"That's right, rub it in," and looked away from him.
"Come, Marj, don't leave me high and dry like this. Come, I'll blow you
to a little supper, kiddo. I got a couple of meal tickets coming to me
down at Harry's on some ivories I threw last night."
"Dice! And after the line of talk you just tried to make me swallow. Did
I believe it? I did not!"
"No stakes, Marj. Just for a couple of meal tickets we tossed. Come,
girl, you 'ain't been down to Harry's for months; you won't get your
halo mussed from one time. It's Christmas Eve, Marj."
"I heard you the first time."
"If I got to go it alone to-night, Marj, it'll be the wettest Christmas
I ever spent, it will. I'll pickle this Christmas Eve like it was never
pickled before, I will."
"Aren't you no man at all, threatening like that? Just no man at all?"
"I tell you if I got to go it alone to-night, I won't be. I'm crazy
enough to tear things wide open."
"A line of talk like that will send me home quicker than anything, if
you want to know it." She turned her face away and toward the dark aisle
of the side street.
"I didn't mean it, Marj."
"I hate whining."
"Don't go, girl. Don't. Don't give me the horrors and leave me alone
to-night, Marj."
She moved slowly into the gloom of the cross-town street. Solemn rows of
blank-faced houses flanked it. Wind slewed as through a canon, whistling
in high pitch.
"Gee!"
"Fine little joy lane for your Christmas Eve, eh? Don't go, Marj. Have
a heart and be a sport. Let me blow you to a supper down at Harry's for
old times' sake. Didn't you promise my old woman to keep an eye on me?
Didn't you? For old times' sake, Marj. It's Christmas."
She stood shivering and gazing down into the black throat of the street.
"It'll be a merry evening in that two-by-four of yours, won't it? Look
at it down there. Cheerful, ain't it?"
Tears formed in a glaze over her eyes.
"Be a sport, Marj."
"All right--Blink!"
* * * * *
At the family entrance to Harry's place, and just around the corner from
the main entrance of knee-high swinging doors and a broadside of frosted
plate-glass front, a bead of gas burned sullenly through a red globe,
winking, so to speak, at all who would enter there under cover of its
murk.
Women with faces the fatty white of jade, and lips that might have
kissed blood, slipped from the dark tide of the side street into the
entrance. Furtive couples rose out of the night: the men, lean as laths,
collars turned up and caps drawn down; girls, some with red lights and
some with no lights in their eyes, and most of them with too red lips of
too few curves, and all of them with chalk-colored powder laid on over
the golden pollen of youth.
Within Harry's place, Christmas found little enough berth except that
above the great soaped-over mirror at the far end of the room a
holly wreath dangled from the tarnished gilt frame and against the
clouded-over glass a forefinger had etched a careless Merry Christmas.
At tables set so close that waiters side-stepped between them, the
habitués of Harry's place dined--wined, too, but mostly out of uncovered
steins or two-inch stemless glasses. And here and there at smaller
tables a solitary figure with a seer's light in his eyes sipped his
greenish milk!
An electric piano, its shallow tones undigested by the crowded room,
played in response to whomsoever slipped a coin into its maw. Kicked-up
sawdust lay in the air like flakes.
From her table near the door Miss Marjorie Clark pushed from her a
litter of half-tasted dishes and sent her dark glance out over the room.
A few pairs of too sinuous dancers circled a small clearing around the
electric piano. Waiters with fans of foam-drifting steins clutched
between fingers jostled them in passing. At a small table adjoining, a
girl slept in her arms. Two more entered, elbow in elbow, and directly
a youth in a wide-striped wool sweater muffled high to his teeth, and
features that in spite of himself would twitch and twitch again.
"Hi, Blink," he said in passing.
"Hi."
Reader, your heart lifted up and glowing with Yuletide and good-will
toward men, turn not in warranted nausea from the reek of Harry's
place. Mere plants can love the light and turn to it, but have not the
beautiful mercy to share their loveliness with foul places. The human
heart is a finer work. It can, if it will, turn its white light upon
darkness, so that out of it even a single seed may take heart and grow.
A fastidious olfactory nerve has no right to dominion over the quality
of mercy. The heart should keep its thousand doors all open, each
heart-string a latch-string, and each latch-string out.
Marjorie Clark met her companion's eyes above the rim of his stein.
"Looks more like hell on a busy day down here than like Christmas Eve,
don't it?"
He was warmed, and the tight skin had softened as dried fruit expands in
water. "Ah-h-h, but I feel better, kiddo."
"That's three steins you've had, Blink. And there's no telling what you
filled up on those three times you went out."
"It's Christmas Eve, kiddo. What kind of a good time do you want for
your money? A Christmas tree trimmed in tin angels?"
"Do I? You just bet your life I do."
"Then let me get it for you, sugar-plum. You just stick to me to-night
and you can have any little thing your heart desires. Here, waiter." And
he jingled again in the depths of his pocket.
"If you want to lose my company double quick, just you order another
stein. Just look at you seeing double already."
"I'm all right, baby; never felt better in my life."
"You caught me when I was down and blue, didn't you, and pumped me full
of a lot of Sunday-school talk, that's what you did. And I was fool
enough to get soft and come down here with you, I was! But I felt it in
my bones you was lying. I knew I was right about the coke. I seen you
throw a high sign to that twitching guy in the striped sweater. I knew I
was right. God, I--I just knew."
He leaned for her hand. "Little bittsie, black-eyed baby, you got me
wrong."
"Ugh-h! Quit! Let go!"
He straightened, regarding her solemnly and controlling the slight
swaying of his figure. "I'm a gentleman."