-books, and pictured on postal cards, their habits are celebrated. Who does not know that Fifth Avenue is the most rococo boulevard in the world, and that it drinks its afternoon tea from etched, thin-stemmed glasses? Who does not know that Rue de la Paix runs through more novels than any other paved thoroughfare, and that Piccadilly bobbies have wider chest expansion than the Swiss Guards?
Wasserman Avenue has no such renown; but it has its routine, like the history-hoary Via Nazionale, which daily closes its souvenir-shops to seek siesta from two until four, the hours when American tourists are rattling in sight-seeing automobiles along the Appian Way.
At half past seven, six mornings in the week, a well-breakfasted procession, morning papers protruding from sack-coat pockets and toothpicks assiduous, hastens down the well-scrubbed front steps of Wasserman Avenue and turns its face toward the sun and the two-blocks-distant street-car. At half past seven, six days in the week, the wives of Wasserman Avenue hold their wrappers close up about their throats and poke uncoifed heads out of doors to Godspeed their well-breakfasted spouses.
Wasserman Avenue flutters farewell handkerchiefs to its husbands until they turn the corner at Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market. At eventide Wasserman Avenue greets its husbands with kisses, frankly delivered on its rows of front porches.
Do not smile. Gautier wrote about the consolation of the arts; but, after all, he has little enough to say of that cold moment when art leaves off and heart turns to heart.
Most of Wasserman Avenue had never read much of Gautier, but it knew the greater truth of the consolation of the hearth. When Mrs. Shongut waved farewell to her husband that greater truth lay mirrored in her eyes, which followed him until Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market shunted him from view.
"Mamma, come in and close the screen door—you look a sight in that wrapper."
Mrs. Shongut withdrew herself from the aperture and turned to the sunshine-flooded, mahogany-and-green-velours sitting-room.
"You think that papa seems so well, Renie? At breakfast this morning he looked so bad underneath his eyes."
Rena yawned in her rocking-chair and rustled the morning paper. The horrific caprice of her pores had long since succumbed to the West End balm of Wasserman Avenue. No rajah's seventh daughter of a seventh daughter had cheeks more delicately golden—that fine tinge which is like the glory of sunlight.
"Now begin, mamma, to find something to worry about! For two months he hasn't had a heart spell."
Mrs. Shongut drew a thin-veined hand across her brow. Her narrow shoulders, which were never held straight, dropped even lower, as though from pressure.
"He don't say much, but I know he worries enough about that second payment coming due in July and only a month and a half off. I tell you I knew what I was talking about when I never wanted him to buy out the Mound City. I was the one who said we was doing better in little business."
"Now begin, mamma!"
"I told him he couldn't count on Izzy to stay down in the business with him. I told him Izzy wouldn't spoil his white hands by helping his papa in business."
"I suppose, mamma, you think Izzy should have stayed down with papa when he could get that job with Uncle Isadore."
"You know why your Uncle Isadore took Izzy? Because to a strange bookkeeper he has to pay more. Your Uncle Isadore is my own brother, Renie, but I tell you he 'ain't never acted like it."
"That's what I say. What have we got rich relatives with a banking-house for, if Izzy can't start there instead of in papa's little business?"
"Ya, ya! What your Uncle Isadore does for Izzy wait and see. For his own sister he never done nothing, and for his own sister's son he don't do nothing, neither. You seen for yourself, if it was not for Aunt Becky begging him nearly on her knees, how he would have treated us that time with the mortgage. Better, I say, Izzy should stay with his papa in business or get out West like he wants, and where he can't keep such fine white hands to gamble with."
Miss Shongut slanted deeper until her slim body was a direct hypotenuse to the chair. "Honest, mamma, it's a shame the way you look for trouble, and the way you and papa pick on that boy."
"Pick! When a boy gambles the roulette and the cards and the horses until—"
"When a boy likes cards and horses and roulette it isn't so nice, I know, mamma; but it don't need to mean he's a born gambler, does it? Boys have got to sow their wild oats."
"Ya, ya! Wild oats! A boy that gambles away his last cent when he knows just the least bit of excitement his father can't stand! Izzy knows how it goes against his father when he plays. Ya, ya! I don't need to look for trouble; I got it. Your papa, with his heart trouble, is enough by itself."
"Well, we're all careful, ain't we, mamma? Did I even holler the other night when I thought I heard a burglar in the dining-room?"
"Ya! How I worry about the things you should know." Mrs. Shongut flung wide the windows and pinned back the lace curtains, so that the spring air, cool as water, flowed in.
Her daughter sprang to her feet and drew her filmy wrapper closer about her. "Mamma, the Solingers don't need to look right in on us from their dining-room."
"Say, I 'ain't got no time to be stylish for the neighbors. On wash-day I got my housework to do. Honest, Renie, do you think, instead of laying round, it would hurt you to go back and make the beds awhile? Do you think a girl like you ought to got to be told, on wash-day and with Lizzie in the laundry, to help a little with the housework? Do you think, Renie, it's nice? I ask you."
"It's early yet, mamma; the housework will keep."
"Early yet, she says! On Monday, with my girl in the laundry and you with five shirtwaists in the wash, it's early, she says! Your mother ain't too lazy to start now, lemme tell you. Get them Kingston Place ideas out of your head, Renie. Remember we don't do nothing but look out on their fine white garages; remember business ain't so grand with your papa, neither."
"Now begin that, mamma! I know it all by heart."
"I ain't beginning nothing, Renie; but, believe me, it ain't so nice for a girl to have to be told everything. How that little Jeannie Lissman, next door, helps her mother already, it's a pleasure to see. I—"
"You've told me about her before, mamma."
Mrs. Shongut flung a sheet across the upright piano.
"Gimme the broom, mamma. I'll sweep."
"Sweep I never said you need to do. It's bad enough I got to spoil my hands. Go back and wake Izzy up and make the beds."
"Aw, mamma, let him sleep. He don't have to be down until nine."
"Nine o'clock nowadays young men have got to work! Up to five years ago every morning at dark your papa was down-town to see the poultry come in, and now at eight o'clock my son can't be woke up to go to work. Honest, I tell you times is changed!"
"Mamma, the way you pick on that boy!"
Mrs. Shongut folded both hands atop her broom in a solemn and hieratic gesture; her face was full of lines, as though time had autographed it many times over in a fine hand.
"Can you blame me? Can you blame me that I worry about that boy, with his wild ways? That a boy like him should gamble away every cent of his salary, except when he wins a little and buys us such nonsenses as bracelets! That a boy who learnt bookkeeping in an expensive business school, and knows that with his papa business ain't so good, shouldn't offer to pay out of his salary a little board! I tell you, Renie, as he goes now, it can't lead to no good; sometimes I would do almost anything to get him out West. Not a cent does he offer to—"
"He only makes—"
"You know, Renie, how little I want his money; but that he shouldn't offer to help out at home a little—that every cent on cards and clothes he should spend! I ask you, is it any reason him and his papa got scenes together until for the neighbors I'm ashamed, and for papa's heart so afraid? That a fine boy like our Izzy should run so wild!"
Tears lay close to the surface of her voice, and she created a sudden flurry of dust, sweeping with short, swift strokes.
"Izzy's not so worse! Give me a boy like Izzy any time, to a mollycoddle. He's just throwing off steam now."
"Just take up with your wild brother against your old parents! Your papa's a young man, with no heart trouble and lots of money; he can afford to have a card-playing son what has to have second breakfast alone every morning! Just you side with your brother!"
Miss Shongut side-stepped the furniture, which in the panicky confusion of sweeping was huddled toward the center of the room, and through a cloud of dust to the door.
"Every time I open my mouth in this family I put my foot in it. I should worry about what isn't my business!"
"Well, one thing I can say, me and papa never need to reproach ourselves that we 'ain't done the right thing by our children."
"Clean sheets, mamma?"
"Yes; and don't muss up the linen-shelfs."
Her daughter flitted down a narrow aisle of hallway; from the shoulders her thin, flowing sleeves floated backward, filmy, white.
Mrs. Shongut flung open the screen door and swept a pile of webby dust to the porch and then off on the patch of grass.
Thin spring sunshine lay warm along the neat terraces of Wasserman Avenue. Windows were flung wide to the fresh kiss of spring; pillows, comforters, and rugs draped across their sills. Across the street a negro, with an old gunny-sack tied apron-fashion about his loins, turned a garden hose on a stretch of asphalt and swept away the flood with his broom. A woman, whose hair caught the sunlight like copper, avoided the flood and tilted a perambulator on its two rear wheels down the wooden steps of her veranda.
Across the dividing rail of the Shonguts' porch a child with a strap of school-books flung over one shoulder ran down the soft terrace, and a woman emerged after her to the topmost step of the veranda, holding her checked apron up about her waist and shielding her eyes with one hand.
"Jeannie! Jean-nie!"
"Yes'm."
"Watch out for the street-car crossing, Jeannie."
"Yes'm."
"Jean-nie!"
"What?"
"Be sure!"
"Yeh."
"Good morning, Mrs. Shongut."
"Good morning, Mrs. Lissman. Looks like spring!"
"Ain't it so? I say to Mr. Lissman this morning, before he went down-town, that he should bring home some grass seed to-night."
"Ya, ya! Before you know it now, we got hot summer after such a late spring."
"I say to my Roscoe that after school to-day he should bring up the rubber-plant out of the cellar."
"That's right; use 'em while they're young, Mrs. Lissman. When they grow up it's different."
"Mrs. Shongut, you should talk! Only last night I says to my husband, I says, when I seen Miss Renie pass by, 'Such a pretty girl!' I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, such a pretty girl and such a fine-looking boy you can be proud of."
"Ach, Mrs. Lissman, you think so?"
"There ain't one on the street any prettier than Miss Renie. 'I tell you, if my Roscoe was ten years older she could have him,' I says to my husband."
Mrs. Shongut leaned forward on her broom-handle. "If I say so myself, Mrs. Lissman, I got good reasons to have pleasure out of my children. I guess you heard, Mrs. Lissman, what a grand position my Izzy has got with his uncle, of the Isadore Flexner Banking-house. Bookkeeping in a banking-house, Mrs. Lissman, for a boy like Izzy!"
"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, if you got rich relations it's a help."
"How grand my brother has done for himself, Mrs. Lissman! Such a house he has built on Kingston Place! Such a home! You can see for yourself, Mrs. Lissman, how his wife and daughters drive up sometimes in their automobile."
"I'm surprised they don't come more often, Mrs. Shongut; your Renie and them girls, I guess, are grand friends."
"Ya; and to be in that banking-house is a grand start for my boy. I always say it can lead to almost anything. Only I tell him he shouldn't let fine company make him wild."
"Ach, boys will be boys, Mrs. Shongut. Even now it ain't so easy for me to get make my Roscoe to come in off his roller-skates at night. My Jeannie I can make mind; but I tell her when she is old enough to have beaus, then our troubles begin with her."
Mrs. Shongut's voice dropped into her throat in the guise of a whisper. "Some time, Mrs. Lissman, when my Renie ain't home, I want you should come over and I read you some of the letters that girl gets from young men. So mad she always gets at me if she knows I talk about them."
"Mrs. Shongut, you'll laugh when I tell you; but already in the school my Jeannie gets little notes what the little boys write to her. Mad it makes me like anything; but what can you do when you got a pretty girl?"
"A young man in Peoria, Mrs. Lissman, such beautiful letters he writes Renie, never in my life did I read. Such language, Mrs. Lissman; just like out of a song-book! Not a time my Renie goes out that I don't go right to her desk to read 'em—that's how beautiful he writes. In Green Springs she met him."
"Ain't it a pleasure, Mrs. Shongut, to have grand letters like that?Even with my little Jeannie, though it makes me so mad, still I—"
"But do you think my Renie will have any of them? 'Not,' she says, 'if they was lined in gold.'"
"I guess she got plenty beaus. Say, I ain't so blind that I don't seeSollie Spitz on your porch every—"
"Sollie Spitz! Ach, Mrs. Lissman, believe me, there's nothing to that!My Renie since a little child likes reading and writing like he does.I tell her papa we made a mistake not to keep her in school like shewanted."
"My Jeannie—"
"She loves learning, that girl. Under her pillow yesterday I found a book of verses about flowers. Where she gets such a mind, Mrs. Lissman, I don't know. But Sollie Spitz! Say, we don't want no poets in the family."
"I should say not! But I guess she gets all the good chances she wants."
"And more. A young man from Cincinnati—if I tell you his name, right away you know him—twice her papa brought him out to supper after they had business down-town together—only twice; and now every week he sends her five pounds—"
"Just think!"
"And such roses, Mrs. Lissman! You seen for yourself when I sent you one the other day. Right in his own hothouse he grows 'em, Mrs. Lissman."
"Just think!"
"If I tell you his name, Mrs. Lissman, right away you know his firm. In Cincinnati they say he's got the finest house up on the hill—musical chairs, that play when you sit on 'em. Twice every week he sends her—"
"Grand!"
"'I tell you,' I says to her papa, 'her cousins over in Kingston Place got tickets to take the young men to theaters with and automobiles to ride them round in; but, if I say so myself, not one of them has better chances than my Renie, right here in our little flat.'"
Mrs. Lissman folded her arms in a shelf across her bosom and leaned her ample uncorseted figure against the railing. "I give you right, Mrs. Shongut. Look at Jeannette Bamberger, over on Kingston; every night when me and Mr. Lissman used to walk past last summer, right on her grand front porch that girl sat alone, like she was glued."
"I know."
"Then look at Birdie Schimm, across the street. Her mother a poor widow who keeps a roomer, and look how her girl did for herself! Down at Rindley's this morning nothing was fine enough for that Birdie to buy for her table. I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, money ain't everything in this world."
"I always tell Renie she can take her place with the best of them."
"Washing?"
"An hour already my Lizzie has been down in the laundry."
"Half a day I take Addie to help with the ironing."
"You should watch her, Mrs. Lissman; she steals soap."
"They're all alike."
"Ah, the mailman. Always in my family no one gets letters but my Renie.Look, Mrs. Lissman! What did I tell you? Another one from Cincinnati.Renie! Renie!" Mrs. Shongut bustled indoors, leaving her broom indolentagainst the porch pillar. "Renie!"
"Yes, mamma."
"Letter!" Feet hurrying down the hall. "Letter from Cincinnati, Renie."
"Mamma, do you have to read the postmarks off my letters? I can read my own mail without any help."
"How she sasses her mother! Say, for my part, I should worry if you get letters or not. A girl that is afraid to give her mother a little pleasure!"
Mrs. Shongut made a great show of dragging the room's furniture back into place; unpinning the lace curtains and draping them carefully in their folds; drawing chairs across the carpet until the casters squealed; uncovering the piano. At the business of dusting the mantelpiece she lingered, stealing furtive glances through its mirror.
Miss Shongut ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a thick, black cascade down her back.
Mrs. Shongut redusted the mantel, raising each piece of bric-a-brac carefully; ran her cloth across the piano keys, giving out a discord; straightened the piano cover; repolished the mantelpiece mirror.
Her daughter read, blew the envelope open at its ripped end and inserted the letter. Her eyes, gray as dawn, met her mother's.
"Well, Renie, is—is he well?"
Silence.
"You're afraid, I guess, it gives me a little pleasure if I know what he has to say. A girl gets a letter from a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, and sits like a funeral!"
Rena unfolded herself from the divan and slid to her feet, slim as a sibyl.
"I knew it!"
"Knew what?"
"He's coming!"
"Coming? What?"
"He left Cincinnati last night and gets here this morning."
"This morning!"
"He comes on business, he says. And at five o'clock he stops in at the store and comes home to supper with papa."
"Supper—and a regular wash-day meal I got! Tongue sweet-sour, and red cabbage! Renie, get on your things and—"
"Honest, if it wasn't too late I would telegraph him I ain't home."
"Get on your things, Renie, and go right down to Rindley's for a roast.If you telephone they don't give you weight. This afternoon I go myselffor the vegetables." Excitement purred in Mrs. Shongut's voice. "Hurry,Renie!"
"I'll get Izzy to take me out to supper and to a show."
"Get on your things, I say, Renie. I'll call Lizzie up-stairs too; we don't need no wash-day, with company for supper. Honest, excited like a chicken I get. Hurry, Renie!"
Miss Shongut stood quiescent, however, gazing through the lace curtains at the sun-lashed terrace, still soft from the ravages of winter and only faintly green. A flush spread to the tips of her delicate ears.
"Izzy's got to take me out to supper and a show. I won't stay home."
"Renie, you lost your mind? You! A young man like Max Hochenheimer begins to pay you attentions in earnest—a man that could have any girl in this town he snaps his finger for—a young man what your stuck-up cousins over on Kingston would grab at! You—you—Ach, to a man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, she wants to say she ain't home yet!"
"Him! An old fatty like him! Izzy calls him Old Squash! Izzy says he's the only live Cartoon in captivity."
"Izzy—always Izzy! Believe me, your brother could do better than layin' in bed at eight o'clock in the morning, to copy after Max Hochenheimer."
"Always running down Izzy! Money ain't everything. I—I like other things in a man besides money—always money."
"Believe me, he has plenty besides money, has Max Hochenheimer. He 'ain't got no time maybe for silk socks and pressed pants, but for a fine good man your papa says he 'ain't got no equal. Your brother Izzy, I tell you, could do well to mock after Max Hochenheimer—a man what made hisself; a man what built up for hisself in Cincinnati a business in country sausages that is known all over the world."
"Country sausages!"
"No; he 'ain't got no time for rhymes like that long-haired SollieSpitz, that ain't worth his house-room and sits until by the nightshirtI got to hold papa back from going out and telling him we 'ain't got nohotel! Max Hochenheimer is a man what's in a legitimate business."
"Please, mamma, keep quiet about him. I don't care if he—"
"I tell you the poultry and the sausage business maybe ain't up to your fine ideas; but believe me, the poultry business will keep you in shoes and stockings when in the poetry business you can go barefoot."
"All right, mamma; I won't argue."
"Your papa has had enough business with Max Hochenheimer to know what kind of a man he is and what kind of a firm. Such a grand man to deal with, papa says. Plain as a old shoe—just like he was a salesman instead of the president of his firm. A poor boy he started, and now such a house they say he built for his mother in Avondale on the hill! Squashy! I only wish for a month our Izzy had his income."
"I wouldn't marry him if—"
"Don't be so quick with yourself, missy. Just because he comes here on a day's business and then comes out to supper with papa don't mean so much."
"Don't it? Well, then, if you know more about what's in this letter thanI do, I've got no more to say."
Mrs. Shongut sat down as though the power to stand had suddenly deserted her limbs. "What—what do you mean, Renie?"
"I'm not so dumb that I—I don't know what a fellow means by a letter like this."
"Renie!" The lines seemed to fade out of Mrs. Shongut's face, softening it. "Renie! My little Renie!"
"You don't need to my-little-Renie me, mamma; I—"
"Renie, I can't believe it—that such luck should come to us. A man like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, who can give her the greatest happiness, comes for our little girl—"
"Always like me and papa had to struggle, Renie, in money matters you won't have to. I tell you, Renie, nothing makes a woman old so soon. Like a queen you can sit back in your automobile. Always a man what's good to his mother, like Max Hochenheimer, makes, too, a grand husband. I want, Renie, to see your Aunt Becky's and your cousins' faces at the reception. Renie—I—"
"Mamma, you talk like—Oh, you make me so mad."
"Musical chairs they got in the house, Renie, what, as soon as you sit on, begin to play. Mrs. Schwartz herself sat on one; and the harder you sit, she says, the louder it plays. Automobiles; a elevator for his mother! I—Ach, Renie, I—I feel like all our troubles are over. I— Ach, Renie, you should know how it feels to be a mother."
Tears rained frankly down Mrs. Shongut's face and she smiled through their mist, and her outstretched arms would tremble.
"Renie, come to mamma!"
Miss Shongut, quivering, drew herself beyond their reach. "Such talk! Honest, mamma, you—you make me ashamed, and mad like anything, too. I wouldn't marry a little old squashy fellow like him if he was worth the mint."
"Renie! Re-nie!"
"An old fellow, just because he's got money and—"
"Old! Max Hochenheimer ain't more than in his first thirties, and old she calls him! When a man makes hisself by hard work he 'ain't got time to keep young, with silk socks and creased pants, and hair-tonic what smells up my house a hour after Izzy's been gone. It ain't the color of a man's vest, Renie—it's the color of his heart, underneath it. When papa was a young man, do you think, if I had looked at the cigar ashes on his vest instead of at what was underneath, that I—"
"That talk's no use with me, mamma."
"Renie; you—you wouldn't do it—you wouldn't refuse him?"
Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire: "It's not me or my feelings you care anything about. Every one but me you think about first. What about me? What about me? I'm the one that's got to do the marrying and live with him. I'm the one you're trying to sell off like I was cattle. I'm the one! I'm the one!"
"Renie!"
"Yes; sell me off—sell me off—like cattle!"
Tears, blinding, scalding, searing, rushed down her cheeks, and her smooth bosom, where the wrapper fell away to reveal it, heaved with the storm beneath.
"But you can't sell me—you can't! You can't keep nagging to get me married off. I can get out, but I won't be married out! If I wasn't afraid of papa, with his heart, I'd tell him so, too. I'd tell him so now. I won't be married out—I won't be married out! I won't! I won't!"
Mrs. Shongut clasped her cheeks in the vise of her two hands. "Married out! She reproaches me yet—a mother that would go through fire for her children's happiness!"
"Always you're making me uncomfortable that I'm not married yet—not papa or Izzy, but you—you! Never does one of the girls get engaged that you don't look at me like I was wearing the welcome off the door-mat."
"Listen to my own child talk to me! No wonder you cry so hard, Renie Shongut, to talk to your mother like that—a girl that I've indulged like you. To sass her mother like that! A man like Max Hochenheimer comes along, a man where the goodness looks out of his face, a man what can give her every comfort; and, because he ain't a fine talker like that long-haired Sollie Spitz, she—"
"You leave him out! Anyways, he's got fine feeling for something besides—sausages."
"Is it a crime, Renie, that I should want so much your happiness? Your papa's getting a old man now, Renie; I won't always be here, neither."
"For the love of Mike, what's the row? Can't a fellow get any beauty sleep round this here shebang? What are you two cutting up about?"
The portières parted to reveal Mr. Isadore Shongut, pressed, manicured, groomed, shaved—something young about him; something conceited; his magenta bow tied to a nicety, his plushlike hair brushed up and backward after the manner of fashion's latest caprice, and smoothing a smooth hand along his smooth jowl.
"Morning, ma. What's the row, Renie? Gee! it's a swell joint round here for a fellow with nerves! What's the row, kid?"
Mr. Isadore Shongut made a cigarette and puffed it, curled himself in a deep-seated chair, with his head low and his legs flung high. His sister lay on the divan, with her tearful profile buried,basso-rilievo, against a green velours cushion, her arms limp and dangling in exhaustion.
"What's the row, Renie?"
"N-nothing."
"Aw, come out with it—what's the row? What you sitting there for, ma, like your luck had turned on you?"
"Ask—ask your sister, Izzy; she can tell you."
"'Smater, sis?"
"N-nothing—only—only—old—old Hochenheimer's coming to—to supper to-night, Izzy; and—"
"Old Squash! Oh, Whillikens!"
"Take me out, Izzy! Take me out anywhere—to a show or supper, or—or anywhere; but take me out, Izzy. Take me out before he comes."
"Sure I will! Old Squash! Whillikens!"
* * * * *
At five o'clock Wasserman Avenue emerged in dainty dimity and silk sewing-bags. Rocking-chairs, tiptilted against veranda railings, were swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes; long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the sidewalks, arms intertwined.
At five-thirty the sun had got so low that it found out Mrs. Schimm in a shady corner of her porch, dazzled her eyes, and flashed teasingly on her needle, so that she crammed her dainty fabric in her sewing-bag and crossed the paved street.
"You don't mind, Mrs. Lissman, if I come over on your porch for a while, where it's shady?"
"It's a pleasure, Mrs. Schimm. Come right up and have a rocker."
"Just a few minutes I can stay."
"That's a beautiful stitch, Mrs. Schimm. When I finish this centerpieceI start me a dozen doilies too."
"I can learn it to you in five minutes, Mrs. Lissman. All my Birdie's trousseau napkins I did with this Battenberg stitch."
"Grand!"
"For a poor widow's daughter, Mrs. Lissman, that girl had a trousseau she don't need to be ashamed of."
"Look, will you? Mrs. Shapiro's coming down her front steps all diked out in a summer silk. I guess she goes down to have supper with her husband, since he keeps open evenings."
"I don't want to say nothing; but I don't think it's so nice—do you, Mrs. Lissman?—the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to have on her hat."
"Ain't it so!"
"I wish you could see the bird of paradise my Birdie bought when her and Simon was in Kansas City on their wedding-trip—you can believe me or not, a yard long! How that man spends money on that girl, Mrs. Lissman!"
"Say, when you got it to spend I always say it's right. He's in a good business and makes good money."
"You should know how good."
"The rainy days come to them that save up for them, like us old-fashioned ones, Mrs. Schimm."
"I—Look, will you? Ain't that Izzy Shongut crossing the street? He comes home from work this early! I tell you, Mrs. Lissman, I don't want to say nothing; but I hear things ain't so good with the Shonguts."
"So!"
"Yes; I hear, since the old man bought out that sausage concern, they got their troubles."
"And such a nice woman! That's what she needs yet on top of his heart trouble and her girl running round with Sollie Spitz; and, from what she don't say, I can see that boy causes her enough worry with his wild ways. That's what that poor woman needs yet!"
"Look at Izzy, Mrs. Lissman. I bet that boy drinks or something. Look at his face—like a sheet! I tell you that boy ain't walking up this street straight. Look for yourself, Mrs. Lissman. Ach, his poor mother!" A current like electricity that sets a wire humming ran in waves along Mrs. Schimm's voice. "Look!"
"Oh-oh! I say, ain't that a trouble for that poor woman? When you see other people's trouble your own ain't so bad."
"Ain't that awful? Just look at his face! Ain't that a trouble for you?"
"She herself as much as told me not a thing does her swell brother over on Kingston do for them. I guess such a job as that boy has got in his banking-house he could get from a stranger too."
"'Sh-h-h, Mrs. Lissman! Here he comes. Don't let on like we been talking about him. Speak to him like always."
"Good evening, Izzy."
Isadora Shongut paused in the act of mounting the front steps and turned a blood-driven face toward his neighbor. His under jaw sagged and trembled, and his well-knit body seemed to have lost its power to stand erect, so that his clothes bagged.
"Good evening, Mrs.—Lissman."
"You're home early to-night, Izzy?"
"Y-yes."
He fitted his key into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of his throat in a wheeze.
The maid-of-all-work, straggly and down at the heels, answered his fumbling at the lock and opened the door to him.
"You, Mr. Izzy!"
He sprang in like a catamount, clicking the door quick as a flash behind him. "'Sh-h-h! Where's ma?"
"Your mamma ain't home; she went up to Rindley's. You ain't sick, are you, Mr. Izzy?"
A spasm of relief flashed over his face, and he snapped his dry fingers in an agony of nervousness. "Where's Renie? Quick!"
"She's in her room, layin' down. She ain't goin' to be home to the supper-party to-night, Mr. Izzy; she—What's the matter, Mr. Izzy?"
He was down the hallway in three running bounds and, without the preliminary of knocking, into his sister's tiny, semi-darkened bedroom, his breathing suddenly filling it. She sprang from her little chintz-covered bed, where she had flung herself across its top, her face and wrapper rumpled with sleep.
"Izzy!"
"'Sh-h-h!"
"Izzy, what—where—Izzy, what is it?"
"'Sh-h-h, for God's sake! 'Sh-h! Don't let 'em hear, Renie. Don't let 'em hear!"
Her swimming senses suddenly seemed to clear. "What's happened, Izzy?Quick! What's wrong?"
He clicked the key in the lock, and in the agony of the same dry-fingered nervousness rubbed his hand back and forth across his dry lips. "Don't let 'em hear—the old man or ma—don't!"
"Quick! What is it, Izzy?" She sat down on the edge of the bed, weak."Tell me, Izzy; something terrible is wrong. It—it isn't papa, Izzy?Tell me it isn't papa. For God's sake, Izzy, he—he ain't—"
"'Sh-h-h! N-no! No, it ain't. It—it ain't pa. It's me, Renie—it's me!" He crumbled at her feet, his palms plastered over his eyes and his fingers clutched deep in the high nap of his hair. "It's me! It's me!"
"What? What?"
"'Sh-h-h! For God's sake, Renie, you got to stand by me; you got to stand by me this time if you ever did! Promise me, Renie! It's me, Renie. I—Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
She stooped to his side, her voice and hands trembling beyond control."Izzy! Izzy, tell me—tell me! What is it?"
"Oh, my God, why didn't I die? Why didn't I die?"
"Izzy, what—what is it? Money? Haven't I always stood by you before?Won't I now? Tell me, Izzy. Tell me, I say!"
She tugged at his hands, prying them away from his eyes; but the terror she saw there set her trembling again and thrice she opened her lips before she found voice.
"Izzy, if you don't tell me, mamma will be back soon, and then pa; and—you better tell me quick. Your own sister will stand by you. Get up, dearie." Tears trickled through his fingers and she could see the curve of his back rise and fall to the retching of suppressed sobs. "Izzy, you got to tell me quick—do you hear?"
He raised his ravaged face at the sharp-edged incisiveness in her voice. "I'm in trouble, Renie—such trouble. Oh, my God, such horrible trouble!"
"Tell me quick—do you hear? Quick, or mamma and papa—"
"Renie—'sh-h-h! They mustn't know—the old man mustn't; she mustn't, if—if I got to kill myself first. His heart—he—he mustn't, Renie—he mustn't know."
"Know what?"
"It's all up, Renie. I've done something—the worst thing I ever done in my life; but I didn't know while I was doing it, Renie, how—what it was. I swear I didn't! It was like borrowing, I thought. I was sure I could pay it back. I thought the system was a great one and—and I couldn't lose."
"Izzy—roulette again! You—you been losing at—at roulette again?"
"No, no; but they found out at—at the bank, Renie. I—oh, my God!Nothing won't save me!"
"The bank, Izzy?"
"They found out, Renie. Yesterday, when the bank was closed, he—Uncle Isadore—put 'em on the books. Nothing won't save me now, Renie. He won't; you—you know him—hard as nails! Nothing won't save me. It's going to be stripes for me, Renie. Ma—the old man—stripes! I—I can't let 'em do it. I—I'll kill myself first. I can't let 'em—I—can't—I can't let 'em!"
He burrowed his head in her lap to stifle his voice, which slipped up and away from his control; and her icy hands and knees could feel his entire body trembling.
"'Sh-h-h, dearie! Try to tell me slow, dearie, for pa's and ma's sake, so—so we can fix it up somehow."
"We can't fix it up. The old man 'ain't got the money and—and he can't stand it."
"For God's sake, Izzy, tell me or I'll go mad! Slow, dearie, so Renie can think and listen and help you. She's with you, darling, and nothing can hurt you. Now begin, Izzy, and go slow. What did you start to tell me about Uncle Isadore and the books? Slow, darling."
Her voice was smooth and flowing, and the hand that stroked his hair was slow and soothing; the great stream of his passion abated and he huddled quietly at her feet.
"Now begin, dearie. Uncle Isadore—what?"
"This morning, when I got down to—to the office, two men had—my books."
"Yes."
"O God! When I seen 'em, right away my heart just stopped."
'"Sh-h-h! Yes—two men had the books."
"And Uncle Isadore—Uncle Isadore—he was—he—"