Part 2

He turned and loosened the back of her seat until it reclined like a Morris chair. "My own invention," he said; "to lie back and watch the stars on a clear night sort of--of gives you a hunch what's goin' on up there."

She looked at him in some surprise. "You're clever, all right," she said, rather seriously.

"Wait till you know me better, kiddo. I'll learn you a whole lot about me that'll surprise you."

His hand groped for hers; she drew it away gently, but her voice was also gentle:

"Here we are home, Mr. Barker."

In front of her lower West Side rooming-house he helped her carefully to alight, regarding her sententiously in the flare of the street lamp.

"You're my style, all right, kiddo. My speedometer registers you pretty high."

She giggled.

"I'm here to tell you that you look good to me, and--and--I--anything on fer to-morrow night?"

"No," she said, softly.

"Are you on?"

She nodded.

"I'll drop in and see you to-morrow," he said.

"Good," she replied.

"If nothin' unexpected comes up to-morrow night we'll take one swell spin out along the Hudson Drive and have dinner at the Vista. There's some swell scenery out along the Palisade drive when the moon comes up and shines over the water."

"Oh, Mr. Barker, that will be heavenly!"

"I'm some on the soft-soap stuff myself," he said.

"You're full of surprises," she agreed.

"I'll drop in and see you to-morrow, kiddo."

"Good night," she whispered.

"Good night, little sis," he replied.

They parted with a final hand-shake; as she climbed up to her room she heard the machine chug away.

The perfume of her rose floated about her like a delicate mist. She undressed and went to bed into a dream-world of shimmering women and hidden music, a world chiefly peopled by deferential waiters and scraping lackeys. All the night through she sped in a silent mahogany-colored touring-car, with the wind singing in her ears and lights flashing past like meteors.

* * * * *

When Miss Gertrude arrived at the Knockerbeck parlors next morning a little violet offering wrapped in white tissue-paper lay on her desk. They were fresh wood violets, cool and damp with dew. She flushed and placed them in a small glass vase behind the cold-cream case.

Her eyes were blue like the sky when you look straight up, and a smile trembled on her lips. Ten minutes later Mr. Barker, dust-begrimed and enveloped in a long linen duster, swaggered in. He peeled off his stout gloves; his fingers were black-rimmed and grease-splotched.

"Mornin', sis; here's a fine job for you. Took an unexpected business trip ten miles out, and the bloomin' spark-plug got to cuttin' up like a balky horse."

He crammed his gloves and goggles into spacious pockets and looked at Miss Gertrude with warming eyes.

"Durned if you ain't lookin' pert as a mornin'-glory to-day!"

She took his fingers on her hand and regarded them reprovingly.

"Shame on you, Mr. Barker, for getting yourself so mussed up!" cried Miss Sprunt.

"Looks like I need somebody to take care of me, doan it, sis?"

"Yes," she agreed, unblushingly.

Once in warm water, his hands exuded the odor of gasolene. She sniffed like a horse scenting the turf.

"I'd rather have a whiff of an automobile," she remarked, "than of the best attar of roses on the market."

"You ain't forgot about to-night, sis?"

She lowered her eyes.

"No, I haven't forgotten."

"There ain't nothin' but a business engagement can keep me off. I gotta big deal on, and I may be too busy to-night, but we'll go to-morrow sure."

"That'll be all right, Mr. Barker; business before pleasure."

"I'm pretty sure it'll be to-night, though. I--I don't like to have to wait too long."

He reached across the table suddenly and gripped hold of her working arm.

"Say, kiddo, I like you."

"Silly!" she said, softly.

"I ain't foolin'."

"I'll be ready at six," she said, lightly. "If you can't come let me know."

"I ain't the sort to do things snide," he said. "If I can't come I'll put you wise, all right."

"You certainly know how to treat a girl," she said.

"Let me get to likin' a goil, and there ain't nothin' I won't do for her."

"You sure can run a machine, Mr. Barker."

"You wait till I let loose some speed along the Hudson road, and then you'll see some real drivin'; last night wasn't nothin'."

"Oh, Mr. Barker!"

"Call me Jim," he said.

"Jim," she repeated, softly, after him.

The day was crowded with appointments. She worked unceasingly until the nerves at the back of her head were strained and aching, and tired shadows appeared under her eyes. The languor of spring oppressed her.

To her surprise, Mr. Chase appeared at four o'clock. At the sight of him the point of her little scissors slipped into the unoffending cuticle of the hand she was grooming. She motioned him to a chair along the wall.

"In just a few minutes, Mr. Chase."

"Thank you," he replied, seating himself and watching her with interested, near-sighted eyes.

A nervousness sent the blood rushing to her head. The low drone of Ethyl's voice talking to a customer, the tick of the clock, the click and sough of the elevator were thrice magnified. She could feel the gush of color to her face.

The fat old gentleman whose fingers she had been administering placed a generous bonus on the table and ambled out. She turned her burning eyes upon Mr. Chase and spoke slowly to steady her voice. She was ashamed of her unaccountable nervousness and of the suffocating dryness in her throat.

"Ready for you, Mr. Chase."

He came toward her with a peculiar slowness of movement, a characteristic slowness which was one of the trivial things which burned his attractiveness into her consciousness. In the stuffiness of her own little room she had more than once closed her eyes and deliberately pictured him as he came toward her table, gentle yet eager, with a deference which was new as it was delightful to her.

As he approached her she snapped a flexible file between her thumb and forefinger, and watched it vibrate and come to a jerky stop; then she looked up.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Chase."

"Good afternoon, Miss Sprunt. You see, I am following your advice." He took the chair opposite her.

"I--I want to thank you for the violets. They are the first real hint of May I've had."

"You knew they came from me?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Why--I--why, I just knew."

She covered her confusion by removing and replacing crystal bottle-stoppers.

"I'm glad that you knew they came from me, Miss Sprunt."

"Yes, I knew that they could come from no one but you--they were so simple and natural and--sweet."

She laughed a pitch too high and plunged his fingers into water some degrees too hot. He did not wince, but she did.

"Oh, Mr. Chase, forgive me. I--I've scalded your fingers."

"Why," he replied, not taking his eyes from her face, "so you have!" They both laughed.

Across the room Miss Ethyl coughed twice. "I always say," she observed to her customer, "a workin'-girl can't be too careful of her actions. That's why I am of a retiring disposition and don't try to force myself on nobody."

Mr. Chase regarded the shadows beneath Miss Sprunt's eyes with a pucker between his own.

"You don't get much of the springtime in here, do you, Miss Sprunt?"

"No," she replied, smiling faintly. "The only way we can tell the seasons down here is by the midwinter Elks convention and the cloak drummers who come to buy fur coats in July."

"You poor little girl," he said, slowly. "What you need is air--good, wholesome air, and plenty of it."

"Oh, I get along all right," she said, biting at her nether lip.

"You're confined too closely, Miss Sprunt."

"Life isn't all choice," she replied, briefly.

"Forgive me," he said.

"I walk home sometimes," she said.

"You're fond of walking?"

"Yes, when I'm not too tired."

"Miss Sprunt, would--would you walk with me this evening? I know a quiet little place where we could dine together."

"Oh," she said, "I--I already have an engagement. I--"

She colored with surprise.

"You have an engagement?" His tones were suddenly flat.

"No," she replied, in tones of sudden decision, "I'd be pleased to go with you. I can do what I planned to-night any other time."

"Thank you, Miss Sprunt."

Her fingers trembled as she worked, and his suddenly closed over them.

"You poor, tired little girl," he repeated.

She gulped down her emotions.

"Miss Sprunt, this is neither the time nor the place for me to express myself, yet somehow our great moments come when we least expect them."

She let her limp fingers rest in his; she was strangely calm.

"I know it is always a great pleasure to have you come in, Mr. Chase."

"The first time I dropped in was chance, Miss Sprunt. You can see for yourself that I am not the sort of fellow who goes in for the little niceties like manicures. I'm what you might call the seedy kind. But the second time I dropped in for a manicure was not accident, nor the third time, nor the tenth--it was _you_."

"You've been extravagant all on account of me?" she parried.

"I've been more than that on account of you, dear girl. I've been consumed night and day by the sweet thought of you."

"Oh-h-h!" She placed one hand at her throat.

"Miss Sprunt, I am not asking anything of you; I simply want you to know me better. I want to begin to-night to try to teach you to reciprocate the immense regard--the love I feel for you."

She closed her eyes for a moment; his firm clasp of her hand tightened.

"You'll think I'm a bold girl, Mr. Chase; you'll--you'll--"

"Yes?"

"You'll think I'm everything I ought not to be, but you--you can't teach me what I already know."

"Gertrude!"

She nodded, swallowing back unaccountable tears.

"I never let myself hope, because I didn't think there was a chance, Mr. Chase."

"Dear, is it possible without knowing me--who, what I am--you--"

"I only know _you_," she said, softly. "That is all that matters."

"My little girl," he whispered, regarding her with unshed tears shining in his eyes.

She placed her two hands over her face for a moment.

"What is it, dear?"

She burrowed deeper into her hands.

"I'm so happy," she said, between her fingers.

They regarded each other with almost incredulous eyes, seeking to probe the web of enchantment their love had woven.

"I do not deserve this happiness, dearest." But his voice was a paean of triumph.

"It is I who do not deserve," she said, in turn. "You are too--too everything for me."

They talked in whispers until there were two appointees ranged along the wall. He was loath to go; she urged him gently.

"I can't work while you are here, dear; return for me at six--no," she corrected, struck by a sudden thought, "at six-thirty."

"Let me wait for you, dearest," he pleaded.

She waggled a playful finger at him.

"Good-by until later."

"Until six-thirty, cruel one."

"Yes."

"There is so much to be said, Gertrude dear."

"To-night."

He left her lingeringly. They tried to cover up their fervent, low-voiced farewells with passive faces, but after he had departed her every feature was lyric.

Juliet might have looked like that when her love was young.

Mr. Barker arrived, but she met him diffidently, even shamefacedly. Before she could explain he launched forth:

"I'm sorry, kiddo, but we'll have to make it to-morrow night for that ride of ourn. That party I was tellin' you about is goin' to get busy on that big deal, and I gotta do a lot of signin' up to-night."

Fate had carved a way for her with gentle hand.

"That's all right, Mr. Barker; just don't you feel badly about it." She felt a gush of sympathy for him; for all humanity.

"You understand, kiddo, don't you? A feller's got to stick to business as much as pleasure, and we'll hit the high places to-morrow night, all right, all right. You're the classiest doll I've met yet."

She swallowed her distaste.

"That's the right idea, Mr. Barker; business appointments are always important."

"I'll see you to-morrow mornin', and we'll fix up some swell party."

"Good night, Mr. Barker."

"So long, honey."

Directly after he departed Miss Ethyl bade her good night in cold, cracky tones.

"The goin's-on in this parlor don't make it no place for a minister's daughter, Miss Gertie Sprunt."

"Then you ought to be glad your father's a policeman," retorted her friend, graciously. "Good night, dearie."

She hummed as she put her table in order. At each footstep down the marble corridor her pulse quickened; she placed her cheeks in her hands, vise-fashion, to feel of their unnatural heat. When Mr. Chase finally came they met shyly and with certain restraint. Whispering together like diffident children, they went out, their hands lightly touching. Broadway was already alight; the cool spring air met them like tonic.

Like an exuberant lad, Mr. Chase led her to the curb. A huge, mahogany-colored touring-car, caparisoned in nickel and upholstered in a darker red, vibrated and snorted alongside. A chauffeur, with a striped rug across his knees, reached back respectfully and flung open the door. Like an automaton Gertrude placed her small foot upon the step and paused, her dumfounded gaze confronting the equally stunned eyes of the chauffeur. Mr. Chase aided and encouraged at her elbow.

"It's all right, dearest, it's all right; this is your surprise."

"Why," she gasped, her eyes never leaving the steel-blue shaved face of the chauffeur--"why--I--"

Mr. Chase regarded her in some anxiety. "What a surprised little girl you are! I shouldn't have taken you so unawares." He almost lifted her in.

"This machine is yours, Mr. Chase?"

"Yes, dear, this machine is _ours_."

"You never told me anything."

"There is little to tell, Gertrude. I have not used my cars to amount to anything since I'm back from Egypt. I've been pretty busy with affairs."

"Back from Egypt!"

"Do not look so helpless, dear. I'm only back three months from a trip round the world, and I've been putting up with hotel life meanwhile. Then I happened to meet you, and as long as you had me all sized up I just let it go--that's all, dear."

"You're not the Mr. Adam Chase who's had the rose suite on the tenth floor all winter?"

"That's me," he laughed.

Her slowly comprehending eyes did not leave his face.

"Why, I thought--I--you--"

"It was my use of the private elevator on the east side of the building that gave you the Sixth Avenue idea, and it was too good a joke on me to spoil, dearie."

She regarded him through blurry eyes.

"What must you think of me?"

He felt for her hand underneath the lap-robe.

"Among other things," he said, "I think that your eyes exactly match the violets I motored out to get for you this morning at my place ten miles up the Hudson."

"When did you go, dear?"

"Before you were up. We were back before ten, in spite of a spark-plug that gave us some trouble."

"Oh," she said.

The figure at the wheel squirmed to be off. She lay back faint against the upholstery.

"To think," she said, "that you should care for me!"

"My own dear girl!"

He touched a spring and the back of her seat reclined like a Morris chair.

"Lie back, dear. I invented that scheme so I can recline at night and watch the stars parade past. I toured that way all through Egypt."

The figure in the front seat gripped his wheel.

"Where are we going, Adam dear?" she whispered.

"This is your night, Gertrude; give James your orders."

She snuggled deeper into the dark-red upholstery, and their hands clasped closer beneath the robe.

"James," she said, in a voice like a bell, "take us to the Vista for dinner; afterward motor out along the Palisade drive, far out so that we can see the Hudson by moonlight."

OTHER PEOPLE'S SHOES

At the close of a grilling summer that had sapped the life from the city as insidiously as fever runs through veins and licks them up--at the close of a day that had bleached the streets as dry as desert bones--Abe Ginsburg closed his store half an hour earlier than usual because his clerk, Miss Ruby Cohn, was enjoying a two days' vacation at the Long Island Recreation Farm, and because a staggering pain behind his eyes and zigzag down the back of his neck to his left shoulder-blade made the shelves of shoe-boxes appear as if they were wavering with the heat-dance of the atmosphere and ready to cast their neatly arranged stock in a hopeless fuddle on the center of the floor.

Up-stairs, on an exact level with the elevated trains that tore past the kitchen windows like speed monsters annihilating distance, Mrs. Ginsburg poised a pie-pan aloft on the tips of five fingers and waltzed a knife round the rim of the tin. A ragged ruffle of dough swung for a moment; she snipped it off, leaving the pie pat and sleek.

Then Mrs. Ginsburg smiled until a too perfect row of badly executed teeth showed their pink rubber gums, leaned over the delicate lid of the pie, and with a three-pronged fork pricked out the doughy inscription--ABE. Sarah baking cakes for Abraham's prophetic visitors had no more gracious zeal.

The waiting oven filled the kitchen with its gassy breath; a train hurtled by and rattled the chandeliers, a stack of plates on a shelf, and a blue-glass vase on the parlor mantel. A buzz-bell rang three staccato times. Mrs. Ginsburg placed the pie on the table-edge and hurried down a black aisle of hallway.

Book-agents, harbingers of a dozen-cabinet-photographs-colored-crayon-thrown-in, and their kin have all combined to make wary the gentle cliff-dweller. Mrs. Ginsburg opened her door just wide enough to insert a narrow pencil, placed the tip of her shoe in the aperture, and leaned her face against the jamb so that from without half an eye burned through the crack.

"Abie? It ain't you, is it, Abie?"

"Don't get excited, mamma!"

"It ain't six o'clock yet, Abie--something ain't right with you!"

"Don't get excited, mamma! I just closed early for the heat. For what should I keep open when a patent-leather shoe burns a hole in your hand?"

"_Ach_, such a scare as you give me! If I'd 'a' known it I could have had supper ready. It wouldn't hurt you to call up-stairs when you close early--no consideration that boy has got for his mother! Poor papa! If he so much as closed the store ten minutes earlier he used to call up for me to heat the things--no consideration that boy has got for his old mother!"

Mr. Ginsburg placed a heavy hand on each of his mother's shoulders and kissed her while the words were unfinished and smoking on her lips.

"It's too hot to eat, mamma. Ain't I asked you every night during this heat not to cook so much?"

"Just the same, when it comes to the table I see you eat. I never see you refuse nothing--I bet you come twice for apple-pie to-night. Is the hall table the place for your cuffs, Abie? I'm ashamed for the people the way my house looks when you're home--no order that boy has got! I go now and put my pie in the oven."

"I ain't hungry, mamma--honest! Don't fix no supper for me--I go in the front room and lay down for a while. Never have I known such heat as I had it in the store to-day--and with Miss Ruby gone it was bad enough, I can tell you."

Mrs. Ginsburg reached up suddenly and turned high a tiny bead of gas-light--it flared for a moment like a ragged-edged fan and then settled into a sooty flare. In its low-candle-power light their faces were far away and without outline--like shadows seen through the mirage of a dream.

"Abie--tell mamma--you ain't sick, are you? Abie, you look pale."

"Now, mamma, begin to worry about nothing when--"

"It ain't like you to come up early, heat or no heat. _Ach!_ I should have known when he comes up-stairs early it means something. What hurts you, Abie? That's what I need yet, a sickness! What hurts you, Abie?"

"Mamma, the way you go on it's enough to make me sick if I ain't. Can't a boy come up-stairs just because--"

"I know you like a book; when you close the store and lay down before supper there's something wrong. Tell me, Abie--"

"All right, then! You know it so well I can't tell you nothing--all I got is a little tiredness from the heat."

"Go in and lay down. Can't you tell mamma what hurts you, Abie? Are you afraid it would give me a little pleasure if you tell me? No consideration that boy has got for his mother!"

"Honest, mamma, ain't I told you three times I ain't nothing but tired?"

"He snaps me up yet like he was a turtle and me his worst enemy! For what should I worry myself? For my part, I don't care. I only say, Abie, if there's anything hurts you--you know how poor papa started to complain just one night like this how he fussed at me when I wanted the doctor. If there's anything hurts you--"

"There ain't, mamma."

"Come in and let me fix the sofa for you. I only say when you close the store early there's something wrong. That Miss Ruby should go off yet--vacation she has to have--a girl like that, with her satin shoes and all--comes into the store at nine o'clock 'cause she runs to the picture shows all night! Yetta Washeim seen her. Vacation yet she has to have! Twenty years I spent with poor papa in the store, and no vacation did I have. Lay down, Abie."

"All right, then," said Mr. Ginsburg, as if duty were a geological eon, and throwing himself across the flowered velvet lounge in the parlor. "I'll lay down if it suits you better."

Mr. Ginsburg was of a cut that never appears on a classy clothes advertisement or in the silver frame on the bird's-eye maple dressing-table of sweet sixteen or more; he belonged to the less ornamented but not unimportant stratum that manufactures the classy clothes by the hundred thousand, and eventually develops into husbands and sponsors for full-length double-breasted sealskin coats for the sweet sixteens and more.

He was as tall as Napoleon, with a round, un-Napoleonic head, close-shaved so that his short-nap hair grew tight like moss on a rock, and a beard that defied every hirsute precaution by pricking darkly through the lower half of his face as phenomenally as the first grass-blades of spring push out in an hour.

"Let me fix you a little something, Abie. I got grand broth in the ice-box--all I need to do is to heat it."

"Ain't I told you I ain't hungry, mamma?"

"When that boy don't eat he's sick. I should worry yet! Poor papa! If he'd listened to me he'd be living to-day. I'm your worst enemy--I am! I work against my own child--that's the thanks what I get."

Sappho, who never wore a gingham wrapper and whose throat was unwrinkled and full of music, never sang more surely than did Mrs. Ginsburg into the heart-cells of her son. He reached out for her wrapper and drew her to him.

"Aw, mamma, you know I don't mean nothing; just when you get all worried over nothing it makes me mad. Come, sit down by me."

"To-night we don't go up to Washeims'. I care a lot for Yetta's talk--her Beulah this and her Beulah that! It makes me sick!"

"I'll take you up, mamma, if you want to go."

"Indeed, you stay where you are! For their front steps and refreshments I don't need to ride in the Subway to Harlem anyway."

"What's the difference? A little evening's pleasure won't hurt you, mamma."

"Such a lunch as she served last time! I got better right now in my ice-box, and I ain't expecting company. They can buy and sell us, too, I guess. Sol Washeim don't take a nine-room house when boys' pants ain't booming--but such a lunch as she served! You can believe me, I wouldn't have the nerve to. Abie, I see Herschey's got fall cloth-tops in their windows already."

"Yes?"

"Good business to-day--not, Abie?--and such heat too! Mrs. Abrahams called across the hallway just now that she was in for a pair; but you was so busy with a customer she couldn't wait--that little pink-haired clerk, with her extravagant ways, had to go off and leave you in the heat! Shoe-buttoners she puts in every box like they cost nothing. I told her so last week, too."

"She's a grand little clerk, mamma--such a business head I never seen!"