Part 16

"Sidewalk speculatin' is a good pastime if you're sharp enough; and I always tell Joe he's got a edge on him like a razor."

"Like a razor! Aw, Loo, you talk like he was a barber."

"Sure, he's that sharp! Take Harry now: he's as slick as a watermelon-seed when it comes to pickin' a sheet of music with a whistle in it; but put him in a game like Joe's, with the law cross-eyed from winkin' and frownin' at the same time, and he'd lose his nerve."

"It ain't a game, Loo. Joe says there ain't a reason why a fellow can't sell a theater ticket at a profit, just like Harry sells a sheet of music. Sidewalks are free for all."

"Leave it to Joe to stretch the language like a rubber band. His middle name is Gutta-Percha."

"He was your friend first."

"He is yet, Beauty--even if you have grabbed him. I like him--he's one good sport; but with Joe's gift for tongue-work he could make a jury believe a Bowery jewelry store ought to have a _habeas corpus_ for every body it snatches; he could rob a cradle and get a hero medal for it."

"I--sometimes I--I don't know how to take him, Loo. We've been goin' together steady now; and sometimes I think he--he likes me, and sometimes I think he don't."

"Take it from me, you got him going. I never knew him to take a five-evenings-a-week lease on anybody's time."

"Six."

"Six! For all I know, you--you're keepin' things from me. Lemme see your left hand--whatta you blushing for, Beauty? Whatta you blushing for?"

"Aw, Loo!"

"Say, how does this jacket look, Ess? Half them judges over there at the Poppy watch your clothes more'n your feet."

"Swell!"

"Well, is this where me and Harry exit, Beauty?"

"Yeh; you go ahead, Loo. I--I'll tell Joe you and Harry went on ahead to-night."

"I gotta half bottle of Hartley's Heart's Ease at home, Ess. Tell your old lady to have it on me. Don't you worry, kiddo. I used to have heart trouble so bad I'd breathe like a fish at a shore dinner--and look at me now! I'll bring it to-morrow--a tablespoonful before meals."

"Good night, Loo. I'll see you Monday."

"Put on a little more color there, Doll, or you'll never get nothin' out of him. You look as scared as an oyster. Lordy, you can handle him easy! Lemme know what happens. S'long! S'long!"

"Good night, Loo!"

Miss Birdsong brushed at her soft cheeks with the pink tip of a rabbit's foot, and the color sprang out to match the rose-colored sateen facing of her hat. Her lips opened in a faint smile; and after a careful interval she scrambled into her jacket, flung a good-night kiss to the doorman, and hurried through the gloomy foyer.

No sham like the sham of the theater! Its marble facade is classic as a temple, and its dirty gray-brick rear opens out on a cat-infested alley. The perfumes of the auditorium are the fumes of the wings. Thespis wears a custom-made coat of many colors, but his undershirt is sackcloth.

Miss Birdsong stepped out of a gold and mauve hallway, through a grimy side-door, and into an area as black as a pit; and out from its blackest shadows a figure rose to meet her.

"Joe?"

"Yeh; where's Loo and Harry?"

"I dunno; they--they went on."

"Hurry up, Beauty. I ain't so much of a favorite round this theater that I can bask in this sunny spot."

"I didn't mean to keep you waitin' so long, Joe."

"Believe me, you're the foist little girl I ever hung round an usher's exit for."

"Honest, am I, Joe?"

"Surest thing! The stage-door is my pace, and for nothing short of head-liners, neither. I gotta like a girl pretty well to hang round on the wrong side of the footlights for her, sweetness."

"Joe, I--I wish I knew if you was kiddin'."

"Kiddin' nothin'!"

They emerged into the white shower from a score of arc-lights; and Mr. Joe Ullman, an apotheosis of a classy-clothes tailor's dearest dream, in his brown suit, brown-bordered silk handkerchief nicely apparent, brown derby hat and tan-top shoes, turned his bulldog toes and fox-terrier eyes to the north, where against a fulvous sky the Palais du Danse spelled itself in ruby and emerald incandescents with the carefully planned effect of green moonlight floating in a mist of blood.

"Joe"--she dragged gently at his coat-sleeve, and a warm pink spread out from under the area of rouge--"Joe, you know what you promised for to-night?"

"What, kiddo? The sky's my limit. I'll taxi you till the meter gives out. I'll buy you--"

"You have promised so long, Joe. Come on! Let's go up home to-night. Be a sport, and let's go. Ma's got a midnight supper waitin', and--"

"The doctor says home cookin's bad for me, sweetness."

He cocked his hat slightly askew, stroked a chin as blue as a priest's, and winked down at her.

"Honest, sweetness, I'm going to buy you a phonograph record of 'Home Sweet Home Ain't Sweet Enough for Me'--"

"She's waitin' up for us, Joe; she ain't hardly able to be up, but she's waitin', Joe."

"Ain't I told you I'm going up with you some night when I'm in the humor for it? I feel like a ninety-horse-power dancer to-night, Doll. Whatta you bet I sold more seats for your show to-night than the box-office? Whatta you bet?"

"Joe--you promised."

"Sure, and I'm going to keep it; but I'm wearin' a celluloid collar to-night, hon, and the fireside ain't no place for me. I wouldn't wanna blow your mamma to smithereens."

"Joe!"

"I wouldn't--honest, sweetness, I wouldn't."

"Joe, comin' to our house ain't like bein' company--honest! When the boys and girls from the store used to come over we'd roll back the carpets, and ma'd play on an old comb and Jimmie'd make a noise like a banjo, and--"

"Hear! Hear! You sound like 'Way Down East' gone into vaudeville."

"Come on up to-night, Joe--like you promised."

"We'll talk it over a little later, sweetness. Midnight ain't no time to call on your best girl's dame. What'll she be thinkin' of us buttin' in there for midnight supper? To-morrow night's Sunday--that'll be more like it."

"She got it waitin' for us, Joe. All week she been fixing every night, and us not comin'. She knows it's the only time we got, Joe. She says she'd rather have us come home after the show than go kiting round like this. Honest, Joe, she's regular sport herself. She used to be the life of her department; the girls used to laff and laff at her cuttings-up. She's achin' to see you, Joe. She knows I we--she don't talk about nothin' else, Joe; and she's sick--it scares me to think how sick maybe she is." He leaned to her upturned face; tears trembled on her lashes and in her voice. "Please, Joe!"

"To-morrow night, sure, little Essie Birdsong. Gawd, what a name! Why didn't they call you--"

"They always used to call us the Songbirds at the store."

"Look, will you? Read--'Tango Contest next Monday night!' Are you game, little one? We'd won the last if they'd kept the profesh off the floor. Come on! Let's go in and practise for it."

"Not to-night, Joe, please. We're only four blocks from home, and it ain't right, our keepin' company like this every night for three months and not goin'. It ain't right."

He paused in the sea of green moonlight before the gold threshold of the Palais du Danse, whose caryatides were faun-eyed Maenads and AEgipans. The gold figure of a Cybele in a gold chariot raced with eight reproductions of herself in an octagonal mirror-lined foyer, and a steady stream of Corybantes bought admission tickets at twenty-five cents a Corybant.

Phrygian music, harlequined to meet the needs of Forty-second Street and its anchorites, flared and receded with the opening and closing of gilded doors.

"Come on, girlie! To-morrow night we'll do the fireside proper."

"You never--nev-er do anything I ask you to, Joe. You jolly me along and jolly me along, and then--do nothing."

He released her suddenly, plunged his hands into his pockets, and slumped in his shoulders.

"I don't, don't I? That's the way with you girls--a fellow ties hisself up like a broken arm in a sling, and that's the thanks he gets! Ain't I quit playin' pool? Didn't I swear to you on your little old Sunday-school book to cut out pool? Didn't the whole gang gimme the laff? Ain't I cuttin' everything--ain't I?--pool and cards--pool and all?"

"I know, Joe; but--"

"You gotta quit naggin' me about the fireside game, sis. I'm going to meet your dame some day--sure I am; but you gotta let me take my time. You gotta let me do it my way--you gotta quit naggin' me. A fellow can't stand for it."

"She's sick, Joe."

"Sure she is; and to-morrow night we'll buy her an oyster loaf or something and take it home to her. How's that, kiddo?"

"That ain't what she wants, Joe--it's us."

"I just ain't home-broke--that's all's the matter with me. Put me in a parlor, and I get weak-kneed as a cat--bashful as a banshee! You gotta let me do it my way, Peaches and Cream. Just like a twenty-five-cent order of 'em you look, with them eyes and cheeks and hair. To-morrow night, sweetness--huh?"

"Honest, Joe?"

"Cross my heart and bet on a dark horse!"

She slid her hand into the curve of his elbow, her incertitude vanishing behind the filmy cloud of a smile.

"All right, Joe; to-morrow night, sure. You walk as far as home with me now, and--"

"Gawd bless my soul! You ain't going to leave me at the church, are you?"

"I gotta go right home, Joe."

"Gee! Why didn't you tell a fellow? I could have tied up ten times over for a Saturday night. There's a little dancer over at the Orpheum would have let out a six-inch smile for the pleasure of my company to-night. Gee! you're a swell little sport--nix!"

"Joe!"

"Come on in for ten minutes, and if you're right good I'll shoot you home in a taxi-cab just as quick as if we went now. Just ten minutes, sweetness."

"No more, Joe."

"Cross my heart and bet on a dark horse--just ten minutes."

She smiled at him from the corners of her shadowed eyes and stepped into the tessellated foyer.

"Satisfied now, Mr. Smarty?" she said, smiling at eight reflections of herself and swaying to the rippling flute notes and violin phrases that wandered out to meet them.

"You're all right, sweetness!"

Within the Sheban elegance of the overlighted, overheated, overgilded dining and dance hall his pressure of her arm tightened and the blood ran in her veins a searing flame.

"Gee! Look at the jam, Joe!"

"Over there's a table for two, sweet--right under them green lights."

"Say, whatta you know about that? There's that same blonde girl, Joe, we been seein' everywhere. Honest, she follows us round every place we go--her and that fellow that was dancing up at the Crescent last night--remember?"

They drew up before a marble-topped table, one of a phalanx that flanked a wide-open space of hard-wood floor, like coping round a sunken pool; and his eyes took a rapid resume of the polyphonic room.

"Good crowd out to-night, sweetness. They all know us, too."

"Yes."

"Wanna dance and show 'em we're in condition?"

"No, Joe."

The music flared suddenly; chairs were pushed back from their tables, leaving food and drink in the attitude of waiting. A bolder couple or two ventured out on the shining floor-space, hesitant like a premonitory ripple on the water before the coming of the wind; another and yet another. And almost instanter there was the intricate maze of a crowded floor--women swaying, men threading in, out, around.

"What'll you have to drink, sweetness?"

"Lemonade, please."

"I know a better one than that."

"What?"

"Condensed milk!"

"Silly! I just can't get used to them bitter-tasting things you try out on me."

"You're all right, little Lemonade Girl!"

He leaned across the table and peered under the pink sateen. Its reflection lay like a blush of pleasure across her features, and she kept her gaze averted, with a pretty _malaise_ trembling through her.

"You're all right, little Peaches and Cream."

"You--you're all right, too, Joe."

"You mean that, sweetness?"

"I mean it if you mean it."

"Do I mean it! Say, do I give a little queen like you my company eight nights out of seven for the fun of kiddin' myself along?"

"I know you ain't, Joe; that's what I keep tellin' ma."

"Sittin' there screwing your lips at me like that! You got a mouth just like--just like red fruit, like a cherry that would bust all over the place if a bird took a peck at it."

Her bosom, little as Juliet's, rose to his words, and she giggled after the immemorial fashion of women.

"Oh, Joe! If only--if only--if only--"

"If only what, sweetness?"

"If only--"

"Huh?"

"Aw, I can't say it."

"Whistle it, then, sweetness."

"It don't do us no good to talk about things, Joe. We--we never get anywhere."

"What's the use o' talking, then, sweetness? Here's your lemonade. I wish I was in the baby-food class--'pon my soul I do! Look, sweetness; this is the stuff, though. Look at its color, will you? Red as a moonshiner's eye! Here, waiter, leave that siphon; I might wanna shoot up the place."

"You promised, Joe, not--"

"Sure; I ain't goin' to, neither. Did I keep my pool promise? Ain't heard a ball click for weeks! Will I keep this one? Watch! Two's my limit, Peaches. I'd swear off sleepin' if you wanted me to."

"Would you, Joe? That's what I want you to tell ma when--"

"Aw, there you go again! Honest, the minute a fellow feels hisself warming up inside you begin tryin' to reach up to the church-tower and ring the bells."

"Joe!"

"Sure you do."

"You make me ashamed when you talk like that."

"Then cut it, sweetness. Come on; let's finish out this dance."

"It worries her so, Joe. She asks and asks till I--I don't know what to say no more when I see her wastin' away and all. I--Gawd, I don't know!"

"For Gawd's sakes, don't leak any tears here, Ess! This gang here knows me. Ain't I told you I like you, girl? I like you well enough to do anything your little heart de-sires; but this ain't the place to talk about it."

"That's what you always say, Joe; no place is the place."

"Gee, ain't it swell enough just the way we are--just like it is, us knocking round together? I ain't your settling-down kind, sister. You're one little winner, and I like your style o' sweetness, but I ain't what you'd call a homesteader."

"Joe!"

"Sure; I mean it. I like you well enough to do any little thing your heart desires; but I never look far ahead, hon. I'm near-sighted."

"What--what about me?"

"I ain't got nothing saved up--not a dime. You tell your dame--you tell her we--we just understand each other. Huh? How's that? That's fair enough, ain't it?"

"Whatta you mean, Joe? You always say that; but please, Joe, please tell me what you mean?"

"Listen, kiddo. Say, listen to that trot they're playin', will you? Come on, sis; be a sport! To-morrow night we'll talk about anything your little heart desires. Come on, one round! Don't make me sore."

"Aw, no, Joe; I gotta go."

"One round, sweetness--see, I'll pay the check. See, two rounds round, and we'll light out for home. Look, they're all watchin' for us--two rounds, sweetness."

"One, you just said, Joe."

"One, then, little mouse."

They rose to the introductory titillation of violins; she slid into his embrace with a little fluid movement, and they slithered out on the shining floor. A light murmur like the rustle of birds' wings went after them, and couples leaned from their tables to watch the perfect syncopation of their steps. His slightly crepuscular eyes took on the sheen of mica; the color ran high in her face, and her lips parted.

"They sit up and take notice when we slide out, don't they, little one?"

"Yes."

"Some class to my trotting, ain't there, sweetness?"

"Yeh. Look, Joe; we gotta go after this round--it's nearly twelve."

"Twice round, sweetness, and then we go. If we ain't got the profesh beat on that Argentine Dip I'll give ten orchestra seats to charity and let any box-office in this town land me for what I'm worth."

"Joe!"

"Aw, I was only kiddin'. They got as much chance with me as a man with Saint Vitus's dance has of landing a trout. Gee, you're pretty to-night, sweetness!"

"Sweetness yourself!"

"Peaches and Cream!"

"Come on, Joe; this is twice round."

"Once more, sweetness--just once more! See, you got me hypnotized; my feet won't stop. See, they keep going and going. See, I can't stop. Whoa! Whoa! Honest, I can't quit! Whoa! We gotta go round once more, sweetness. I--just--can't--stop!"

"Just once more, Joe."

* * * * *

At one o'clock the gas-flame in the hallway outside the rear third-floor apartment flared sootily and waned to a weary bead as the pressure receded. Through the opacity of the sudden fog the formal-faced door faded into the gloom, and Miss Essie Birdsong pushed the knob stealthily inch by inch to save the squeak.

"Plunk-plunk-plunka-plunka-plunk-plunk! Essie?"

"'Sh-h-h-h! Yes, Jimmie--it's only me. Why you makin' that noise? Why's the light burning? What's--"

"Essie! Essie, is that you and--"

"Ma dearie, you--What's the matter? You ain't sick, are you? What's--what's wrong, Jimmie? Please, what's wrong?"

She stood with her back to the door, her face struck with fear suddenly, as with white forked lightning, and her breath coming on every alternate heart-beat.

"Ma! Jimmie! For Gawd's sakes, what's the matter?"

The transitional falsetto of her brother's voice came to her gritty as slate scratching slate, and cold, prickly flesh sprang out over her.

"Don't come in here! You--you and your friend stay out there a minute till ma kinda gets her breath back; she--she's all right--ain't you, ma? You and your friend just wait just a minute, Ess."

"Me and---"

"Yeh; both of you wait. Nothing ain't wrong--is it, ma? There, just lay back on the pillow a minute, ma. Gwan; be a sport! Look, your cheek's all red from restin' on my shoulder so long. Lemme go a minute and bring Essie and her gen'l'man friend in to see you. Gee! After you been waitin' and waitin' you--you ain't goin' to give out the last minute. There ain't nothin' to be scared about, ma. Lemme go in just a minute. Here it is, ma; don't break it--seven years' bad luck for smashin' a hand-mirror. Here; you look swell, ma--swell!"

"Tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Take them bottles and that ice away, Jimmie--throw my flowered wrapper over my shoulders. There! Now tell him, Jimmie, it ain't like me."

"Surest thing, ma. Watch me!"

He emerged from the bedroom suddenly, his face twisted and his whispering voice like cold iron under the stroke of an anvil, and Essie trembled as she stood.

"Jimmie!"

"You--you devil, you! Where is he?"

She edged away from him with limbs that seemed as though they took root at every step and she must tear each foot from the carpet.

"To-morrow night he's comin' sure, Jimmie; he couldn't to-night, he--couldn't."

Jimmie's lips drew back from his gums as though too dry to cover them.

"You--you street-runner, you!"

"Jimmie!"

"You--you--you--"

"For Gawd's sakes, she'll hear you, Jimmie!"

"You devil, you! You've killed her, I tell you! I've been holdin' her in there for two hours, with the sweat standing out on her like water--you--"

"Oh, Gawd! Jimmie, lemme run for old man Gibbs; lemme--"

"Oh no, you don't! Lizzie Marks down-stairs is gone for him--but that ain't goin' to help none; what she wants is _you_--you and your low-down sneaking friend; and she's goin' to have him, too."

"He's gone, Jimmie. What--"

"You can't come home here to-night without him--you can't! You better run after him, and run after him quick. You can't come home here to-night without him, I tell you! Whatta you going to do about it--huh? Whatta you going to do? Quick! What?"

She trembled so she grasped the back of a chair for support, and tears ricocheted down her cheeks.

"I can't, Jimmie! He's gone by now; he's gone by now--out of sight. I can't! Please, Jimmie! I'll tell her! I'll tell her! Don't--don't you dare come near me! I'll go, Jimmie--I'll go. 'Sh-h-h!"

"You gotta get him--you can't come here to-night without him. I ain't goin' to stand for her not seeing him to-night. I--I don't care how you get him, but you ain't going to kill her! You gotta get him, or I'll--"

"Jimmie--'sh-h-h!"

"Jimmie, tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Tell--"

"Yes, ma."

"Yes, ma--we're comin'. Joe's waitin' down at the door. I'll run down and bring him up; he--he's so bashful. In a minute, ma darlin'."

She flung open the door and fled, racing down two flights of stairs, with her steps clattering after her in an avalanche, and out into a quiet street, which sprung echoes of her flying feet.

After midnight every pedestrian becomes a simulacrum, wrapped in a black domino of mystery and a starry ephod of romance. A homeward-bound pedestrian is a faun in evening dress. Fat-and-forty leans from her window to hurtle a can at a night-yelling cat and becomes a demoiselle leaning out from the golden bar of Heaven.

In the inspissated gloom of the street occasional silhouettes hurried in silent haste; and a block ahead of her, just emerging into a string of shop lights, she could distinguish the uneven-shouldered outline of Joe Ullman and the unmistakable silhouette of his slightly askew hat.

She sobbed in her throat and made a cup of her hands to halloo; but her voice would not come, and she ran faster.

A policeman glanced after her and struck asphalt. A dog yapped at her tall heels. Even as she sped, her face upturned and her mouth dry and open, the figure swerved suddenly into a red-lighted doorway with a crescent burning above it; and, with her eyes on that Mecca, she pulled at her strength and gathered more speed.

The crescent grew in size and redness, and its lettering sprang out; and suddenly she stopped, as suddenly as an engine jerking up before a washout.

CRESCENT POOL AND BILLIARD ROOM-- OPEN ALL NIGHT

And her heart folded inward like the petals of a moonflower.

Stretched to the limit of their resilience, the nerves act reflexly. The merest second of incertitude, and then automatically she swung about, turned her blood-driven face toward the place from whence she came and groped her way homeward as Polymestor must have groped after being blinded in the presence of Hecuba.

Tears hot from the geyser of shame and pain magnified her eyes like high-power spectacle-lenses; and when she reached the dim entrance of the cliff dwelling she called home an edge of ice stiffened round her heart and her feet would not enter.

A silhouette lurched round a black corner and zigzagged toward her, and she held herself flat as a lath against the building until it and its drunken song had lurched round another corner; a couple hurried past with interlinked arms; their laughter light as foam. More silhouettes--a flat-chested woman, who wore her shame with the conscious speciousness of a prisoner promenading in his stripes; a loutish fellow, who whistled as he hurried and vaulted up the steps of the Electric Institute three steps at a bound; an old man with an outline like a crooked finger; a shawled woman; a cab lined with vague faces, and streamers of laughter floating back from it; and, standing darkly against the cold wall, Essie, with the tears drying on her cheeks, and her whole being suddenly galvanized by a new thought.

A momentary lull in the drippy streamlet of pedestrians; she leaned out into the darkness and peered up, then down the aisle of street. A shadow came gliding toward her, and she stepped forward; but when the street-lamp fell on the cold eyes and cuttlefish stare she huddled back into her corner until the steps had receded like the stick-taps of a blind man.

Two women in the professional garb of nurses twinkled past, twitting each to each like sparrows; a man whose face was narrow and dark, bespeaking in his ancestry a Latin breed, kept close to the shadow of the buildings; and, with her finger-nails cutting her palms, she stepped out from her lair directly in his path and clasped her hands tighter to keep them from trembling.

"You--please!"