He stroked her arm, and the taste of tears found its way to her mouth.
"I'm feeling so silly-like to-night, Charley."
"You're all in, kiddo." In the shadow he kissed her.
"Charley, you--you mustn't, unless we're--engaged." But she could
not find the strength to unfold herself from his arms. "You mustn't,
Charley!"
"Great little girl you are, Sweetness--one great little girl!"
"Aw, Charley!"
"And, to show you that I like you, I'm going to make up for this
to-morrow night. A real little Saturday-night blow! And don't forget
Sunday afternoon--two o'clock for us, down at Crissey's Hall. Two
o'clock."
"Two o'clock."
"Good!"
"Oh, Charley, I--"
"What, Sweetness?"
"Oh, nothing; I--I'm just silly to-night."
Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and
he kissed her again, scorching her lips.
"Good night, Sweetness."
"Good night, Charley."
Then up three flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed
doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to
the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with
the moonlight flowing in.
Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps--a woman's blouse was flung across
the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the
bed in the attitude of walking--tired-looking shoes, run down at the
heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter
bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with
sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.
Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded
her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping
carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her
straight-falling nightdress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her
bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed lightly,
scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm-clock ticked
with emphasis.
An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.
Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered
dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her
nightrobe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.
After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
bedside.
On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
stirred and half opened her eyes.
"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
Put--it--down!"
Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with
teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with her
mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to full
consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown at
the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold
perspiration.
"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"
She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her. The
moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her
in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of
peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that
comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream
and Reality visits the couch.
Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night-sweat.
Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too
weary to follow her mind's dictate.
"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her
friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert
across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"
"N-nothing."
"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"
"N-nothing."
* * * * *
In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes
a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree-branch tapping at the window an
armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther
across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light
of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of
Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by
day.
So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of
the Titanic Store, the morning following, her laughter was ready enough.
But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the
importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday
swarm of Sixth Avenue.
Down one block--two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow
store-front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and
with a red cross blazoning above the doorway. And Sara Juke, whose heart
was full of fear, faltered, entered.
The same thin file passed round the room, halting, sauntering, like
grim visitors in a grim gallery. At a front desk a sleek young interne,
tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed
glasses.
Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted
pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.
Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the
list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as
though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears. Once, when she
passed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded
her with a warming glance of recognition.
"Hello!" he said. "You back?"
"Yes." Her voice was the thin cry of quail.
"You must like our little picture-gallery, eh?"
"Oh! Oh!" She caught at the edge of his desk, and tears lay heavy in her
eyes.
"Eh?"
"Yes; I--I like it. I wanna buy it for my yacht." Her ghastly simulacrum
of a jest died in her throat; and he said, quickly, a big blush
suffusing his face:
"I was only fooling, missy. You 'ain't got the scare, have you?"
"The scare?"
"Yes; the bug? You ain't afraid you've ate the germ, are you?"
"I--I dun'no'."
"Pshaw! There's a lot of 'em comes in here more scared than hurt, missy.
Never throw a scare till you've had a examination. For all you know, you
got hay fever, eh! Hay fever!" And he laughed as though to salve his
words.
"I--I got all them things on the red-printed list, I tell you. I--I got
'em all, night-sweats and all. I--I got 'em."
"Sure you got 'em, missy; but that don't need to mean nothing much."
"I got 'em, I tell you."
"Losing weight?"
"Feel."