At Christmas-tide men and women with soiled lives breathe alcoholic
sighs and dare to glance back into the dim corridors of their long agos.
Cronies, snug in an age of steam heat, turn their warm backs upon
to-day, swap white-Christmas stories, and hanker with forefinger laid
alongside of nose for the base-burners and cold backs of the good old
days.
Not least upon the busy magnate's table is his shopping-list.
Evenings, six-dollar-a-week salesgirls sit in their five-dollar-a-week
hall-bedrooms, with their aching feet in a tub of hot water and their
aching fingers busy with baby-ribboned coat-hangers and silk needle-book
tokens of Yuletide affection.
Even as it flowered in a manger the Christmas spirit, a perennial lily
upon the sooty face of the world, blooms out of the slack heap of men's
rife and strife.
In the hearts of children it is a pod filled with their first happiness.
Down from a sky the color of cold dish-water a cloak of swift snow fell
upon the city, muffling its voice like a hand held against its mouth.
Children who had never before beheld a white Christmas leaped with the
joy of it. A sudden army of men with blue faces and no overcoats sprang
full-grown and armed with shovels, from out the storm. City parks lay
etched in sudden finery. Men coming up out of the cañon of Wall Street
remembered that it was Christmas and felt for bauble money.
At early dusk and through the white dance of the white storm the city
slid its four million packs off its four million backs and turned
homeward. Pedestrians with the shopper's light in their eyes bent into
the flurry and darted for surface cars and subways. Commuters, laden
with bundles and with tickets between their teeth, rushed for early
trains.
Women with bearing-down bundles and babies wedged through the
crowd, fighting for trains and place. Boys in cadet uniforms and
boarding-school girls, homeward bound, thrust forward their shining
faces as if into the to-morrow. A tight tangle of business men passed
single file through a trellised gateway and on down to a lower level. A
messenger with a tipsy spray of holly stuck upright in his cap whacked
with a folded newspaper at a fellow-messenger's swift legs and darted in
and around the knees of the crowd. A prodigal hesitated, then bought a
second-class ticket for home. Two nuns hurried softly on missions of
Christmas.
The low thunder of a thousand feet: tired feet, eager feet; flat feet;
shabby feet; young feet; callous feet; arched and archless feet.
Voices that rose like wind to a gale. A child dragged by the arm and
whimpering. A group of shawled strangers interchanging sharp jargon.
Within the marble mausoleum of a waiting-room, its benches lined with
the kaleidoscopic faces of the traveling public, a train-announcer
bellowed a paean of tracks and stations.
At the onyx-and-nickel-plated periodical stand men in passing snatched
their evening paper from off the stack of the counter, flopping down
their pennies as they ran. In the glow of a spray of red and white
electric bulbs, in a bower of the instant's pretty-girl periodical
covers, and herself the most vivid of them all, Miss Marjorie Clark
caught a hastily flung copper coin on the fly, her laughter mounting
with it.
"Whoops, la-la!"
"Good catch, kiddo."
"Oh, you Charley-boy, who was you pitching for last season?"
"The Reds, because that's your color."
"Say, if you're going to catch that four-eighteen you've got to
break somebody's speed limit between here and track ten. Run along,
Charley-boy, and Merry Christmas."
But Mr. Charles Scully swung to a halt, poured his armful of packages
into a wire basket of six-city-postcard-views for ten cents, swung
open his overcoat with a sprinkling of snow on its slick-napped velvet
collar, lifted his small black mustache in a smile.
"Black-eyes, I'd miss three trains for you."
"There's not another until the four-forty."
"I should worry. Anyway, for all I know you've changed your mind and are
coming out with me to-night, little one."
The quick blood ran up into her small face, dyeing it, and she withdrew
from his nearing features.
"I have not! Gee! you're about as square as a doughnut, you are."
"Jumping Juniper, can't a fellow miss his train just to wish a little
beauty like you a Merry Christmas? But on the level, I want to take you
out home with me to-night; honest I do, little spitfire."
"Crank up there, Charley-boy; you got about thirty seconds to make that
train in."
"Gets you sore every time I ask you out, don't it, black-eyes? Talk
about your little tin saints!"
"Say, if you was any slicker you'd slide."
"You can't scare me with those black eyes."
"Can't I, my brave boy! Say, you'd want to quarantine the dictionary if
you found smallpox in it, that's how hard you are to scare."
"Well, of all the lines of talk, if you 'ain't got the greatest. Cute is
no name for you."
"And say, the place where you clerk must be a classy clothes-parlor,
Charley-boy."
"Right-o, little one. If you ever pass by the Brown Haberdashery, on
Twenty-third Street, drop in, and I'll buy you a lunch."
"Tra-la! Where did you get that checked suit? And I'll bet you flag the
train out at Glendale, where you live, with that tie. Oh, you Checkers!"
"Some class to me, eh, kiddo?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that."
He leaned closer. His smile had an uplift like a crescent and a slight
depression in his left cheek, too low for a dimple, twinkled when he
smiled, like an adjacent star.
"Take it from me, Queenie, these glad rags are my stock in trade. In my
line I got to sport them. At home I'm all to the overalls. If my boss
was to see the old red wool smoking-jacket I wear around the house, he'd
fire me for burlesquing the business."
"Well, of all the nerve! Let go my hand."
"Didn't know I had it, little one."
"And say, you give back that kodak picture you swiped off me yesterday.
I don't give my photographs out promiscuous."
"That little snap-shot of you? Nix, I will! I took that home and hung it
in a mother-of-pearl frame right over the parlor table."
"Sure! And above the family Bible, huh? I had a fellow once tell me he
was a bookmaker, and I was green enough then to beg him to take me out
and let me see him make 'em. But I've learnt a thing or two about you
and your kind since then, Charley-boy."
"You come out to-night and I'll show it to you myself."
"Haven't you got my number, yet, Cholly--haven't you?"
"What is it, little one, number scared-cat?"
She flung him a glance over the hump of one shoulder. Nineteen summers
had breezed lightly over her, and her lips were cherry-like, but
tilted slightly as if their fruit had been plucked from the tree of
sophistication.
"You bet your life I'm scared."
"Why, out there in Glendale, little one, you won't meet your own shadow,
if that's what's hurting you."
"You bet your life I won't."
"My old woman will fix you up all right."
"Oh no, she won't!"
"Aw, come on, kiddo. We're going to have a tree for the little brother,
and the old woman will be rigged up like a mast in her spotted silk.
Come on. Who'll be any the wiser?"
Laughter and mockery rose to the surface of her eyes, bubbled to her
lips.
"Huh! What's that only-son stuff you gave me yesterday? All about how
you had to land a job in the city and make good after your old man died,
eh? How about your yesterday's line of talk?"
"I--"
"All about how mother's wandering boy found himself all plastered
over with the mortgage and worked nights to get out from under. All
about--Aw, say, what's the use? But I always say to you fellows, 'Boys,
cultivate good memories; you need 'em.' Little brother! Ha, joke!"
"I--aw--I--Little brother's what we call my sister Till's little
red-headed kid. Aw, what--what you want to put me in bad for, sister?
I'm not so easy to trip up as you think I am."
"Little brother! And say, that's a bottle of malted milk there in your
pocket that you're taking out to him, ain't it? Sure it is."
"This? Aw, this--Say, you haven't got those snappy black eyes of yours
for nothing, have you? This bottle here in my pocket, aw, this--this is
a--bottle of brandy for my old woman. First snow flurry and her left
foot begins to drag like a rag with rheumatism."
Her laughter rose, and his confusion with it.
"Sure," she cried.
"Aw--aw, come on, Marjie."
"Well, of all the nerve! My name's private property, it is."
"It slipped. It said itself. But, gee! I like it. Marjie! Some little
name."
"Well, of all the nerve!"
"Come on, black-eyes. You're off at five and we'll catch the
five-eighteen. Who's going to be any the wiser? I got something out
there I want to tell you."
"My hearing's all right in the city."
"It's something I want to whisper right where I can get next to that
little ear of yours."
"You got a swell chance at that little ear of mine, nix."
"Stingy!"
"You bet your life I'm stingy."
"It's a white Christmas for sure out where I live. Come on out and let
me show you a good time, little one."
"I wish you was half as white as this Christmas is. Honest, sometimes I
says to myself, I says, ain't there just none of you white? Has a girl
like me got to keep dodging all her life?"
"Come, sister, let's catch the five-eighteen."
"You better run along before you get me all rubbed the wrong way. At
five-eighteen I'll be buying my own meal ticket, let me tell you that."
"Then buy your own meal ticket, if that's what's hurting you, little
touchy, and come out on the eight-eighteen. It's only a thirty-minute
run; and if you say the word I'll be at the station with bells on to
meet you. Come on. I'll show you the Christmas Eve of your life. Be a
sport, Marjie."
"Yes, I always say, inviting a girl to be a sport is a slick way of
inviting her to Hades. I've seen where being a sport lands a girl, I
have. I ain't game, maybe, but, thank God, I ain't. Thank God, I ain't,
is what I always say to them."
"Well, of all the funny little propositions."
"Well, there's nothing funny about your proposition."
"You're one funny little girl, but, gee! I like you."
There was that in his glance and the white flash of his teeth and the
pomaded air of geniality about him that sent a quick network of thrills
darting through her; all her perceptions rose, and her color.
"Come on, little girl."
"Oh," she cried, clenching her small tan hand, and a tempest of fury
flashing across her face, "you--you fresh fellows up-town here think
just because you wear good clothes and can hold down a decent job, that
you--you can put up any kind of a proposition to a girl like me. Oh--oh,
just every one of you!"
"Well, of all the little spitfires."
"What do you think I am? What does every one of you, up and down town,
think I am? Do I look like I was born yesterday? Well, I wasn't, or
the day before or the day before that. Honest to God, if I was a
nice-appearing fellow like you I'd be ashamed, I would. I'd go out in
the garden and eat worms, I would."
He retreated before her scorn, but smiling. "I'll get you yet, you
little vix," he said; "you pretty little black-eyed vix, you; I'll get
you yet.'
"Like hell you will."
"If you change your mind, come out on the eight-eighteen, girlie. Two
blocks to the left of the station; the corner house with a little
weather-cock over the porch. Can't miss it. I'll be drapin' the tree in
tin fringe and wishing you were there."
"Oh," she cried, her voice cracked spang across with a sob, "I--I just
hate you!"
"No, you don't," he said, smiling and gathering his parcels.
"Do."
"Don't."
"Do."
"What's that on your wrist?"
"Where?"
"There. I thought you said you threw it away."
Her right hand flew to her left wrist as if a welt lay there. "This,
I--huh--I--I forgot I had it on. This--this little old bracelet you said
you found in the Subway. It--it's nothing but red celluloid, anyway.
I--I nearly did throw it away."
"You look just like a little gipsy, you do, with that red comb in that
black hair of yours and that red bracelet on your little brown arm. I'll
swear if I didn't miss my train by ten minutes the first time I seen you
standing here at this counter with those big black eyes of yours shining
out."
"You'll miss it again if you don't run away, Charley-boy."
"Dare you to come along! I'll wait for the five-eighteen."
"Don't hold your breath till I do."
"Dare you to come out on the eight-eighteen! Say the word, and I'll be
at the station."
"I'll see myself crazy with the blues first."
"You might as well come, kiddo, because I'll get you yet."
"Try the soft-pedal stuff about the kid and the Christmas tree on the
girl at the Glendale station. Maybe she hasn't cut her eye-teeth."
A flush swept his face like quick wind. "You're a bum sport, all
righty."
"And you! Gee! if I was to tell you what I think you are! If I was!" She
sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but smiled.
"But I wouldn't take the trouble, Charley-boy--honest, I wouldn't take
the trouble."
"I'll get you yet, you little vix," he insisted, his white smile
flashing, and retreating into the crowd.
"You--oh--oh, you!"
She stood looking after him, head backward and hip arched forward in the
pose of Carmen's immortal defiance. But behind her flashing attitude her
heart rose to her throat and a warm gush of blood to her face, betraying
it.
When the illuminated hands of the illuminated tower clock swung to the
wide angle of five o'clock, Miss Marjorie Clark and Miss Minnie Bundt,
from the fancy-fruit stand opposite, cast off the brown cocoon of their
workaday for the trim street finery which the American shopgirl, to the
stupefaction of economists and theorists, can somehow evolve out of
eight dollars a week.
In the locker-room they met, the placid sky-colored eyes of Miss Bundt
meeting Miss Clark's in the wavy square of mirror.
"Snowing, ain't it?"
"Yep."
"Gee! that's a nifty little hat, Min! Where'd you get the pompon?"
"Five-and-Ten."
"If it 'ain't got the Avenue written all over it."
Silence.
"Want some my powder, Min? Pink."
"Nope."
"Want to--want to go to a movie to-night or--or bum around the stores?
It's Christmas Eve."
"Can't."
"Date?"
"Yep."
Silence.
A flush rose to Miss Clark's face, darkening it. She adjusted her
dyed-fur tippet and a small imitation-fur cap at just the angle which
doubled its face value. Something seemed to leap out from her eyes and
then retreat behind a smile and a squint.
"Say, Min, if my voice hurt me like yours does, I'd rub salve on it,"
and went out, slamming the door behind her. But a tear lay on the edge
of her down-curved lashes, threatening to ricochet down her smoothly
powdered cheek. She winked it in again. The station swarm was close to
her, jostling, kicking her ankles in passing, buffeting.
From out the swift tide a figure without an overcoat, and a cap vizor
pulled well down over his eyes, locked her arm from the rear, so that
she sprang about, releasing herself.
"For God's sake, Blink, cut the pussy-foot tread, will you? I've jabbed
with a hat-pin for less than that."
"Merry Christmas, Marj."
"Yes, I'm merry as a crutch. What brought you around, Blink?"
"Can't a fellow drop around to pick you up?"
"Land that job?"
"Not a chance. What they want down there is a rough-neck, not a
gentleman rubber-down. Say, take it from me; after a fellow has worked
in the high-class Turkish baths, Third Avenue joints ain't up to his
tone no more. I got to have class, kiddo. That's why I got such a lean
toward you."
"Cut that."
"Come down to-night, Marj?"
"Where?"
"Harry's."
"Well, I guess not."
"Buy you a dinner."
"But you're flat as your hand."