Part 6

Mrs. Trimp's voice rose to a hysterical crescendo. Her hair, yellow as corn-silk, and caught in a low chignon at her back, escaped its restraint of pins and fell in a whorl down her shirt-waist. She was like a young immortal eaten by the corroding acids of earlier experiences--raw with the vitriol of her deathless destiny.

"You ain't been out with Cutty. You been--"

The piano-salesman in the first-floor back knocked against the closed folding-door for the stilly night that should have been his by right. A distant night-stick struck the asphalt, and across Harry Trimp's features, like filmy clouds across the moon, floated a composite death-mask of Henry the Eighth and Othello, and all their alimony-paying kith. His mouth curved into an expression that did not coincide with pale hair and light eyes.

He slid from his greatcoat, a black one with an astrakan collar and bought in three payments, and inclined closer to his wife, a contumelious quirk on his lips.

"Well, whatta you going to do about it, kiddo--huh?"

"I--I'm going to--quit!"

He laughed and let her squirm from his hold, strolled over to the dresser mirror, pulled his red four-in-hand upward from its knot and tugged his collar open.

"You're not going to quit, kiddo! You ain't got the nerve!"

He leaned to the mirror and examined the even rows of teeth, and grinned at himself like a Hallowe'en pumpkin to flash whiter their whiteness.

"Ain't I! Which takes the most nerve, I'd like to know, stickin' to you and your devilishness or strikin' out for myself like I been raised to do? I was born a worm, and I ain't never found the cocoon that would change me into a butterfly. I--I had as swell a job up at Gregory's as a girl ever had. I'm an expert stenographer, I am! I got a diploma from--"

"Why don't you get your job back, baby? You been up there twice to my knowin'; maybe the third time'll be a charm. Don't let me keep you, kiddo."

The sluice-gates of her fear and anger opened suddenly, and tears rained down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her bare palm.

"It's because you took the life and soul out of me! They don't want me back because I ain't nothin' but a rag any more. I guess they're ashamed to take me back cause I'm in--in your class. Ten months of standing for your funny business and dodging landladies, and waitin' up nights, and watchin' you and your crooked starvation game would take the life out of any girl. It would! It would!"

"Don't fuss at me any more, Goldie-eyes. It's gettin' hard for me to keep down; and I don't want--want to begin gettin' ugly."

Mr. Trimp advanced toward his wife gently--gently.

"Don't come near me! I know what's coming; but you ain't going to get me this time with your oily ways. You're the kind that, walks on a girl with spiked heels and tries to kiss the sores away. I'm going to quit!"

Mr. Trimp plucked at the faint hirsute adornment of his upper lip and folded his black-and-white waistcoat over the back of a chair. He fumbled it a bit.

"Stay where you're put, you--you bloomin' vest, you!"

"I--I got friends that'll help me, I have--even if I ain't ever laid eyes on 'em since the day I married you. I got friends--_real_ friends! Addie'll take me in any minute, day or night. Eddie Bopp could get me a job in his firm to-morrow if--if I ask him. I got friends! You've kept me from 'em; but I ain't afraid to look 'em up. I'm not!"

He advanced to where she stood beneath the waving gas-flame, a pet phrase clung to his lips, and he stumbled over it.

"My--my little--pussy-cat!"

"You're drunk!"

"No, I ain't, baby--only dog-tired. Dog-tired! Don't fuss at me! You just don't know how much I love you, baby!"

"Who wouldn't fuss, I'd like to know?"

Her voice was like ice crackling with thaw. He took her lax waist in his embrace and kissed her on the brow.

"Don't, honey--don't! Me and Cutty had a sucker out, I tell you."

"You--you always get your way with me. You treat me like a dog; but you know you can wind me round--wind me round."

"Baby! Baby!"

He smoothed her hair away from her salt-bitten eyes, laid his cheek pat against hers, and murmured to her through the scratch in his throat, like a parrakeet croons to its mate.

"Pussy-cat! Pussy!"

The river of difference between them dried in the warm sun of her forgiveness, and she sobbed on his shoulder with the exhaustion of a child after a tantrum.

"You won't leave me alone nights no more, Harry?"

"Thu--thu--thu--such a little Goldie-eyes!"

"I can't stand for the worry of the board no more, Harry. McCaskys are gettin' ugly. I ain't got a decent rag to my back, neither."

"I'm going to take a shipping-room job next week, honey, and get back in harness. Bill's going to fix me up. There ain't nothin' in this rotten game, and I'm going to get out."

"Sure?"

"Sure, Goldie."

"You ain't been drinking, Harry?"

"Sure I ain't. Me and Cutty had a rube out, I tell you."

"You'll keep straight, won't you, Harry? You're killin' me, boy, you are."

"Come, dry your face, baby."

He reached to his hip-pocket for his handkerchief, and with it a sparse shower of red and green and pink and white and blue confetti showered to the floor like snow through a spectrum. Goldie slid from his embrace and laughed--a laugh frapped with the ice of scorn and chilled as her own chilled heart.

"Liar!" she said, and trembled as she stood.

His lips curled again into the expression that so ill-fitted his albinism.

"You little cat! You can bluff me!"

"I knew you was up at the Crescent Cotillon! I felt it in my bones. I knew you was up there when I read on the bill-boards that the Red Slipper was dancing there. I knew where you was every night while I been sittin' here waitin'! I knew--I knew--"

The piano-salesman rapped against the folding-doors thrice, with distemper and the head of a cane. At that instant the lower half of Mr. Trimp's face protruded suddenly into a lantern-jawed facsimile of a blue-ribbon English bull; his hand shot out and hurled the chair that stood between them half-way across the room, where it fell on its side against the wash-stand and split a rung.

"You--you little devil, you!"

The second-floor front beat a tattoo of remonstrance; but there was a sudden howling as of boiling surf in Mr. Trimp's ears, and the hot ember of an oath dropped from his lips.

"You little devil! You been hounding me with the quit game for eight months. Now you gotta quit!"

"I--I--"

"There ain't a man livin' would stand for your long face and naggin'! If you don't like my banking-hours and my game and the company I keep you quit, kiddo! Quit! Do you hear?"

"Will--I--quit? Well--"

"Yeh; I been up to the Crescent Confetti--every night this week, just like you say! I been round live wires, where there ain't no long, white faces shoving board bills and whining the daylights out of me."

"Oh, you--you ain't nothing but--"

"Sure, I been up there! I can get two laughs for every long face you pull on me. You quit if you want to, kiddo--there ain't no strings to you. Quit--and the sooner the better!" Mr. Trimp grasped his wife by her taut wrists and jerked her to him until her head fell backward and the breath jumped out of her throat in a choke. "Quit--and the sooner the better!"

"Lemme go! Lem-me-go!"

He tightened his hold and inclined toward her, so close that their faces almost touched. With his hot clutches on her wrists and his hot breath in her face it seemed to her that his eyes fused into one huge Cyclopean circle that spun and spun in the center of his forehead, like a fiery Catharine Wheel against a night sky.

"Bah! You little whiteface, you! You played a snide trick on me, anyway--lost your looks the second month and went dead like a punctured tire! Quit when you want to--there ain't no strings. Quit now!"

He flung her from him, so that she staggered backward four steps and struck her right cheek sharply against the mantel corner. A blue-glass vase fell to the hearth and was shattered. With the salt of fray on his lips, he kicked at the overturned chair and slammed a closet door so that the windows rattled. A carpet-covered hassock lay in his path, and he hurled it across the floor. Goldie edged toward the wardrobe, hugging the wall like one who gropes in the dark.

"If you're right bright, kiddo, you'll keep out of my way. You got me crazy to-night--crazy! Do you hear me, you little--"

"My hat!"

He flung it to her from its peg, with her jacket, so that they fell crumpled at her feet.

"You're called on your bluff this time, little one. This is one night it's quits for you--and I ain't drunk, neither!"

She crowded her rampant hair, flowing as Ophelia's, into her cheap little boyish hat and fumbled into her jacket. A red welt, shaped like a tongue of flame, burned diagonally down her right cheek.

"Keep out of my way--you! You got me crazy to-night--crazy to-night!"

He watched her from the opposite side of the room with lowered head, like a bull lunging for onslaught.

She moved toward the door with the rigidity of an automaton doll, her magnetized eyes never leaving his reddening face and her hands groping ahead. Her mouth was moist and no older than a child's; but her skin dead, as if coated over with tallow. She opened the door slowly, fearing to break the spell--then suddenly slipped through the aperture and slammed it after her. Then the slam of another door; the scurrying of feet down cold stone steps that sprung echoes in the deserted street.

The douse of cold air stung her flaming cheek; a policeman glanced after her; a drunken sailor staggered out of a black doorway, and her trembling limbs sped faster--a labyrinth of city streets and rows of blank-faced houses; an occasional pedestrian, who glanced after her because she wheezed in her throat, and ever so often gathered her strength and broke into a run; then a close, ill-smelling apartment house, with a tipsy gas-light mewling in the hall, and a dull-brown door that remained blank to her knocks and rings. The sobs were rising in her throat, and the trembling in her limbs shook her as with ague.

A knock that was more of a pound and a frenzied rattling of the knob! Finally from the inside of the door a thump-thump down a long hallway--and the door creaked open cautiously, suspiciously!

In its frame a pale figure, in the rumpled clothes of one always sitting down and hunched on a pair of silver-mounted mahogany crutches that slanted from her sides like props.

"Goldie! Little Goldie!"

"Oh, Addie! Addie!"

* * * * *

Youth has rebound like a rubber ball. Batted up against the back fence, she bounces back into the heart of a rose-bush or into the carefully weeded, radishless radish-bed of the kitchen garden.

Mrs. Trimp rose from the couch-bed davenport of the Bopp sitting-dining-sleeping-room, with something of the old lamps burning in her eyes and a full-lipped mouth to which clung the memory of smiles. Even Psyche, abandoned by love, smiled a specious smile when she posed for the scalpel.

Eddie Bopp reached out a protective arm and drew Goldie by the sleeve of her shirt-waist down to the couch-bed davenport again.

"Take it easy there, Goldie. Don't get yourself all excited again."

"But it's just like you say, Eddie--I got the law on my side. I got him on the grounds of cruelty if--if I show nothin' but--but this cheek."

"Sure, you have, Goldie; but you just sit quiet. Addie, come in here and make Goldie behave her little self."

"I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!"

Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk.

"You poor little kid!"

Addie hobbled in from the kitchen.

"I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too."

God alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fashioned her in clay and water, even as you and me--from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes.

He fashioned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender--broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit shining through--Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was sunshine on dew.

"You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie. You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?"

"Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!"

"Eat, Goldie--gwan."

"I ain't hungry--honest!"

"Quit standing over her, Eddie; you make her nervous. Let me feed you, Goldie."

"Gee! Ain't you swell to me!" Ready tears sprang to her eyes.

"Like you ain't my old chum, Goldie! It don't seem so long since we were working in the same office and going to Recreation Pier dances together, does it?"

"Addie! Addie!"

"Do you remember how you and me and Ed and Charley Snuggs used to walk up and down Ninth Avenue summer evenings eating ice-cream cones?"

"Do I? Oh, Addie, do I?"

"I'm glad we had them ice-cream days, Goldie. They're melted, but the flavor ain't all gone." Addie's face was large and white and calm-featured, like a Botticelli head.

"You two girls sure was cut-ups! Remember the night Addie first introduced us, Goldie? You came over to call for her, and us three went to the wax-works show on Twenty-third Street. Lordy, how we cut up!"

"And I started to ask the wax policeman if we was allowed to go past the rail!" They laughed low in their throats, as if they feared to raise an echo in a vale of tears. "It's like old times for me to be staying all night with you again, Addie. It's been so long! He--he used to get mad like anything if I wanted to see any of the old crowd. He knew they didn't know any good of him. He was always for the sporty, all-night bunch."

"Poor kid!"

"Don't get her to talking about it again, Eddie; it gets her all excited."

"He could have turned me against my own mother, I was that crazy over him."

"That," said Addie, softly, "was _love_! And only women can love like that; and women who do love like that are cursed--and blessed."

"I'm out of it now, Addie. You won't never send me back to him--you won't ever?"

"There now, dearie, you're gettin' worked up again. Ain't you right here, safe with us?"

"That night at Hinkey's was the worst, Goldie," said Eddie. "It makes my blood boil! Why didn't you quit then; why?"

"I ain't told you all, neither, Eddie. One night he came home about two o'clock, and I had been--"

"Just quit thinking and talking about him, Goldie. You're right here, safe with me and Eddie; and he's going to get you a job when you're feeling stronger. And then, when you're free--when you're free--"

Addie regarded her brother with the tender aura of a smile on her lips and a tender implication in her eyes that scurried like a frightened mouse back into its hole. Eddie flamed red; and his ears, by a curious physiological process, seemed to take fire and contemplate instant flight from his head.

"Oh, look, Ad. We got to get a new back for your chair. The stuffin's all poking through the velvet."

"So it is, Eddie. It's a good thing you got your raise, with all these new-fangled dangles we need."

"To-night's his lodge night. He never came home till three--till three o'clock, lodge nights."

"There you go, Goldie--back on the subject, makin' yourself sick."

"Gee!"

"What's the matter, Goldie?"

"To-night's his lodge. I could go now and get my things while he ain't there--couldn't I?"

"Swell! I'll take you, Goldie, and wait outside for you."

"Eddie, can't you see she ain't in any condition to go running round nights? There's plenty time yet, Goldie. You can wear my shirt-waists and things. Wait till--"

"I got to get it over with, Addie; and daytimes Eddie's working, and I'd have to go alone. I--I don't want to go alone."

"Sure; she can't go alone, Addie; and she's got to have her things."

Eddie was on his feet and beside Goldie's palpitating figure, as though he would lay his heart, a living stepping-stone, at her feet.

"We better go now, Addie; honest we had! Eddie'll wait outside for me."

"You poor kid! You want to get it over with, don't you? Get her coat, Eddie, and bring her my sweater to wear underneath. It's getting colder every minute."

"I ain't scared a bit, Addie. I'll just go in and pack my things together and hustle out again."

"Here's a sweater, Goldie, and your coat and hat."

"Take care, children; and, Goldie, don't forget all the things you need. Just take your time and get your things together--warm clothes and all."

"I'll be waiting right outside for you, Goldie."

"I'm ready, Eddie."

"Don't let her get excited and worked up, Eddie."

"I ain't scared a bit, Addie."

"Sure you ain't?"

"Not a bit!"

"Good-by, Addie. Gee, but you're swell to me!"

"Don't forget to bring your rubbers, Goldie; going to work on wet mornings you'll need them."

"I--I ain't got none."

"You can have mine. I--I don't need them any more."

"Good-by, Ad--leave the dishes till we come back. I can do 'em swell myself after you two girls have gone to bed."

"Yes. I'll be waiting, Goldie; and we'll talk in bed like old times."

"Yes, yes!" It was as if Addie's frail hands were gripping Goldie's heart and clogging her speech.

"Good-by, children!"

"Good-by."

"S'long!"

The night air met them with a whoop and tugged and pulled at Goldie's hat.

"Take my arm, Goldie. It's some howler, ain't it?"

Their feet clacked on the cold, dry pavement, and passers-by leaned into the wind.

"He was a great one for hating the cold, Eddie. Gee, how he hated winter!"

"That's why he wears a fur-collared coat and you go freezing along in a cheese-cloth jacket, I guess."

"It always kind of got on his chest and gave him fever."

"What about you? You just shivered along and dassent say anything!"

"And I used to fix him antiphlogistin plasters half the night. When he wasn't mad or drunk he was just like a kid with the measles! It used to make me laugh so--he'd--"

"Humph!"

"But one night--one night I got the antiphlogistin too hot while I was straightening up--'cause he never liked a messy-looking room when he was sick--and he was down and out from one of his bad nights; and it--and it got too hot, and--" She turned away and finished her sentence in the teeth of the wind; but Eddie's arm tightened on hers until she could feel each distinct finger.

"God!" he said.

"I ain't scared a bit, Eddie."

"For what, I'd like to know! Ain't I going to be waiting right here across the street?"

"See! That's the room over there--the dark one, with the shade half-way up. Gee, how I hate it!"

"I'll be waiting right here in front of Joe's place, Goldie. If you need me just shoot the shade all the way up."

"I won't need you."

"Well, then, light the gas, pull the shade all the way down, and that'll mean all's well."

"Swell!" she said. "Down comes the shade--and all's well!"

"Good!"

They smiled, and their breaths clouded between them; and down through the high-walled street the wind shot javelin-like and stung red into their cheeks, and in Eddie's ears and round his heart the blood buzzed.

Goldie crossed the street and went up the steps lightly, her feet grating the brown stone like fine-grained sandpaper. When she unlocked the front door the cave-like mustiness and the cold smell of unsunned hallways and the conglomerate of food smells from below met her at the threshold. Memories like needle-tongued insects stung her.

The first-floor front she opened slowly, pausing after every creak of the door; and the gas she fumbled because her hand trembled, and the match burned close to her fingers before she found the tip.

She turned up the flame until it sang, and glanced about her fearfully, with one hand on her bruised cheek and her underlip caught in by her teeth.

Mr. Trimp's room was as expressive as a lady's glove still warm from her hand. He might have slipped out of it and let it lie crumpled, but in his own image.

The fumes of bay-rum and stale beer struggled for supremacy. The center-table, with a sickening litter of empty bottles and dead ashes, was dreary as cold mutton in its grease, or a woman's painted face at crack o' dawn, or the moment when the flavor of love becomes as tansy.

A red-satin slipper, an unhygienic drinking-goblet, which has leaked and slopped over full many a non-waterproof romance, lay on the floor, with its red run into many pinks and its rosette limp as a wad of paper. Goldie picked her careful way round it. Fear and nausea and sickness at the heart made her dizzy.

The dresser, with its wavy mirror, was strewn with her husband's neckties; an uncorked bottle of bay-rum gave out its last faint fumes.

She opened the first long drawer with a quivering intake of breath and pulled out a shirt-waist, another, and yet another, and a coarse white petticoat with a large-holed embroidery flounce. Then she dragged a suit-case, which was wavy like the mirror, through the blur of her tears, out from under the bed; and while she fumbled with the lock the door behind her opened, and her heart rose in her throat with the sudden velocity of an express elevator shooting up a ten-story shaft.

In the dresser mirror, and without turning her head or gaining her feet, she looked into the eyes of her husband.

"Pussy-cat!" he said, and came toward her with his teeth flashing like Carrara marble in sunlight.

She sprang to her feet and backed against the dresser.

"Don't! Don't you come near me!"

"You don't mean that, Goldie."

She shivered in her scorn.

"Don't you come near me! I came--to get my things."

"Oh!" he said, and tossed his hat on the bed and peeled off his coat. "Help yourself, kiddo. Go as far as you like."

She fell to tearing at the contents of her drawer without discrimination, cramming them into her bag and breathing furiously, like a hare in the torture of the chase. The color sprang out in her cheeks, and her eyes took fire.

Her husband threw himself, in his shirt-sleeves and waistcoat, across the bed and watched her idly. Only her fumbling movements and the sing of the too-high gas broke the silence. He rose, lowered the flame, and lay down again.

Her little box of poor trinkets spilled its contents as she packed it; her hair-brush fell from her trembling fingers and clattered to the floor.

"Can I help you, Goldie-eyes?"

Silence. He coughed rather deep in his chest, and she almost brushed his hand as she passed to the clothes wardrobe. He reached out and caught her wrist.

"Now, Goldie, you--"

"Don't--don't you touch me! Let go!"

He drew her down to the bed beside him.

"Can't you give a fellow another chance, baby? Can't you?" She tugged for her freedom, but his clasp was tight as steel and tender as love. "Can't you, baby?"

"You!" she said, kicking at the sloppy satin slipper at her feet, as if it were a loathsome thing that crawled. "I--I don't ever want to see you again, you--you--"

"You drove me to it, pussy; honest you did!"

"You didn't need no driving. You take to it like a fish to water--nobody can drive you. You just ain't--no--good!"

"You drove me to it. When you quit I just went crazy mad. I kicked the skylight--I tore things wide open. I was that sore for you--honest, baby!"

"I've heard that line of talk before. I ain't forgot the night at Hinkey's. I ain't forgot nothing. You or horses can't hold me here!" She wrenched at her wrists.

"I got a job yesterday, baby. Bill made good. Eighty dollars, honey! Me and Cutty are quits for good. Ain't that something--now, ain't it?"

"Let me go!"

"Pussy-cat!"

"Let me go, I say!"

He coughed and turned on his side toward her.