Part 9

He placed his hand against her forehead, tilted her head backward and kissed her twice on the lips.

"You're my little Birdie, ain't you--a little birdie like flies in the woods!"

The evening petered out and too soon waned to its finish. They parted with thrice-told good-nights, reluctant to break the weft of their enchantment. She closed the door after him and stood with her back against it; her lips were curved in a perfect smile.

A door creaked, and footsteps padded down the hall.

"Birdie! Birdie!"

"Yes, mamma!" was all she said, going toward her parent and hiding her pink face in the flannel folds of the maternal wrapper.

"God bless you, Birdie! Such happiness I should wish every mother. Go in, baby, and tell papa. For an engagement present you get--like Ray--two hundred dollars."

Mrs. Katzenstein's face was lyric and her voice furry with emotion. She hastened, her night-room slippers slouching off her feet, into the hall and unhooked the telephone receiver.

"Columbus 5-6-2-4," she whispered, standing on her toes to reach the mouthpiece. "Bamberger's apartment. Batta! Hello, Batta! I know you ain't in bed yet, 'cause you got the poker crowd--not? Batta, I got news for you! Guess! Yes; it just happened--such a surprise, you can believe me! Grand! How happy we are you should know! I want they should start in one of those apartments like yours, Batta. Five rooms and a sleep-out porch is enough for a beginning. You can tell who you want--yes; I don't believe in secrets. Batta, who was the woman that embroidered those towels for your Miriam's trousseau? Yes; both of them gone now! Ain't that the way with raising children? But I wish every girl such a young man! Yes, just think, for a firm like Loeb Brothers--manager yet! Batta, come over the first thing in the morning. Now I got trousseau on my mind again, I think I go to the same woman for the table-linen. Good night. She's in talking to her papa--she'll call you to-morrow. Thank you! Good night! Good-by!... Birdie," she called, through the open doorway, "Mrs. Ginsburg's number is Plaza 8-5-7, ain't it? You think it too late to call her?"

"Yes, mamma, and, anyway, if Aunt Batta knows it that's enough--to-morrow everybody has it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Katzenstein, submissively; but after a moment she turned to the telephone again and unhooked the receiver. "Plaza 8-5-7," she said, in muffled tones.

* * * * *

The evening following, Mrs. Katzenstein greeted her prospective son-in-law with three kisses--one for each cheek and the third for the very center of his mouth. She batted at him playfully with her hand.

"You bad boy, you! What you mean by stealing away our baby? Papa, you come right in here and fight with him."

"Mrs. Katzenstein, for you to give me a girl like Birdie, I don't deserve. She's the grandest girl in the world!"

"He asks me for my Birdie," said Mr. Katzenstein, pumping the young man's arm up and down; "but he asks me after it is all settled and everybody but me knows it--even in the factory to-day I hear about it."

Laughter.

"What could we do, papa--wake you up last night?"

"He should pay your bills awhile, and then he won't feel so glad--ain't it, Birdie?" He pinched his daughter's cheek.

"Marcus took me to lunch at the Kaiserbraeu to-day, papa. He's starting in to pay my bills already."

"Have a cigar, Marcus!"

"Thanks, I don't smoke."

"Well, Marcus, you got a fine girl; and you're a good boy, making good money."

"I told your mamma to-day, Marcus; she got the best of it, and I got the best of it," chuckled Mrs. Katzenstein.

Marcus regarded Birdie in some uneasiness, the color drained out of his face.

"Go on, Marcus," she said, with a note of reassurance in her voice.

"Everything as you say is grand and fine, Mr. Katzenstein, except--except--well, to-day at lunch I told Birdie some news I just heard, which--which maybe won't make you feel so good; I told her it wasn't too late if she wanted to change her mind about me."

"_Ach!_" exclaimed Mrs. Katzenstein, clasping her hands quickly. "Ain't everything all right?"

"What you mean, Marcus?" inquired Mr. Katzenstein, glancing up quickly.

"What's wrong? Ain't everything all right, children?"

"Aw, mamma, it ain't nothing wrong! Don't get so excited over everything."

"Birdie's right, mamma--what you so excited about? What is it you got to say, Marcus?"

"I ain't frightened; but what's the matter, children? This is what we need yet something to happen when it's all fixed!"

"Well, I told Birdie about it at lunch to-day, and--"

There was a pause. Birdie linked her arm within the young man's and regarded her parents like a Nemesis at the bar.

"It isn't so bad as Marcus makes out, papa."

"Well, young man?" questioned Mr. Katzenstein, sharply.

"Well, you don't need to holler at him, papa."

"I got some bad news to-day, Mr. Katzenstein. The raise I was expecting I don't get--instead of twenty-eight hundred dollars I go only to fifteen. Loeb is going to put his son-in-law, Steinfeld, from Cleveland, in the new factory. I still just got the city trade."

"I says to Marcus, papa, it's enough; you and mamma had less than half that much."

"_Ach_, my poor baby! My poor baby!"

"I ain't your poor baby, mamma. It could be worse--believe me--"

"Oh! And I thought he was going to have that grand position and give it to her so fine--how I told everybody; how I--"

"Don't get excited, Salcha! Let's sit quiet and talk it over."

"Such plans as I had for that girl, papa! I had it all fixed that she should have one of those five rooms and a sleeping-out porch over Batta! Already I talked to Tillie that she should go to her."

Mrs. Katzenstein sniffled and wiped each eye with the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Katzenstein."

"That don't get you nowhere, Mr. Gump. If you had only known this last night! Now what will people say?"

"Mamma!"

"Nowadays in New York it ain't like it used to be, Mr. Gump; people can't start in on so little--half of what you make costs Birdie's clothes. _Ach_, when I think what that girl is used to! Every comfort she has--you can't give her like she's used to, Mr. Gump."

"I told all that to Birdie, Mrs. Katzenstein--I can't give her what she's got at home, and she should take her time to decide."

"That's easy enough to say now after it's in everybody's mouth."

"That Loeb Brothers should play you such a trick," said Mr. Katzenstein--"a boy that's built up a trade like you!"

"_Ach_, my baby!" sobbed Mrs. Katzenstein. "And now the whole town already knows it! If only he had known this last night, before it was too late!"

"Salcha, how you talk!"

"My own husband turns against me!"

"That they should start little, mamma, is just so good as they should start big. My boy, you got a good head; and with a good head and a good heart you got just so good a start as you need. Go 'way, you foolisher children! You make me sick with your crying and _gedinks_!"

"Such a father I got, Marcus! What did I tell you, how he would act--what did I tell you?"

She kissed her father lightly on the cheek.

"Go 'way, you children!" he repeated. "You got it too good as it is--ain't it, mamma?"

"I guess you're right, Rudolph; but how I had plans for that girl, papa can tell you, Marcus! You're a good boy, Marcus, and she's got her heart set on you; but I--I hate it how everybody can talk now--something to talk about for them all!"

"They should talk!" said Mr. Katzenstein, lighting a cigar. "And talk and talk!"

"What I ordered embroidered linens enough for five rooms now I don't know, Birdie! If you want him I say you should have him--but how I had plans for that girl!"

"I'll work for her, all right, Mrs. Katzenstein. It will be five rooms before you know it--this don't mean, Mrs. Katzenstein--maw!--that I won't ever get up."

"Kiss me, Marcus," said Mrs. Katzenstein. "That she should be happy is all I care."

"Now, Marcus, we'll go up and see Mamma Gump."

"Get ready, little Birdie," he said.

"Good night, Marcus! You're a good boy, and you'll be good to our baby. Even if she ain't got it so grand, she's got a good husband--that's more than Meena Ginsburg's got."

"Run along, you children," said Mr. Katzenstein. "Here, Marcus, put a cigar in your pocket--one of Goldstein's ten-cent specials."

"I don't smoke, paw," said Marcus.

He went out, his arm linked in Birdie's. Their laughter drifted backward.

Mrs. Katzenstein resumed her chair in the warm glow of the logs--her full face, with the scallop of double chin, was suddenly old and lined; her husband drew up his curved-back rocker beside her.

"Mamma, you shouldn't take on so. Everything comes for the best."

"You can talk, papa! Now I had even told Mrs. Ginsburg for sure she should have one of those Ninety-sixth Street apartments."

"You women folks make me sick! You should be glad we got our health, mamma, and good men for our girls."

"I guess you're right, papa. He's a grand young man!"

"A good boy--_ach_, how tired I am!"

"Stretch out your feet, papa. It's warm by the fire."

The light flickered over their faces and sent long shadows wavering and dancing back of them.

Mr. Katzenstein settled deeper in his chair; his head, bald on top and with a fringe of bristles over the ears, was hunched down between his shoulders.

"You've been a good mother, Salcha."

"Not such a mother as you've been a father--me and them girls never wanted for one thing, even when you couldn't afford it as now."

"Ah--ho!" sighed Mr. Katzenstein.

"You're tired, papa, and it's late. Here, I'll unlace your shoes for you."

"No; in a minute I go to bed--such a back-ache!"

"She's got a good man; and, like you say, that's the main thing," repeated Mrs. Katzenstein, intent on self-conviction. "It ain't always the money."

"_Ya, ya!_" said Mr. Katzenstein.

"Look at us when we was down on Grand Street! We was happy--You remember that green-plush dress I had, papa?"

"Yes, Salcha."

"Don't go to sleep sitting there, papa; you'll take cold."

Mr. Katzenstein's fingers, that were never straight, closed over the veined back of his wife's hand.

"In a minute I go to bed."

"If she had known what was coming when he asked her last night it might be different; but now it's too late, and everything is for the best."

"Yes, mamma."

"She's happy--and that's the main thing."

"Time flies," he said, with his eyes on the flames. "Only yesterday she was a baby!"

"Ain't it so, papa? We had 'em, and we suffered for 'em, and now we give 'em up; that's what it means to raise a family."

"Salcha," he said, his fingers stroking hers gently, "we're getting old--ain't it, old lady?"

"Yes," she said, rocking rhythmically; "twenty-eight years now! We've had good times, and we've had bad times."

"Good--and--bad--times," he repeated.

They watched the flames.

After a while Mr. Katzenstein's head fell forward on his chest and he dozed lightly.

The clock ticked somberly and with increasing loudness; twice it traveled its circle, and twice it tonged the hour. The gas-logs burned steadily and kept the shadows dancing. Off somewhere a dog bayed; a creak, which is one of the noises that belong solely to after midnight, came from the direction of one of the windows.

Mr. Katzenstein woke with a start and jerked his head up.

"Mamma!" he cried, dazed with sleep. "Mamma! Birdie! Mamma!"

"Yes, papa," she replied, smiling at him and with her hand still beneath his; "I'm here."

BREAKERS AHEAD

In the ink-blue shrieking trail of the twenty-two-hour Imperial flyer, Slateville lay stark alongside the singing tracks as if hurtled there like a spark off a speed-hot emery wheel.

The Imperial flyer swooped through the dun-colored village like the glance of a lovely coquette shoots through her victim's heart and leaves it bare.

At eight-one the far-off Imperial voice hallooed through the darkness like a conquering hero whose vanguard is a waving sword which flashes in the sunlight before he and his steed come up out of the horizon.

At eight-four a steam yodel shook the panes and lamp-chimneys of Slateville, a semaphore studded with a ruby stiffened out against the sky, and a white eye--the size of a bicycle-wheel--flashed down the tracks.

Then the howl of a fiend, and a mile-long checkerboard of lighted car-windows, and cinders rattling against them like hail.

A fire-boweled engine with a grimy-faced demon leaning out of his red-hot cab, and, on every alternate night, a green eye with a black pupil which winked a signal from that same heat-roaring cab and from a dirt-colored frame shanty in a dirt-brown yard, where a naked tree stretched its thin arms against the sky, an answering eye which gleamed through a bandana-bound lantern and outlined the Hebe-like silhouette of a woman in the window.

Then the flash of a mahogany-lined dining-car with nodding _vis-a-vis_, pink-shaded candles and white-coated, black-faded genii of the bowl and weal; an occasional vague figure peering through cupped hands out from an electric-lighted berth; a plate-glass observation-car with figures lounging in shallow leather chairs like oil-kings and merchant princes and only sons in a Fifth Avenue club, and a great trailing plume of smoke that lingered for a moment and died in the still tingling air.

For a full half-hour, even an hour, after the Imperial flyer had gouged through the village the yellow lights of Slateville burned on behind its unwashed windows, which were half opaque with train-dust and the grimy finger-prints of children. Then they began to flick out, here, there--here, there. In a slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, in an out-of-balance bookkeeper's office in the Slateville Varnish Factory, in the Red Trunk general store and post-office, the parson's study, a maiden's bedroom, in the dirt-colored frame house, another slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, another, and yet another. Here, there--here, there.

The clerk in the signal-tower slumped in his chair, the doctor's tin-tired buggy rattled up a hilly street that was shaped like a crooked finger, and away beyond the melancholy stretches of close-bitten grazing-land and runty corn-fields the flyer shrieked upward, and the miles scuttled the echoes back to Slateville.

On an alternate night that was as singingly still as the inside of a cup the flyer tore through the village with the cinders tattooing against its panes and the white eye searching like a near-sighted cylcopean monster.

But from the red fireman's cab the green lantern with the black bull's-eye painted on the outward side dangled unlit, and in the dirt-colored house, behind drawn shades, the Hebe-like figure was crouched in another woman's arms, and, in the room adjoining, John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.

Who-o-o-p! Who-o-o-p!

"Listen, Cottie, listen!"

"'Sh-h-h-h, darlin'."

The crouching women crouched closer together, a dove-note in the crooning voice of one like the coo of a mate. "'Sh-h-h, darlin'."

"There it goes, Cottie. Gawd, just like nothing had happened."

"'Sh-h-h, dearie; lay still!"

"Listen. The engine's playin' a different tune on the tracks; it's lighter and smoother."

"Yes--yes--'sh-h-h."

"Just hear, Cottie; they got the old diner on. I know her screech."

"I hear, dearie."

"And the Cleveland sleeper wasn't touched, neither. Hear her. They say she didn't even leave the tracks. He used to say she had a rattle like a dice-box. Just the same, it was the smooth-runnin' Washington sleeper lit on the engine. Listen, Cottie, oh, listen! Just like nothin' had happened."

"Don't tremble so, darlin'. That's life every time--it just rides over its dead."

"He hated the flyer, oh--oh--"

"Don't take on so, Della darlin'. He died on his job."

"He hated the flyer; he--"

"He could have jumped like Jim Dirkey did, and lived to face the shame of it, but he died on his job. You can always say your man died on his job, Della darlin'."

Della raised her crouching head and brushed the hair back from her eyes. Helen's face that launched a thousand ships was no more fair.

"That he did--didn't he, Cottie? He died on his job."

"Sure he did, darlin'--sure he did."

"You remember--you remember, Cottie, the first night they put him on the flyer?"

"Try to forget it, Della, and don't go gettin' all excited--there--there."

"I was over home that night with you and maw, and--and he came in for supper with the news and--and he was like a funeral about bein' promoted."

"Yes, I remember."

"Even with the extra pay he was for stickin' to the accommodation, because he loved her insides."

"And because it was a chance to spite you."

"But I--I was all for the flyer. I told him he was afraid of her speed, and he hauled off and nearly hit me for callin' him a coward before you and maw, and you up and--"

"He was rough with you, Della, but he wouldn't 'a' dared do it with me there. I had him bluffed, all righty; he wouldn't 'a' done it with me and maw there."

"Lots maw would 'a' cared. Poor maw! She never knew nothing else but abuse, herself."

"Paw wasn't so bad, Della--he always brought home the envelope."

"John--he made me eat the words when we got home that night; but, just the samey, he--he wouldn't 'a' took the Imperial, Cottie, if I hadn't nagged him to it--he wouldn't have!"

"Well, what if he wouldn't? You wouldn't 'a' married him, neither, if he hadn't nagged you to it when paw died, and he knew you had a stepmother that was devilin' and abusin' the life out of us--you."

"He used to say, when he came home with a face as black as a crazy devil's, that coaling the flyer was just like stoking hell. She ate and ate and bellowed for more. He hated the flyer, he did. He stoked her with more hate than coal, and I drove him to it, Cottie. I put the hole in his head."

"Aw, no, dearie! Nobody ever made John Blaney do nothing he didn't want to do. He's dead now and can't take up for hisself, but he was hard as nails--even if he was my brother-in-law."

"'Sh-h-h, Cottie, little sister."

"I always say, Della, Gawd knows I ain't got a cinch! I hate the factory like I hate a green devil, and you know what it is to live around maw's doggin' and abuse, but it's like I tole Joe the other night: I wouldn't marry the finest man livin' before I'd had my chance to try out what I had my heart set on. I told him he could save his breath. I'm goin' to take a chance on gettin' out of this dump--not on tyin' up to it."

"Joe's a good boy, Cottie. He's a saint alongside of what John was. Steady fellows and foremen ain't layin' around loose, dearie. He's a good boy, Cottie--none finer."

"Della! You ain't--"

"No; I ain't urgin' you, Cottie. I ain't sayin' you're not right to hold off, but Joe's the finest boy in these parts, ain't he?"

"That ain't sayin' much. You wasn't a big-enough gambler, Della. You remember how I begged you the night before the wedding to hold off. I ain't goin' to make your mistake. You ought 'a' done what Lily done--took a chance. Tessie says her pictures were all pasted up outside of Indianapolis last week. Lily Divette in the 'Twinkling Belles.' If Lily Maloney with her baby face and--"

"I--I stuck to John to the end, though--didn't I, Cottie? Nobody can say I didn't stick to him--can they, Cottie?"

"No, no! Now don't go gettin' excited again, dearie."

"Oh, Gawd, Gawd, Cottie. I--I feel--so--so--queer!"

"Yes, darlin', I know!"

The cryptic quiescence of death hung over the unpainted pine bedchamber and chilled their skin like damp in a cave seeps through clothing. From the far side of the bed a lamp wavered against a tin reflector and danced through their hair like firelight in copper; wind galloped over the flat country, shook the box-shaped house, and whinnied on every flue.

Cottie, whose head was Tiziano's Flora yet more radiant, held her sister's equally radiant head close to her warm bosom, and through the calico of her open-at-the-throat waist, her heart pumped the organ-prelude of Life--Life in the midst of Death.

"Della darlin'--don't--don't be afraid to talk to me. Ain't--ain't I your--sister?"

"What--what--"

"I--I know--what you're thinkin', Della--"

"'Sh-h-h; not now!"

"You're thinkin' that you're--that you're _free_, now, darlin'--free--ain't you?"

"'Sh-h-h-h!"

"Free, darlin'--think--there ain't nothin' can hold you! A hundred dollars' benefit-money and--"

"Gawd, Cottie--Cottie--'sh-h-h! Him layin' in there dead! It--it ain't no time to talk about that now. Anyways, you're the one to go. I'll stay with maw."

Her words tumbled, and her tones were galvanized with fear and fear's offspring, superstition. She glanced toward the half-open door with eyes two shades too dark.

"No, no, Della; you're the oldest. You go first, and I--I'll stick it out with maw till--she's gettin' feebler every day, Delia, and I'll be joinin' you some day not far off."

"'Sh-h-h; it ain't right. I--I'll give her--half the benefit-money, Cottie, but it's a sin to--"

"You and folks make me sick. If the devil hisself was to die you'd snivel and bury him in priest's robes. What John _was_ he _was_--dyin' didn't change it. Ten days ago you were standin' at this very window answering his signal and hating him with every swing of the lantern."

"Cottie, you mustn't!"

"I used to see you sit across from him at the table, and when he yelled at you or wanted to pet you I've seen you run your finger-nails into you palms from hatin' him, clear in till they bled, like you used to do when you was a kid and hated any one, and now, just because he's dead--"

"Oh, Gawd, I never done the right thing by him! He was my husband. Look how bare I kept everything from him. He used to come home from a forty-eight-hour shift and say this house reminded him of hell with the fire gone out. I never did the right thing by him."

"He didn't by you, neither."

"He was my husband."

"He knew if we'd 'a' had the money to light out and do like Lily he wouldn't 'a' stood a show of bein' your husband, though. He knew, from the day they put the bandages on maw's eyes, thet he was just the only way out for us. He knew one of us had to quit the factory and stay home with her--and where was the money comin' from? He knew."

"Yes, he knew, Cottie. Even on the New York accommodation, that time on the wedding-trip, trouble began right off. When that fellow on the train got talkin' to me and told me he could give me a job in the biggest show on Broadway, he nearly hauled off and raised a row right there on the train when he came back and seen me talkin' to him."

"If only you'd got the fellow's name, Della, and his street in New York!"

"How could I, when John came back and began snarlin' like--"

"Would you know him if you seen him again, Della? Think, darlin', would you?"

"Would I? In my sleep I'd know him. He was a short fellow with eyes so little they didn't show when he laughed, and a mouth full of gold teeth that stuck out like a buck's. And say, Cottie, for diamonds! A diamond horseshoe scarf-pin as big as a dollar!"

"There's money in it, Della. Look at Lily. Tessie says she's diamond rings to her knuckles."

"John knew what took the life out of me, from that day on. He used to say if he ever laid eyes on that little bullet-headed, rat-eyed sport, as he called him, he'd shake the life out of him. Just like that!"

"Faugh! he wouldn't 'a' had the nerve!"

"Don't you forget he knew what was eatin' us, Cottie."

"Well, wasn't it our right--a beauty like you in this dump?"

"And you?"

Their faces, startlingly alike, were upturned, and in their eyes was the golden fluid of dawn.

"He knew. You remember that letter Lily wrote when you asked her to get you in her show?"

"Do I?"

"He found it in my pocket one night and read it, and laughed and laughed. He used to know it by heart, and he'd cackle it to me whenever he caught me red-eyed from cryin'."

"That letter she wrote out of jealousy? He seen that?"