Part 10

"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'?"

"So--so soon, Cottie--only three days after, and him hardly cold."

"Don't let's drag it out, darlin'."

"Oh, Cottie, I'll be waitin' for you! There won't be a day that I won't be waitin' for you. There's nothin' I love like you."

Their faces were close and wet with tears, and the first ray of sun burnished their heads and whitened their white bosoms.

"Kiss me, Cottie."

"Della--Della!"

"My little sister!"

"You're goin', Della--try to think, darlin', what it means--you're goin'."

"'Sh-h-h, dearie--'sh-h-h. Yes--I--I'm goin'."

And in the room adjoining John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.

* * * * *

The city has a thousand throats, its voice is like a storm running on the wind, and like ship-high waves plunging on ship-high rocks, and like unto the undertone of lost souls adrift in a sheol of fog and water.

The voice of the city knows none of the acoustic limitations of architects and prima donnas. Its dome is as high as fifty-story sky-scrapers, and its sounding-board the bases of a thousand thousand tired brains.

It penetrates the Persian-velvet hangings of the most rococo palace toward which the sight-seeing automobile points its megaphone, and beats against brains neurotic with the problems of solid-gold-edged bonds and solid-gold cotillion favors. It is the birth-song of the tenement child and the swan-song of the weak. It travels out over fields of new-mown hay and sings to the boy at the plow. It shouts to the victor and whispers to the stranger.

Through the morning bedlam of alarm-clocks, slamming doors, the rattle of ash-cans, and the internal disorders of a rooming-house, came the voice a-whispering to Della.

Out from the mouths of babes and truck-drivers, out from the mouths of debutantes and coal-stokers, out from the mouths of those who toil and those who spin not. Drifting over the sea of housetops, up from the steep-walled streets. The laugh of the glad, the taut laugh of the mad; the lover's sigh, and the convict's sigh--and, beneath, like arpeggio scales under a melody, the swiftly running gabble-gabble of life.

Della stirred on her cot, raised her arms, and yawned to the faun-colored oblong of October sky; breathed in the stale air and salty pungency of bad ventilation and the city's breakfast-bacon, and swung herself out of bed.

So awoke Adriana, too, with her hair falling in a torrent over her breasts and her languid limbs unfolding.

She shook her hair backward with the changeless gesture of women, held her hands at arm's-length, and regarded them. They were whiter, and the broken nails were shaping themselves into ovals. A callous ridge along her forefinger, souvenir of a cistern which pumped reluctantly, was disappearing.

She smiled to herself in the mirror, like the legendary people who have eyes to see the grass grow must smile at the secret of each blade.

Then she slid into a high-necked, long-sleeved wrapper and bound the whorl of her hair in a loose bun at her neck.

Mrs. Fallows's minimum-priced, minimum-sized hall bedroom speaks for its nine-by-twelve "neatly furnished" self. The hall bedrooms of Forty-fourth Street and Forty-fifth Street and Forty-_ad-infinitum_ Street are furnished in that same white-iron bed with the dented brass knobs, light-oak, easy-payment dresser, wash-stand, and square table with a too short fourth leg and shelf beneath for dust--and above the dresser, slightly askew, a heart-rendering, art-rendering version of "Narcissus at the Pool," or any of the well-worn incidents favorite to mythology and lithographers.

But life, like love and the high cost of living and a good cigar, is comparative. To Della, stretching her limbs to the morning, Mrs. Fallows's carpeted fourth-floor back, painted furniture, and a light that sprang into brilliancy at a tweak, was a sybarite's retreat, eighteen hours removed from wash-day, and rising in the dark, black mud-roads and a dirt-colored shanty that met the wind broadside and trembled to its innards.

Two flights below her a mezzo-soprano struggled for high C; adjoining, an early-morning-throated barytone leaned out of a doorway and called for a fresh towel. Came three staccato raps at Della's portal, and enter on the wings of the morning and a pair of white-topped, French-heeled shoes Miss Ysobel Du Prez, late of the third road company of the Broadway success, "Oh, Oh, Marietta!" and with a history in pony ballets that entitled her to a pedigree and honorable mention.

"Girl, ain't you dressed yet? What you doin'? Waitin' for your French maid to get your French lawngerie from the French laundry?"

Miss Du Prez swung herself atop the trunk and crossed her slim limbs. Chatelaine jewelry jangled; Herculean perfume dominated the air, and that expressive sobriquet for soubrette, a fourteen-inch willow-plume, and long as the tail of a male pheasant, brushed her left shoulder.

Miss Ysobel Du Prez--one of the ornamental line of tottering caryatids who uphold on their narrow, whitewashed shoulders the gold-paper thrones of musical-comedy principalities, and on those same shoulders carry every tradition of that section of Broadway which Thespis occupies on a ninety-nine-year, privilege-of-renewal lease--the fumes of grease-paint the incense of her temple, the footlights the white flame of her sacrifice!

"You gotta do a quick change if you're going to the offices with me to-day, girl. I gotta be up at the Empire in the Putney Building by eleven and stop in at the Bijou first."

Delia shed her comfortable shroud of repose like Thais dropping her mantle in an Alexandrian theater.

"I must 'a' overslept, Ysobel. Trying on them duds we bought yesterday up to so late last night done me up. Three days in New York ain't got me used to the pace."

"You should worry! If I had your face and figure I'd sleep till the call-boy rapped twice."

"Ah, Ysobel, you with your cute little face and cute little ways!"

"Soft pedal on the ingenoo stuff, girl. You know you don't hate yourself. I didn't notice that you exactly despised anything about you when they called the floor-walker to have a look at you in that black dress yesterday."

"Honest, Ysobel, I dreamt about it all night."

"Sure you did! But who was it steered you into a 'slightly used,' classy place where you could buy a gown that Mrs. Asterbilt wore once to a reception at the Sultan of Sulu's or the Prince of Pilsen's or any of that crowd; who steered you in a place where you could buy a real gown for one-tenth the cost of production?"

"You did, Ysobel. I don't know what I'd 'a' done if Mrs. Fallows hadn't brought you up."

"That little black dream that only let you back twenty-nine-fifty cost three hundred if it cost a cent, and nothing but a snag in the hem and the lace in front as good as new. Gee, I could show this cheap bunch around here how to dress if I had a month's advance in hand!"

"Get off the trunk, Ysobel, and sit here, will you? I want to get it out. Say, if Cottie could see me with the black hat to match! My little sister I was telling you about could--"

"Who you got to thank? Who gave you the right steer? Take it from me, if I hadn't gone along with you, every store on Sixth Avenue would have X-rayed the corner of your handkerchief for the thirty-eight dollars tied up in it and body-snatched you for your own funeral. Even with me along you had a lean like a bent pin for that made-on-Canal-Street, thirty-two-fifty, red silk they hauled out of the morgue to show you. I seen you edgin' for that Kokome model."

"Me and Cottie was always great ones for red. I ought to had the red serge you made so much fun of dyed for mourning, but Cottie--"

"Red! When you, in a tight-lookin' black that hugs you like it was wet, and a black hat with a tilt that Anna Held would buy right off your head, can walk into any office in the row this morning and land in the show-girl row of any chorus on the bills. If you think that's an easy stunt, ask any girl in this house."

"I--I ain't scared a bit now, since I'm going around with you, Ysobel: but gee, if I had to go alone!"

"Fallows does the same thing for all of them. When I was in last spring from first pony in a Middle West company of the 'Merry Whirl'--remind me, and I'll show you my notices--when I was in last spring Fallows dumped a little doll-eyed soubrette on me that didn't do a thing, after I dragged her around to the offices, but grab a part away from me in a Snooky Ookums quartet that Jim Simmons was puttin' out."

"Honest?"

"Sure! A production I'd been holding off for all season. Me that's made the boards of more stages creak than she's ever seen!"

"Mrs. Fallows says you're just the one to show me around, that you are one swell little pony, and an old one in the offices."

"An old one in the offices! I don't see Fallows herself suffering from no growing-pains. They don't come any farther gone to seed than her. She tried to stick to her soft-shoe act till the office boys of the Consolidated Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Managers got up a subscription and bought her this four-flights' rooming-house to keep her feet busy with. Fallows better lay low with me or I can do some fancy tongue-work."

"She didn't mean--"

"Easy there, girl! Didn't I learn you for two hours last night to get the cold-cream on smooth, first? Smooth--now the powder--more white on the nose--more!"

"Like that?"

"Say, I met Vyette D'Orsay up in a office yesterday, and she thought I was tryin' out a comedy line on her when I told her I found one I had to learn how to make up."

"Lily, a girl from our town, used to powder and--"

"Little more red over the cheek-bones--see, honey?--like mine--say, if you wanna see swell work you ought to see me made up for spot--didn't I tell you to work back toward the ears? There--more--good! Don't give yourself a mouth like a low-comedy gash. Use the cheese-cloth, honey."

"Look how it smears!"

"There, a Cupid bow in the middle is all you need. You got a mouth just the size of a kiss, anyway."

"John--John used to say about it that--"

"Good! Say, you're some little learner--you are! Easy there--always line an eyebrow downward--there--more--so!"

"So?"

"Say, you got Zaza, Perfecta, Lillie Russell, and the whole hothouse bunch of them knocked through the glass ceiling."

Delia leaned to her radiant reflection in the mirror and smiled through teeth faintly pink from the ruby richness of her lips.

"You ought to see my little sister Cottie, Ysobel. When she comes you'll sit up and take real notice. I ain't even in her class. She can sit on her hair--it's so long--and it's so gold it's hot-lookin'."

"Before I had typhoid mine was the same way--you can't put them dresses on over your head, girl. You gotta climb in--there ain't no room for a overhead act. There! Say, look at that side-drape, will you! I bet that lace set some dame back ten a yard. Some class! Don't forget to strike for thirty right off the bat--they'll think more of you. Say, girl, it's worth the time I'm wasting on you to see Casey's face when I steer you into there this morning."

"Ain't it--a beauty, Ysobel! But it's a little tight, kinda--"

"Now begin that again, will you? Honest, if Vyette could hear that line!"

"Around the knees I mean, Ysobel. It's hard for me to walk."

"If it was any looser I'd get a fit of the laughs like I did over that red serge. If it was any looser--for Gawd's sake, leave that neck open! No, no; down like that! A strip of real, lily-white, garden-variety neck, and she wants to pin it shut!"

"I--I feel ashamed--I--I--kinda hate to leave it open."

"Shades of Vyette! Leave that neck alone, can't you? After all my preachin' yesterday, look where I landed you. Nowheres!"

"Like that, Ysobel?"

"Take the pin out, there; center left like that. Say, girl, I wish you knew about this game what I've forgot."

"Me, too, Ysobel."

"Say, listen to her warblin' down there, will you? What's she practisin' for, I wonder--a chaser act on a four-a-day circuit? Breathe in, girl, you may be a perfect thirty-six, but you'll never make a tape-measure see it your way."

"Shall I--shall I tell 'em I got a voice, Ysobel? Me and my little sister used to sing in--"

Miss Du Prez glanced up over Della's shoulder and, by proxy of the mirror, their eyes met. The red of exertion was high in her face, and one corner of her mouth compressed over pins, so that her words leaked out as through the lips of a faun.

"Voice! You remind me of the fellow that went down to Bowling Green to bowl. They got as much room for voices in musical comedy as a magazine's got for anything besides the advertisin' pages."

"My little sister's got--"

"Can you beat it? 'Voice,' she says. You put your voice in your ankles and waist-line, girl, and it'll get you further. And as for scales like our friend down-stairs, learn to keep the runners out of your silk stockings first. There, give it the Anna Held tilt--there--more--so!"

"Oh-h-h, Ysobel--oh-h-h!"

"Swell, and then some. Who you got to thank? Who steered you right?"

Like a pale-gold aura of moonlight spreading out from behind a black cloud sprang Della's hair against the drooping brim of her hat. She was like a tight-draped, firm-stayed Venus, lyric in every line, her limbs wrapped in an ephod of grace and a skirt that restricted her steps like anklets joined by a too short chain.

"Here, put them white gloves in your bag and save 'em for outside the office doors. Ready?"

"Oh, Ysobel, if my little sister Cottie could only see me now!"

"Don't forget the lines I learnt you last night--two years' experience on Western short circuit--spot-light work, and silent principal--thirty dollars."

"Western short circuit--Western short circuit!"

"Dancing and first-row promenade specialty."

"Dancing and first--"

"Say, you ain't unlearnt it already, have you?"

"No--no."

Down four flights of narrow, unlit stairs with their gauzy laughter, lingering in black hall corners, and then out into a sunlit morning.

At the end of the tall-walled block, lined on both sides with brownstone, straight-front phalanxes of rooming-houses, a segment of Broadway, flashing with automobiles, darting pedestrians, white-facaded buildings, and sun-reflecting windows, flowed like a mountain stream in spring.

"Gee--Ysobel, look at that jam, will you!"

"Well, whatta you know! There goes Vance Dudley! If you want to know what kind of work I do, ask Vance. Me and him did a duet solo in a two-a-day musical sketch that would have landed us on Broadway sure if the lead hadn't put in his lady friend when she came in off the road, flat. I'll show you my notices sometime. That act was good enough for a Hy Myers house if it had been worked right."

"I bet you're grand, Ysobel--your cute little feet and all."

"Ask any of 'em around the offices about me. I could soft-shoe Clarice off the 'Winter Revue' this minute if--if I wasn't what they call in the profesh a--a tin saint. I kinda got my ideas about things--"

"About what, Ysobel?"

"None of them ingenoo lines again, girl. Leave it to you merry widows to take care of yourselves every time. There's nothin' I can learn a merry widow. A merry widow can make Methuselah, herself, feel like a squab when it comes to bein' wise."

"Honest--"

"That baby stare ain't the kind of a cue to throw me, girl. I can steer you up as far as the offices, but I'm done after you once get past the office boy."

"I--I don't--"

"After she gets past the ground-glass door every girl in the business has got to decide for herself. I decided myself, and look where I got to! Nine years in the business and never creaked a Broadway board yet. I ain't got the looks to get there on my own stuff--and what happens? I wake up dead some day doin' short circuit in a Kansas tank-town. I'll be doin' thirty-a-week, West-of-the-Mississippi stuff to the bitter end because--because I decided _my_ way and selected the rocky lane."

"The rocky lane?"

"Sure! The first job I ever went out for I could 'a' had. Five sides to the part--two songs and a specialty solo, but, instead, I hit him flop across the cheek with my glove and walked out, leavin' him staggerin' and my engagement layin' on the floor. I--I ain't preachin' to you, honey--I'm just tellin'! Every girl in this business has got to decide for herself--I ain't sayin' one thing or the other."

"Ysobel--hit who across the cheek--hit who?"

"Take it from me, honey, and remember I ain't tryin' to sing you the 'Saint's Serenade,' but take it from me, if I was startin' all over again--way back where you are--I--I'd do the glove act over again. I would, honey, I would, and I ain't preachin', neither."

"Honest to Gawd, Ysobel; I don't know what--"

"Ain't I told you to cut out that ingenoo with me--honest, it gets on my nerves! Watch out, there!"

"Gee; that scart me!"

"Them are pay-as-you-exit taxi-cabs we're dodging. The chorus-girls' sun-parlors, if you listen to the Sunday supplements and funny papers."

"The time we--came--John--was a great one for watchin' them."

"Take it from me that about all nine out of ten of us gay la-la girls you read about, get out of 'em, is watchin'. All we know about them is dodgin' them after the show to get home in a hurry, stick our feet in hot water to get some of the ache out, and fall into bed too tired to smear the cold-cream off."

"Watch out, there, Ysobel!"

"The truth about the chorus-girl would cripple the box-office and put the feature supplements and press-agents out of business. Here we are, Della--I got to stop off at nine just a minute, and you wait outside for me; remember when we get up to eleven--Western circuit, silent principal and--"

"Western circuit--Western circuit!"

The Putney Building reared nineteen white-tile, marble-facaded stories straight up from the most expensive heart-acreage of Broadway and stemmed the Thespian tide that rushed in from every side and surged against its booking-offices.

A bronze elevator the size of a Harlem bedroom and crowded to its capacity shot them upward with the breath-taking flight of a frightened bird.

Ysobel crowded into a corner and nudged a youthful-looking old man in a blue-and-white striped collar and too much bay-rum.

"Hello, Eddie!"

"Hello yourself, Ysobel."

"How are yuh?"

"Ain't braggin'."

"What you doin', Eddie?"

"Rehearsin' with a act."

"Musical?"

"No."

"Specialty?"

"No--er--high-class burlesque--two a day."

"Oh!"

"You workin', Ysobel?"

"Got three things danglin'--ain't signed yet. Just came in last week."

"S'long."

"S'long. Come on, Della. Watch out there, Eddie--a fellow burnt a hole in my friend lookin' at her like that once."

A titter ran around the elevator, and the old young man writhed in his blue-striped collar.

"'Sh-h-h, Ysobel; everybody heard you." A rosily opalescent hue swam high into Della's face as she stepped out of the elevator, and dyed her neck.

"I should worry! I was never out with him in a show in my life that he didn't ogle a hole in every queen he seen. Out in Spokane onct he--"

"Western circuit--Western circuit--"

They hurried down a curving, white-tile corridor, rows of doors with eye-like glass panes were lined up on each side, and the tick-tack of typewriters penetrating. Della's breath came heavier and faster, and a layer of vivid pink showed through the artificial red.

"You wait out here a minute, Della. I wanna step in here, at the Bijou, and see if Louis Rafalsky is doin' anything this morning. Then we'll shoot up to the Empire--"

"Sure--I--I'll wait, Ysobel."

She leaned against the wall and placed her hand over the region of her lace yoke and heart, as if she would regulate their heaving.