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THE VERTICAL CITY
By
FANNIE HURST
_Author of_
"GASLIGHT SONATAS"
"HUMORESQUE"
ETC.
1922
CONTENTS
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
BACK PAY
THE VERTICAL CITY
THE SMUDGE
GUILTY
ROULETTE
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY
By that same architectural gesture of grief which caused Jehan at Agrato erect the Taj Mahal in memory of a dead wife and a cold hearthstone,so the Bon Ton hotel, even to the pillars with red-freckled monolithsand peacock-backed lobby chairs, making the analogy rather absurdlycomplete, reared its fourteen stories of "elegantly furnished suites,all the comforts and none of the discomforts of home."
A mausoleum to the hearth. And as true to form as any that ever mournedthe dynastic bones of an Augustus or a Hadrian.
An Indiana-limestone and Vermont-marble tomb to Hestia.
All ye who enter here, at sixty dollars a week and up, leave behind thelingo of the fireside chair, parsley bed, servant problem, cretonne shoebags, hose nozzle, striped awnings, attic trunks, bird houses, ice-creamsalt, spare-room matting, bungalow aprons, mayonnaise receipt, fruitjars, spring painting, summer covers, fall cleaning, winter apples.
The mosaic tablet of the family hotel is nailed to the room side of eachdoor and its commandments read something like this:
One ring: Bell Boy.
Two rings: Chambermaid.
Three rings: Valet.
Under no conditions are guests permitted to use electric irons in rooms.
Cooking in rooms not permitted.
No dogs allowed.
Management not responsible for loss or theft of jewels. Same can be deposited for safe-keeping in the safe at office.
* * * * *
Note:
Our famous two-dollar Table d'Hote dinner is served in the Red Dining Room from six-thirty to eight. Music.
It is doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel BonTon boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along theforefinger that tattles so of potato peeling or asparagus scraping.
The fourteenth-story manicure, steam bath, and beauty parlors saw toall that. In spite of long bridge table, lobby divan, and table-d'hoteseances, "tea" where the coffee was served with whipped cream and thetarts built in four tiers and mortared in mocha filling, the Bon Tonhotel was scarcely more than an average of fourteen pounds overweight.
Forty's silhouette, except for that cruel and irrefutable place wherethe throat will wattle, was almost interchangeable with eighteen's.Indeed, Bon Ton grandmothers with backs and French heels that weretwenty years younger than their throats and bunions, vied with twenty'sprofile.
Whistler's kind of mother, full of sweet years that were richer becauseshe had dwelt in them, but whose eyelids were a little weary, had noplace there.
Mrs. Gronauer, who occupied an outside, southern-exposure suite offive rooms and three baths, jazzed on the same cabaret floor with hergranddaughters.
Many the Bon Ton afternoon devoted entirely to the possible lackof length of the new season's skirts or the intricacies of the newfilet-lace patterns.
Fads for the latest personal accoutrements gripped the Bon Ton inseasonal epidemics.
The permanent wave swept it like a tidal one.
In one winter of afternoons enough colored-silk sweaters were knitted inthe lobby alone to supply an orphan asylum, but didn't.
The beaded bag, cunningly contrived, needleful by needleful, from littlestrands of colored-glass caviar, glittered its hour.
Filet lace came then, sheerly, whole yokes of it for crepe-de-Chinenightgowns and dainty scalloped edges for camisoles.
Mrs. Samstag made six of the nightgowns that winter--three for herselfand three for her daughter. Peach-blowy pink ones with lace yokes thatwere scarcely more to the skin than the print of a wave edge running upsand, and then little frills of pink-satin ribbon, caught up here andthere with the most delightful and unconvincing little blue-satinrosebuds.
It was bad for her neuralgic eye, the meanderings of the filet pattern,but she liked the delicate threadiness of the handiwork, and Mr. Latzliked watching her.
There you have it! Straight through the lacy mesh of the filet to theheart interest.
Mr. Louis Latz, who was too short, slightly too stout, and too shyof likely length of swimming arm ever to have figured in any woman'sinevitable visualization of her ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly,to watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked thempassive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them betweenhis own, but that had never been.
Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. Thatvery morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment,strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansivetree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly andvery badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them.
Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swiftlance.
He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and thedry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads.
Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but justas correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short.Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked.
Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger.
On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby,Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself downon a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread,taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, buthe sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers upinto a little chapel.
"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smileencompassing the question.
"If I was any better I couldn't stand it," relishing her smile and hisreply.
The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _a la_ Bon Ton,mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _saute_, choice of or both _pouletteemince_ and spring lamb _grignon_, and on through to fresh strawberryice cream in fluted paper boxes, _petits fours_, and _demi-tasse_.Groups of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitationalplush divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinnerstanding penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slidsurreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand.Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteenhanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across ahardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered inbare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply,patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement andeager to excel in return badinage.
Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed.
The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off men.Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like asquaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and anaftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emergedfrom the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law.
"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing hisown kind of cognizance of the scented trail.
"_Fleur de printemps_," said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis."Eight-ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thoughtthe cunning perfection of a sniff.
"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max Gronauerwhen he first st
arted in the produce business in Jersey City and theonly perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not always freshkilled at that. _Cold storage de printemps_!"
"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband," said Mrs. Samstag,tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace handkerchief, itselfguilty of a not inexpensive attar.
"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort.
"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs.Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for agrandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almosteight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scentedsigh.
He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wantingto seem appropriate.
"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble."
"Share," she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of hereyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma,Mr. Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My oneconsolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto inlife, 'Keep a bold front.'"
For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleedingquality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!"
"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!"
There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefullytrimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and whatthreatened to be a slight depth of flesh across the shoulders had beencarefully massaged of this tendency, fifteen minutes each night andmorning, by her daughter.
In fact, through the black transparency of her waist Mr. Latz thoughther plumply adorable.
It was about the eyes that Mrs. Samstag showed most plainly whateverinroads into her clay the years might have gained. There were littledark areas beneath them like smeared charcoal, and two unrelenting sacsthat threatened to become pouchy.
Their effect was not so much one of years, but they gave Mrs. Samstag,in spite of the only slightly plump and really passable figure, the lookof one out of health. Women of her kind of sallowness can be found dailyin fashionable physicians' outer offices, awaiting X-ray appointments.
What ailed Mrs. Samstag was hardly organic. She was the victim ofperiodic and raging neuralgic fires that could sweep the right side ofher head and down into her shoulder blade with a great crackling andblazing of nerves. It was not unusual for her daughter Alma to sit upthe one or two nights that it could endure, unfailing through the weehours in her chain of hot applications.
For a week, sometimes, these attacks heralded their comings with littlejabs, like the pricks of an exploring needle. Then the under-eyes beganto look their muddiest. They were darkening now and she put up twofingers with a little pressing movement to her temple.
"You're a great little woman," reiterated Mr. Latz, rather riveting evenMrs. Samstag's suspicion that here was no great stickler for variety ofexpression.
"I try to be," she said, his tone inviting out in her a mood of sweetforbearance.
"And a great sufferer, too," he said, noting the pressing fingers.
She colored under this delightful impeachment.
"I wouldn't wish one of my neuralgia spells to my worst enemy, Mr.Latz."
"If you were mine--I mean--if--the--say--was mine--I wouldn't stop untilI had you to every specialist in Europe. I know a thing or two aboutthose fellows over there. Some of them are wonders."
Mrs. Samstag looked off, her profile inclined to lift and fall as if bylittle pulleys of emotion.
"That's easier said than done, Mr. Latz, by a--widow who wants to doright by her grown daughter and living so--high since the war."
"I--I--" said Mr. Latz, leaping impulsively forward on the chair thatwas as tightly upholstered in effect as he in his modish suit, thenclutching himself there as if he had caught the impulse on the fly, "Ijust wish I could help."
"Oh!" she said, and threw up a swift brown look from the lace making andthen at it again.
He laughed, but from nervousness.
"My little mother was an ailer, too."
"That's me, Mr. Latz. Not sick--just ailing. I always say that it'sridiculous that a woman in such perfect health as I am should be such asufferer."
"Same with her and her joints."
"Why, except for this old neuralgia, I can outdo Alma when it comesto dancing down in the grill with the young people of an evening, orshopping."
"More like sisters than any mother and daughter I ever saw."
"Mother and daughter, but which is which from the back, some of myfriends put it," said Mrs. Samstag, not without a curve to her voice;then, hastily: "But the best child, Mr. Latz. The best that ever lived.A regular little mother to me in my spells."
"Nice girl, Alma."
"It snowed so the day of--my husband's funeral. Why, do you know that upto then I never had an attack of neuralgia in my life. Didn't even knowwhat a headache was. That long drive. That windy hilltop with two men tokeep me from jumping into the grave after him. Ask Alma. That's how Icare when I care. But, of course, as the saying is, 'time heals.' Butthat's how I got my first attack. 'Intenseness' is what the doctorscalled it. I'm terribly intense."
"I--guess when a woman like you--cares like--you--cared, it's not muchuse hoping you would ever--care again. That's about the way of it, isn'tit?"
If he had known it, there was something about his intensity ofexpression to inspire mirth. His eyebrows lifted to little Gothic archesof anxiety, a rash of tiny perspiration broke out over his blue shavedface, and as he sat on the edge of his chair it seemed that inevitablythe tight sausagelike knees must push their way through mere fabric.
Ordinarily he presented the slightly bay-windowed, bay-rummed, spatted,and somewhat jowled well-being of the Wall Street bachelor who is amusical-comedy first-nighter, can dig the meat out of the lobster clawwhole, takes his beefsteak rare and with two or three condiments, andwears his elk's tooth dangling from his waistcoat pocket and mounted ona band of platinum and tiny diamonds.
Mothers of debutantes were by no means unamiably disposed toward him,but the debutantes themselves slithered away like slim-flanked minnows.
It was rumored that one summer at the Royal Palisades Hotel in AtlanticCity he had become engaged to a slim-flanked one from Akron, Ohio. Buton the evening of the first day she had seen him in a bathing suit therebellious young girl and a bitterly disappointed and remonstratingmother had departed on the Buck Eye for "points west."
There was almost something of the nudity of arm and leg he must havepresented to eighteen's tender sensibilities in Mr. Latz's expressionnow as he sat well forward on the overstuffed chair, his overstuffedknees strained apart, his face nude of all pretense and creased withanxiety.
"That's about the way of it, isn't it?" he said again into the growingsilence.
Suddenly Mrs. Samstag's fingers were rigid at their task of lace making,the scraping of the orchestral violin tearing the roaring noises in herears into ribbons of alternate sound and vacuum, as if she were closingher ears and opening them, so roaringly the blood pounded.
"I--When a woman cares for--a man like--I did--Mr. Latz, she'll neverbe happy until--she cares again--like that. I always say, once anaffectionate nature, always an affectionate nature."
"You mean," he said, leaning forward the imperceptible half inch thatwas left of chair--"you mean--me--?"
The smell of bay rum came out greenly then as the moisture sprang out onhis scalp.
"I--I'm a home woman, Mr. Latz. You can put a fish in water, but youcannot make him swim. That's me and hotel life."
At this somewhat cryptic apothegm Mr. Latz's knee touched Mrs.Samstag's, so that he sprang back full of nerves at what he had notintended.
"Marry me, Carrie," he said, more abruptly than he might have, withoutthe act of that knee to immediately justify.
She spread the lace out on her lap.
Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawnysoup was cold to-night,"
or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolsonpulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than everin Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rushing inflashes over his body.
"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips couldrepeat their incredible feat.
With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang.
"Mr. Latz--"
"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture.
"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placedher hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there withhis kisses.
"God bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would makeit so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, thisgetting it said. Carrie, will you?"
"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--"
"Loo--"
"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you readabout."
"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up tofive years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had wasalive, I never had eyes for a woman or--"
"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--"
"Loo."
"Loo."
"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that justwalked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback,Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when shewas helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that littlestooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it upto her. Y'understand?"
"Yes--Loo."
"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years beforeshe died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me backeighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than thatit cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped mylittle old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat.
"I had some friends lived in the Grenoble Apartments when you did--theAdelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels andshe never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to siton it.
"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting,without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman inthe world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem."
Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light.
"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, butask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!"
"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngsterin years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--"
"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger."
"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother'sdeath, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girlwith her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think aboutit--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. Icouldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, anymore than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matchesthat we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it wastoo late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible tomy own age."
"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie thatgives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearerto forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"
"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just yourdoing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent."
"I'm--that way."
"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in thishotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But atheart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess,you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?"
"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"
"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proudof."
"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death Ihaven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'"
"I knew it!"
"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in thehouse I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after myhusband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers offthe furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'Forwhat should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half thetime with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a coldsnack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. Butwith no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--"
"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used totelephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew thelittle mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eatenough herself to keep a bird alive."
"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr.Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, andnaturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. Peoplethink I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider anda young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on myseventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in ahotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but justthe same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from thestart."
"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it."
"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd ajobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, youknow how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out withconscientiousness."
"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you justsaid about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford foryourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Streetalone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousandlast year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you sayyes?"
"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean onher so."
"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in hermother's light."
"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family."
"That don't scare me."
"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through andthrough. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby toomuch to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself.She's precious to me, Louis."
"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I wouldwant you to feel different?"
"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children,she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spendthe night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it,but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takescare of me."
"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a roomfor her."
"Loo!"
"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascalFriedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better businesshead you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Daytonthe other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a bignew clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out oftheir eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical SupplyCompany doubled their excess-profit tax last year."
A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs.Samstag into a rigid pallor.
"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their daughtersoff. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's best youknow it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I have tohave my little girl with me!"
He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist.
"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to mefurther what a grand little woman you are!"
"You'll like Alma,
when you get to know her, Louis."
"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing."
"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that isreserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's thekind of a child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book orher sewing than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now."
"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay youngchickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before theystart than my little mother did when she finished."
"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bitof it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. Morelike the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me,Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not mybaby."
"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be afine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to pleaseher as a father. Carrie, will you have me?"
"Oh, Louis--Loo!"
"Carrie, my dear!"
And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into theirbetrothal.
* * * * *
None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning highon her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that eveningturned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room.
The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery,ornamental portieres on brass rings that grated, and the equidistantFrench engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames.
But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with agreen-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two gilt-framedphotographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the white mantel.A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift poets and somecirculating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately owned and drawnup, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its headrest wornfrom kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow.
From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up ather mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her cheekwas a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting in thepalm of her hand.
"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching onthe ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late."
There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a littledawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousnessthat her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that thepupils of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to youngLeo Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactlythe shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into hisheart.
And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was that kind oftimid adolescence about her, and yet when she said, "Mamma, you stayeddown so late," the bang of a little pistol shot was back somewhere inher voice.
"Why--Mr. Latz--and--I--sat and talked."
An almost imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's righttemple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge of pain.
"You're all right, mamma?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Samstag, and sat down on a divan, its naked greennessrelieved by a thrown scarf of black velvet stenciled in gold.
"You shouldn't have remained down so long if your head is hurting," saidher daughter, and quite casually took up her mother's beaded hand bagwhere it had fallen in her lap, but her fingers feeling lightly andfurtively as if for the shape of its contents.
"Stop that," said Mrs. Samstag, jerking it back, a dull anger in hervoice.
"Come to bed, mamma. If you're in for neuralgia, I'll fix the electricpad."
Suddenly Mrs. Samstag shot out her arm, rather slim-looking in theinvariable long sleeve she affected, drawing Alma back toward her by theribbon sash of her pretty chiffon frock.
"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her."
The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's gropingalong the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner.
"Mamma--you haven't--?"
"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma isvery happy about."
"Mamma, you've broken your promise again."
"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?"
"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--"
"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamedHeyman."
"Mamma, I don't understand."
"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. Buteverything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leafthat everything is going to be happiness in this family."
"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that."
"Alma, look at me."
"Mamma, you--you frighten me."
"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?"
"Why, yes, mamma. Very much."
"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?"
"You mean--?"
"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying aroundloose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himselfup from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire."
"Mamma?"
"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close.He asked me to-night."
"What?"
"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have."
"Seen what?"
"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been asgrieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, andhe--asked me to-night."
There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smearedthere by a hand.
"Asked you what?"
"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day Iburied him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer,steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."
"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?"
"Alma?"
There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon andMiss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little facestiff with the clench of her mouth.
"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!"
A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so thatshe slanted backward, holding her throat.
"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own childagainst me!"
"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody."
"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child whena good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's mythanks for making my child my first consideration--before I acceptedhim."
"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing likethat!"
Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a littlescream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small andstricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where shestood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.
"Alma!"
It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was hercoolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice.
"You can't marry Louis Latz."
"Can't I? Watch me."
"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!"
"Do what?"
"That!"
Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in anagony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold.
"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to myown child!"
"Oh--mamma--!"
"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia andDoctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of whathappiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't wanthappiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter willsee to that. Oh, I know what is o
n your mind. You want to make me outsomething--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to helpmyself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor'sorders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out somethingterrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave hisprescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself."
She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slipperywith them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her ownface swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her motherinto the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there.
"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. Iblame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I knowyour fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize.Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you'recured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma,you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!"
"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enoughto travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel.Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through thislast year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught theneuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--"
"Mamma, don't talk like that!"
"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this bighotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--"
"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves asweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--"
"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and theywill never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one tohumiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the wayhe did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help meGod if I ever give in to--it again."
"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often,only to break your promise."
"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't beentortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--"
"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frighteningpart. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That'swhat's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it theselast months. Just from--desire."
Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands.
"O God! My own child against me!"
"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet andgood you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together andwin! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you'vebeen nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of youand--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment ofour own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take upstenography or social ser--"
"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. Ayoung man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't lethim come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, Iknow--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what Iam, and mine, too!"
Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks.
"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well."
"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color upwhen he--"
"Mamma, how can you?"
"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--"
"No!"
"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him formine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. Theminute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby,fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about mewould hold me back? See, Alma?"
"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--"
"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me.Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weakwoman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal youaway from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!"
"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you."
"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to getrid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said ithimself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'"
"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!"
"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a littlewhile that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a goodman! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night hewants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia."
"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!"
"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so littleas I do--now."
"You've said that before--and before."
"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a newlife. I know it. I'm cured!"
"Mamma, if I thought you meant it."
"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case ofneuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad.I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over."
"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right."
"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'drather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live tolearn such a--thing about me."
"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hopeyou're cured now, but--"
"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! Youdon't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until Ikill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to LouisLatz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don'ttell--don't tell!"
"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you.Never."
"Say it again."
"Never."
"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. Butit's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured."
There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke ofher tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling shecould no longer control racing through her like a chill.
"Oh--how--I hope so!"
"I know so."
"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year."
"No! No!"
"A few months."
"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma'scured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me God to keep mypromises to you! Cured, Alma, cured."
And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost toherself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss toher mother that night was the long one of felicitation.
And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of womanto woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric padunder her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked,these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night.
"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman thatmarries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got fromhis mother."
"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again."
"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideasof a good man."
"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever."
"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turnnow, Alma, to be care free like other girls."
"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me."
"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'"
"I'll never leave you!"
"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won'tstand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm notalone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chanceto--pop--"
"Shh--sh--h--h!"
"Don't tremble so, darling. Mam
ma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer lastnight when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for theConvalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white,because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag."
"Oh, mamma!"
"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyesoff you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the samething about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have tohold him off any more."
"I'll never leave you. Never!"
Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in thedark with the secret of her blushes.
Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raginghead tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard withcruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises thatcan make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevatordepositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. Atrain's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creakwhich lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. Bythree o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, andher pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching layof he cheek.
Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest,floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was verydrowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back asshe said:
"Mamma, you all right?"
Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathingresumed its light cadence.
Then at four o'clock the kind of nervousness that Mrs. Samstag hadlearned to fear began to roll over her in waves, locking her throat andcurling her toes and fingers and her tongue up dry against the roof ofher mouth.
She must concentrate now--must steer her mind away from the craving!
Now then: West End Avenue. Louis liked the apartments there. Luxurious.Quiet. Residential. Circassian walnut or mahogany dining room? Almashould decide. A baby-grand piano. Later to be Alma's engagement giftfrom "mamma and--papa." No, "mamma and Louis." Better so.
How her neck and her shoulder blade and now her elbow were flaming withthe pain. She cried a little, quite silently, and tried a poor, futilescheme for easing her head in the crotch of her elbow.
Now then: She must knit Louis some neckties. The silk-sweater stitchwould do. Married in a traveling suit. One of those smart dark-bluetwills like Mrs. Gronauer, junior's. Topcoat--sable. Louis' hairthinning. Tonic. O God! let me sleep! Please, God! The wheeze rising inher closed throat. That little threatening desire that must not shapeitself! It darted with the hither and thither of a bee bumbling againsta garden wall. No! No! Ugh! the vast chills of nervousness. The flaming,the craving chills of desire!
Just this last giving-in. This one. To be rested and fresh for himto-morrow. Then never again. The little beaded hand bag. O God! help me!That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousandthousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated.They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in herhead; the crackle of lightning down that arm--
"Let me see--Circassian walnut--baby grand--" The pores demanding,crying--shrieking--
It was then that Carrie Samstag, even in her lovely pink nightdress acrone with pain, and the cables out dreadfully in her neck, began byinfinitesimal processes to swing herself gently to the side of the bed,unrelaxed inch by unrelaxed inch, softly and with the cunning born oftravail.
It was actually a matter of fifteen minutes, that breathless swingtoward the floor, the mattress rising after her with scarcely a whisperand her two bare feet landing patly into the pale-blue room slippers,there beside the bed.
Then her bag, the beaded one on the end of the divan. The slow, tautfeeling for it and the floor that creaked twice, starting the sweat outover her.
It was finally after more tortuous saving of floor creaks and theinterminable opening and closing of a door that Carrie Samstag, thebeaded bag in her hand, found herself face to face with herself in themirror of the bathroom medicine chest.
She was shuddering with one of the hot chills. The needle and littleglass piston out of the hand bag and with a dry little insuck of breath,pinching up little areas of flesh from her arm, bent on a good firmperch, as it were.
There were undeniable pockmarks on Mrs. Samstag's right forearm.Invariably it sickened her to see them. Little graves. Oh! oh! littlegraves! For Alma. Herself. And now Louis. Just once. Just one morelittle grave--
And Alma, answering her somewhere down in her heartbeats: "No, mamma.No, mamma! No! No! No!"
But all the little pores gaping. Mouths! The pinching up of the skin.Here, this little clean and white area.
"No, mamma! No, mamma! No! No! No!"
"Just once, darling?" Oh--oh--little graves for Alma and Louis. No! No!No!
Somehow, some way, with all the little mouths still parched and gapingand the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found herback to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and theconflagration of neuralgia, curiously enough, was now roaring in herears so that it seemed to her she could hear her pain.
Her daughter lay asleep, with her face to the wall, her flowing hairspread in a fan against the pillow and her body curled up cozily. Theremaining hours of the night, in a kind of waking faint she could neverfind the words to describe, Mrs. Samstag, with that dreadful dew of hersweat constantly out over her, lay with her twisted lips to the faintperfume of that fan of Alma's flowing hair, her toes curling in and out.Out and in. Toward morning she slept. Actually, sweetly, and deeply, asif she could never have done with deep draughts of it.
She awoke to the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into theirapartment for about eight minutes of each forenoon.
Alma was at the pretty chore of lifting the trays from a hamper ofroses. She placed a shower of them on her mother's coverlet with a kiss,a deeper and dearer one, somehow, this morning.
There was a card, and Mrs. Samstag read it and laughed:
Good morning, Carrie. Louis.
They seemed to her, poor dear, these roses, to be pink with the glory ofthe coming of the dawn.
* * * * *
On the spur of the moment and because the same precipitate decision thatdetermined Louis Latz's successes in Wall Street determined him here,they were married the following Thursday in Lakewood, New Jersey,without even allowing Carrie time for the blue-twill traveling suit. Shewore her brown-velvet, instead, looking quite modish, a sable wrap, giftof the groom, lending genuine magnificence.
Alma was there, of course, in a beautiful fox scarf, also gift of thegroom, and locked in a pale kind of tensity that made her seem morethan ever like a little white flower to Leo Friedlander, the sole otherattendant, and who during the ceremony yearned at her with his gaze. Buther eyes were squeezed tight against his, as if to forbid herself theconsciousness that life seemed suddenly so richly sweet to her--oh, sorichly sweet!
* * * * *
There was a time during the first months of the married life of Louisand Carrie Latz when it seemed to Alma, who in the sanctity of herlovely little ivory bedroom all appointed in rose enamel toilet trifles,could be prayerful with the peace of it, that the old Carrie, who couldcome pale and terrible out of her drugged nights, belonged to somegrimacing and chimeric past. A dead past that had buried its dead andits hatchet.
There had been a month at a Hot Springs in the wintergreen heart ofVirginia, and whatever Louis may have felt in his heart of his right tothe privacy of these honeymoon days was carefully belied on his lips,and at Alma's depriving him now and then of his wife's company, packingher off to rest when he wanted a climb with her up a mountain slope or adrive over piny roads, he could still smile and pinch her cheek.
"You're stingy to me with my wife, Alma," he said to her upon one ofthese provocations. "I don't believe she's got a daughter at all, but alittle policeman inste
ad."
And Alma smiled back, out of the agony of her constant consciousnessthat she was insinuating her presence upon him, and resolutely, so thather fear for him should always subordinate her fear of him, she bit downher sensitiveness in proportion to the rising tide of his growing, butstill politely held in check, bewilderment.
Once, these first weeks of their marriage, because she saw the dreadedsignal of the muddy pools under her mother's eyes and the littlequivering nerve beneath the temple, she shut him out of her presence fora day and a night, and when he came fuming up every few minutes from thehotel veranda, miserable and fretting, met him at the closed door of hermother's darkened room and was adamant.
"It won't hurt if I tiptoe in and sit with her," he pleaded.
"No, Louis. No one knows how to get her through these spells like I do.The least excitement will only prolong her pain."
He trotted off, then, down the hotel corridor, with a strut to hisresentment that was bantam and just a little fighty.
That night as Alma lay beside her mother, holding off sleep andwatching, Carrie rolled her eyes side-wise with the plea of a strickendog in them.
"Alma," she whispered, "for God's sake! Just this once. To tide me over.One shot--darling. Alma, if you love me?"
Later there was a struggle between them that hardly bears relating. Alamp was overturned. But toward morning, when Carrie lay exhausted, butat rest in her daughter's arms, she kept muttering in her sleep:
"Thank you, baby. You saved me. Never leave me, Alma.Never--never--never. You saved me, Alma."
And then the miracle of those next months. The return to New York. Thehappily busy weeks of furnishing and the unlimited gratifications of thewell-filled purse. The selection of the limousine with the special bodythat was fearfully and wonderfully made in mulberry upholstery withmother-of-pearl caparisons. The fourteen-room apartment on West EndAvenue with four baths, drawing-room of pink-brocaded walls, andCarrie's Roman bathroom that was precisely as large as her old hotelsitting room, with two full-length wall mirrors, a dressing tablecanopied in white lace over white satin, and the marble bath itself, twosteps down and with rubber curtains that swished after.
There were evenings when Carrie, who loved the tyranny of things withwhat must have been a survival within her of the bazaar instinct, wouldfall asleep almost directly after dinner, her head back against herhusband's shoulder, roundly tired out after a day all cluttered up withmatching the blue upholstery of their bedroom with taffeta bed hangings.Shopping for a strip of pantry linoleum that was just the desired slatecolor. Calculating with electricians over the plugs for floor lamps.Herself edging pantry shelves in cotton lace.
Latz liked her so, with her fragrantly coiffured head, scarcely gray,back against his shoulder, and with his newspapers, Wall Street journalsand the comic weeklies which he liked to read, would sit an entireevening thus, moving only when his joints rebelled, his pipe smokecarefully directed away from her face.
Weeks and weeks of this, and already Louis Latz's trousers were a littleout of crease, and Mrs. Latz, after eight o'clock and under cover of avery fluffy and very expensive negligee, would unhook her stays.
Sometimes friends came in for a game of small-stake poker, but after thesecond month they countermanded the standing order for Saturday nightmusical-comedy seats. So often they discovered it was pleasanter toremain at home. Indeed, during these days of household adjustment, asmany as four evenings a week Mrs. Latz dozed there against her husband'sshoulder, until about ten, when he kissed her awake to forage with himin the great white porcelain refrigerator and then to bed.
And Alma. Almost she tiptoed through these months. Not that herscorching awareness of what must have lain low in Louis' mind everdiminished. Sometimes, although still never by word, she could see thedispleasure mount in his face.
If she entered in on a tete-a-tete, as she did once, when by chance shehad sniffed the curative smell of spirits of camphor on the air of aroom through which her mother had passed, and came to drag her off thatnight to share her own lace-covered-and-ivory bed.
Again, upon the occasion of an impulsively planned motor trip andweek-end to Long Beach, her intrusion had been so obvious.
"Want to join us, Alma?"
"Oh--yes--thank you, Louis."
"But I thought you and Leo were--"
"No, no. I'd rather go with you and mamma, Louis."
Even her mother had smiled rather strainedly. Louis' invitation,politely uttered, had said so plainly, "Are we two never to be alone,your mother and I?"
Oh, there was no doubt that Louis Latz was in love and with all thedelayed fervor of first youth.
There was something rather throat-catching about his treatment of hermother that made Alma want to cry.
He would never tire of marveling, not alone at the wonder of her, but atthe wonder that she was his.
"No man has ever been as lucky in women as I have, Carrie," he told heronce in Alma's hearing. "It seemed to me that after--my little motherthere couldn't ever be another--and now you!"
At the business of sewing some beads on a lamp shade Carrie looked up,her eyes dewy.
"And I felt that way about one good husband," she said, "and now I seethere could be two."
Alma tiptoed out.
The third month of this she was allowing Leo Friedlander his twoevenings a week. Once to the theater in a modish little sedan carwhich Leo drove himself. One evening at home in the rose-and-mauvedrawing-room. It delighted Louis and Carrie slyly to have in theirfriends for poker over the dining-room table these evenings, leaving theyoung people somewhat indirectly chaperoned until as late as midnight.Louis' attitude with Leo was one of winks, quirks, slaps on the back,and the curving voice of innuendo.
"Come on in, Leo; the water's fine!"
"Louis!" This from Alma, stung to crimson and not arch enough to feignthat she did not understand.
"Loo, don't tease," said Carrie, smiling, but then closing her eyes asif to invoke help to want this thing to come to pass.
But Leo was frankly the lover, kept not without difficulty on theedge of his ardor. A city youth with gymnasium-bred shoulders, fine,pole-vaulter's length of limb, and a clean tan skin that bespoke colddrubbings with Turkish towels.
And despite herself, Alma, who was not without a young girl's feelingsfor nice detail, could thrill to this sartorial svelteness and to thepatent-leather lay of his black hair which caught the light like apolished floor.
In the lingo of Louis Latz, he was "a rattling good business man,too." He shared with his father partnership in a manufacturingbusiness--"Friedlander Clinical Supply Company"--which, since his adventfrom high school into the already enormously rich firm, had almostdoubled its volume of business.
The kind of sweetness he found in Alma he could never articulate even tohimself. In some ways she seemed hardly to have the pressure of vitalityto match his, but, on the other hand, just that slower beat to her mayhave heightened his sense of prowess.
His greatest delight seemed to lie in her pallid loveliness. "Whitehoneysuckle," he called her, and the names of all the beautiful whiteflowers he knew. And then one night, to the rattle of poker chips fromthe remote dining room, he jerked her to him without preamble, kissingher mouth down tightly against her teeth.
"My sweetheart! My little white carnation sweetheart! I won't be heldoff any longer. I'm going to carry you away for my little moonflowerwife."
She sprang back prettier than he had ever seen her in the dishevelmentfrom where his embrace had dragged at her hair.
"You mustn't," she cried, but there was enough of the conquering male inhim to read easily into this a mere plating over her desire.
"You can't hold me at arm's length any longer. You've maddened me formonths. I love you. You love me. You do. You do," and crushed her tohim, but this time his pain and his surprise genuine as she sprang back,quivering.
"No, I tell you. No! No! No!" and sat down trembling.
"Why, Alma!" And he sat down, t
oo, rather palely, at the remote end ofthe divan.
"You--I--mustn't!" she said, frantic to keep her lips from twisting, herlittle lacy fribble of a handkerchief a mere string from winding.
"Mustn't what?"
"Mustn't," was all she could repeat and not weep her words.
"Won't--I--do?"
"It's--mamma."
"What?"
"Her."
"Her what, my little white buttonhole carnation?"
"You see--I--She's all alone."
"You adorable, she's got a brand-new husky husband."
"No--you don't--understand."
Then, on a thunderclap of inspiration, hitting his knee:
"I have it. Mamma-baby! That's it. My girlie is a cry-baby, mamma-baby!"And made to slide along the divan toward her, but up flew her two smallhands, like fans.
"No," she said, with the little bang back in her voice which steadiedhim again. "I mustn't! You see, we're so close. Sometimes it's more asif I were the mother and she my little girl."
"Alma, that's beautiful, but it's silly, too. But tell me first of all,mamma-baby, that you do care. Tell me that first, dearest, and then wecan talk."
The kerchief was all screwed up now, so tightly that it could stifflyunwind of itself.
"She's not well, Leo. That terrible neuralgia--that's why she needs meso."
"Nonsense! She hasn't had a spell for weeks. That's Louis' great brag,that he's curing her. Oh, Alma, Alma, that's not a reason; that's anexcuse!"
"Leo--you don't understand."
"I'm afraid I--don't," he said, looking at her with a sudden intensitythat startled her with a quick suspicion of his suspicions, but then hesmiled.
"Alma!" he said, "Alma!"
Misery made her dumb.
"Why, don't you know, dear, that your mother is better able to take careof herself than you are? She's bigger and stronger. You--you're a littlewhite flower, that I want to wear on my heart."
"Leo--give me time. Let me think."
"A thousand thinks, Alma, but I love you. I love you and want soterribly for you to love me back."
"I--do."
"Then tell me with kisses."
Again she pressed him to arm's length.
"Please, Leo! Not yet. Let me think. Just one day. To-morrow."
"No, no! Now!"
"To-morrow."
"When?"
"Evening."
"No, morning."
"All right, Leo--to-morrow morning--"
"I'll sit up all night and count every second in every minute and everyminute in every hour."
She put up her soft little fingers to his lips.
"Dear boy," she said.
And then they kissed, and after a little swoon to his nearness shestruggled like a caught bird and a guilty one.
"Please go, Leo," she said. "Leave me alone--"
"Little mamma-baby sweetheart," he said. "I'll build you a nest rightnext to hers. Good night, little white flower. I'll be waiting, andremember, counting every second of every minute and every minute ofevery hour."
For a long time she remained where he had left her, forward on the pinkdivan, her head with a listening look to it, as if waiting an answer forthe prayers that she sent up.
* * * * *
At two o'clock that morning, by what intuition she would never know, andwith such leverage that she landed out of bed plump on her two feet,Alma, with all her faculties into trace like fire horses, sprang out ofsleep.
It was a matter of twenty steps across the hall. In the white-tiledRoman bathroom, the muddy circles suddenly out and angry beneathher eyes, her mother was standing before one of the full-lengthmirrors--snickering.
There was a fresh little grave on the inside of her right forearm.
* * * * *
Sometimes in the weeks that followed a sense of the miracle of what washappening would clutch at Alma's throat like a fear.
Louis did not know.
That the old neuralgic recurrences were more frequent again, yes.Already plans for a summer trip abroad, on a curative mission bent,were taking shape. There was a famous nerve specialist, the one whohad worked such wonders on his mother's cruelly rheumatic limbs,reassuringly foremost in his mind.
But except that there were not infrequent and sometimes twenty-four-hoursieges when he was denied the sight of his wife, he had learned, with amale's acquiescence to the frailties of the other sex, to submit, and,with no great understanding of pain, to condone.
And as if to atone for these more or less frequent lapses, there wassomething pathetic, even a little heartbreaking, in Carrie's zeal forhis well-being. No duty too small. One night she wanted to unlace hisshoes and even shine them--would have, in fact, except for his fiercecatching of her into his arms and for some reason his tonsils aching ashe kissed her.
Once after a "spell" she took out every garment from his wardrobe and,kissing them piece by piece, put them back again, and he found her so,and they cried together, he of happiness.
In his utter beatitude, even his resentment of Alma continued to growbut slowly. Once, when after forty-eight hours she forbade him ratherfiercely an entrance into his wife's room, he shoved her aside almostrudely, but, at Carrie's little shriek of remonstrance from thedarkened room, backed out shamefacedly, and apologized next day in theconciliatory language of a tiny wrist watch.
But a break came, as she knew and feared it must.
One evening during one of these attacks, when for two days Carrie hadnot appeared at the dinner table, Alma, entering when the meal wasalmost over, seated herself rather exhaustedly at her mother's placeopposite her stepfather.
He had reached the stage when that little unconscious usurpation initself could annoy him.
"How's your mother?" he asked, dourly for him.
"She's asleep."
"Funny. This is the third attack this month, and each time it lastslonger. Confound that neuralgia!"
"She's easier now."
He pushed back his plate.
"Then I'll go in and sit with her while she sleeps."
She, who was so fastidiously dainty of manner, half rose, spilling hersoup.
"No," she said, "you mustn't! Not now!" And sat down again hurriedly,wanting not to appear perturbed.
A curious thing happened then to Louis. His lower lip came pursingout like a little shelf and a hitherto unsuspected look of pigginessfattened over his rather plump face.
"You quit butting into me and my wife's affairs, you, or get the hellout of here," he said, without raising his voice or his manner.
She placed her hand to the almost unbearable flutter of her heart.
"Louis! You mustn't talk like that to--me!"
"Don't make me say something I'll regret. You! Only take this tip, you!There's one of two things you better do. Quit trying to come between meand her or--get out."
"I--She's sick."
"Naw, she ain't. Not as sick as you make out. You're trying, God knowswhy, to keep us apart. I've watched you. I know your sneaking kind.Still water runs deep. You've never missed a chance since we're marriedto keep us apart. Shame!"
"I--She--"
"Now mark my word, if it wasn't to spare her I'd have invited you outlong ago. Haven't you got any pride?"
"I have. I have," she almost moaned, and could have crumpled up thereand swooned her humiliation.
"You're not a regular girl. You're a she-devil. That's what you are!Trying to come between your mother and me. Ain't you ashamed? What is ityou want?"
"Louis--I don't--"
"First you turn down a fine fellow like Leo Friedlander, so he don'tcome to the house any more, and then you take out on us whatever iseating you, by trying to come between me and the finest woman that everlived. Shame! Shame!"
"Louis!" she said, "Louis!" wringing her hands in a dry wash of agony,"can't you understand? She'd rather have me. It makes her nervous tryingto pretend to you that she's not suffering when s
he is. That'sall, Louis. You see, she's not ashamed to suffer before me. Why,Louis--that's all! Why should I want to come between you and her? Isn'tshe dearer to me than anything in the world, and haven't you been thebest friend to me a girl could have? That's all--Louis."
He was placated and a little sorry and did not insist further upon goinginto the room.
"Funny," he said. "Funny," and, adjusting his spectacles, snapped openhis newspaper for a lonely evening.
The one thing that perturbed Alma almost more than anything else, as thedreaded cravings grew, with each siege her mother becoming more brutishand more given to profanity, was where she obtained the soluble tablets.
The well-thumbed old doctor's prescription she had purloined even backin the hotel days, and embargo and legislation were daily making moreand more furtive and prohibitive the traffic in drugs.
Once Alma, mistakenly, too, she thought later, had suspected a chauffeurof collusion with her mother and abruptly dismissed him, to Louis' rage.
"What's the idea?" he said, out of Carrie's hearing, of course. "Who'srunning this shebang, anyway?"
Again, after Alma had guarded her well for days, scarcely leaving herside, Carrie laughed sardonically up into her daughter's face, her eyesas glassy and without swimming fluid as a doll's.
"I get it! But wouldn't you like to know where? Yah!" And to Alma'shorror slapped her quite roundly across the cheek so that for an hourthe sting, the shape of the red print of fingers, lay on her face.
One night in what had become the horrible sanctity of thatbedchamber--But let this sum it up. When Alma was nineteen years old alittle colony of gray hairs was creeping in on each temple.
And then one day, after a long period of quiet, when Carrie had lavishedher really great wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband,spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery,somehow to express her grateful adoration of her, paying her husband thesecret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim,Alma, returning from a trip taken reluctantly and at her mother'sbidding down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modishblack-lace hat and the sable coat missing from the closet.
It was early afternoon, sunlit and pleasantly cold.
The first rush of panic and the impulse to dash after stayed, she forcedherself down into a chair, striving with the utmost difficulty forcoherence of procedure.
Where in the half hour of her absence had her mother gone? Matinee?Impossible! Walking? Hardly possible. Upon inquiry in the kitchen,neither of the maids had seen nor heard her depart. Motoring? With ahand that trembled in spite of itself Alma telephoned the garage. Carand chauffeur were there. Incredible as it seemed, Alma, upon more thanone occasion, had lately been obliged to remind her mother that shewas becoming careless of the old pointedly rosy hands. Manicurist? Shetelephoned the Bon Ton Beauty Parlors. No. Where? O God! Where? Whichway to begin? That was what troubled her most. To start right so as notto lose a precious second.
Suddenly, and for no particular reason, Alma began a hurried searchthrough her mother's dresser drawers of lovely personal appointments.Turning over whole mounds of fresh white gloves, delving into nests ofsheer handkerchiefs and stacks of webby lingerie. Then for a while shestood quite helplessly, looking into the mirror, her hands closed abouther throat.
"Please, God, where?"
A one-inch square of newspaper clipping, apparently gouged from thesheet with a hairpin, caught her eye from the top of one of thegold-backed hairbrushes. Dawningly, Alma read.
It described in brief detail the innovation of a newly equippednarcotic clinic on the Bowery below Canal Street, provided to medicallyadminister to the pathological cravings of addicts.
Fifteen minutes later Alma emerged from the Subway at Canal Street, and,with three blocks toward her destination ahead, started to run.
At the end of the first block she saw her mother, in the sable coat andthe black-lace hat, coming toward her.
Her first impulse was to run faster and yoo-hoo, but she thought betterof it and, by biting her lips and digging her finger nails, was able toslow down to a casual walk.
Carrie's fur coat was flaring open and, because of the quality of herattire down there where the bilge waters of the city tide flow and eddy,stares followed her.
Once, to the stoppage of Alma's heart, she saw Carrie halt and say abrief word to a truckman as he crossed the sidewalk with a bill oflading. He hesitated, laughed, and went on.
Then she quickened her pace and went on, but as if with a sense of beingfollowed, because constantly as she walked she jerked a step, to lookback, and then again, over her shoulder.
A second time she stopped, this time to address a little nub of awoman without a hat and lugging one-sidedly a stack of men's bastedwaistcoats, evidently for home work in some tenement. She looked andmuttered her un-understanding at whatever Carrie had to say, andshambled on.
Then Mrs. Latz spied her daughter, greeting her without surprise or anyparticular recognition.
"Thought you could fool me! Heh, Louis? I mean Alma."
"Mamma, it's Alma. It's all right. Don't you remember, we had thisappointment? Come, dear."
"No, you don't! That's a man following. Shh-h-h-h, Louis! I was fooling.I went up to him in the clinic" (snicker) "and I said to him, 'Give youfive dollars for a doctor's certificate.' That's all I said to him,or any of them. He's in a white carnation, Louis. You can find him bythe--it on his coat lapel. He's coming! Quick--"
"Mamma, there's no one following. Wait, I'll call a taxi!"
"No, you don't! He tried to put me in a taxi, too. No, you don't!"
"Then the Subway, dearest. You'll sit quietly beside Alma in the Subway,won't you, Carrie? Alma's so tired."
Suddenly Carrie began to whimper.
"My baby! Don't let her see me. My baby! What am I good for? I've ruinedher life. My precious sweetheart's life. I hit her once--Louis--in themouth. It bled. God won't forgive me for that."
"Yes, He will, dear, if you come."
"It bled. Alma, tell him in the white carnation that mamma losther doctor's certificate. That's all I said to him. Saw him in theclinic--new clinic--'give you five dollars for a doctor's certificate.'He had a white carnation--right lapel. Stingy. Quick!--following!"
"Sweetheart, please, there's no one coming."
"Don't tell! Oh, Alma darling--mamma's ruined your life! Her sweetheartbaby's life."
"No, darling, you haven't. She loves you if you'll come home with her,dear, to bed, before Louis gets home and--"
"No. No. He mustn't see. Never this bad--was I, darling? Oh! Oh!"
"No, mamma--never--this bad. That's why we must hurry."
"Best man that ever lived. Best baby. Ruin. Ruin."
"Mamma, you--you're making Alma tremble so that she can scarcely walk ifyou drag her so. There's no one following, dear. I won't let anyone harmyou. Please, sweetheart--a taxicab."
"No. I tell you he's following. He tried to put me into a taxicab.Followed me. Said he knew me."
"Then, mamma, listen. Do you hear? Alma wants you to listen. If youdon't--she'll faint. People are looking. Now I want you to turn squarearound and look. No, look again. You see now, there's no one following.Now I want you to cross the street over there to the Subway. Just withAlma who loves you. There's nobody following. Just with Alma who lovesyou."
And then Carrie, whose lace hat was quite on the back of her head,relaxed enough so that through the enormous maze of the traffic oftrucks and the heavier drags of the lower city, her daughter could windtheir way.
"My baby! My poor Louis!" she kept saying. "The worst I've ever been.Oh--Alma--Louis--waiting--before we get there--Louis!"
It was in the tightest tangle of the crossing and apparently on thisconjuring of her husband that Carrie jerked suddenly free of Alma'sfrailer hold.
"No--no--not home--now. Him. Alma!" And darted back against the breastof the down side of the traffic.
There was scarcely more than the quick r
otation of her arm around withthe spoke of a truck wheel, so quickly she went down.
It was almost a miracle, her kind of death, because out of all that jamof tonnage she carried only one bruise, a faint one, near the brow.
And the wonder was that Louis Latz, in his grief, was so proud.
"To think," he kept saying over and over again and unabashed at the wayhis face twisted--"to think they should have happened to me. Two suchwomen in one lifetime as my little mother--and her. Fat little old Louisto have had those two. Why, just the memory of my Carrie--is almostenough. To think old me should have a memory like that--it is almostenough--isn't it, Alma?"
She kissed his hand.
That very same, that dreadful night, almost without her knowing it,her throat-tearing sobs broke loose, her face to the waistcoat of LeoFriedlander.
He held her close--very, very close. "Why, sweetheart," he said, "Icould cut out my heart to help you! Why, sweetheart! Shh-h-h! Rememberwhat Louis says. Just the beautiful memory--of--her--is--wonderful--"
"Just--the b-beautiful--memory--you'll always have it, too--of her--mymamma--won't you, Leo? Won't you?"
"Always," he said when the tight grip in his throat had eased enough.
"Say--it again--Leo."
"Always."
She could not know how dear she became to him then, because not tenminutes before, from the very lapel against which her cheek lay pressed,he had unpinned a white carnation.