"Gad! what you mad about, kiddo? Gentleman friend, eh?"
"You just cut that talk, and double quick, too."
"After bigger game, eh, kiddo?"
"Fine chance."
"Not good enough down here, eh?"
"No, if you want to know it. No."
"He liked you, kiddo."
"Yes, he liked me. He liked me, all righty, like they all do. God! if
I'd ever run across a fellow that was on the level with me, I'd get the
hysterics right in his face, I would. Right in his face!"
"I'm on the level, Marj, only--"
"You try to begin that, now."
"I am, and you know it."
"You're about as straight as a horseshoe."
"I may backslide now and then, sweetness, but--"
"There's no backsliding for you any more, Blink. After that Gregory raid
business you slid back as far in my mind as a fellow can slide."
He drained his glass, and this time caught his sway a bit too late.
"Forget that, kiddo."
"I can't. It was that showed me plainer than all that went before how I
was wasting my time working over you."
"'Ain't I got something on you, too, peaches? But you don't hear me
throwing it up to you, do you? 'Ain't I got Checkers on you?"
"You--"
"But I ain't blaming you. Come, Marj, let's swap our real names."
"What?"
"Sure, I ain't blaming you. Only be on the level, girl--be on the level.
If it's big fry you're after, and we don't measure up down here, say
so."
"You--I think you're crazy, Blink."
"I know life, kiddo. I've used up thirty years of my lease on it getting
wise to it. Come now, is it Checkers, queenie? What's your game?"
She leaned forward, looking him evenly between the eyes, but her lips
seared as if from his hot insult. "You take that back."
"What you green around the gills for, kiddo? Didn't you say yourself
that the name and the game come together in the same package? I ain't
arguing it with you."
"You take it back, I said."
He laughed and flecked his fingers for a waiter, flinging out his legs
at full length alongside the table. "You're a clever little girl, Marj,
and I've got to hand it to you. Another stein there, waiter, and one for
the girl; she needs it."
"I'll spill it right out if it comes."
"Lord! what you so sheety-looking for? White with temper and green at
the gills, eh? Gad! I like you that way. I like you for your temper, and
if you want to know it, I like you for every blamed thing about you."
"You--quit! Let go! Let go, I say! Ug-gh!" Her lips, with the greenish
auro about them, would only move stiffly, and she pushed back from the
table only half articulate. "Let me pass--please."
"Where you going, peaches?" He reached for her hand. "You mad, Marj? I
didn't mean to get you sore."
"N-no, Blink."
"You beauty, you."
"'Sh-h-h!"
"Gad! but I like you. Sit down, Marj, I got a new proposition to put to
you. I can talk big money, girl."
"Don't--Blink."
"Sit down, girl. Harry don't stand for no stage stuff in here no more."
"I--"
"I got a new proposition, girl. One that'll make Checkers look like
thirty cents. A white proposition, too, Marj. A baby could listen to
it."
"Yes, yes, Blink, but not now. When you get lit up you--you oughtn't
begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink. Try and keep
your wits."
"A baby could listen to this here proposition, Marj. And big money, too,
Marj. It's diamonds for you."
Somehow with her lips she smiled down at him, and did not tug for the
release of her hand. Dallied for the instant instead.
"You're lit up, Blink."
"Some big guns in Wall Street, Marj, are after me, Marj, with a
million-dollar proposition. I--"
"Yes, yes, but wait a minute, Blink. I'll be back." She even lay a pat
on his shoulder and slid past him lightly. "In a minute, Blink."
"Hurry," he said, his smile broken by a swift twitch of feature, and
raising his fresh stein.
Once out of his vision, she veered sharply and in a bath of fear darted
toward the small hallway, with its red bead of gaslight burning on and
flickering against the two panels of colored glass in the dingy brown
door.
Outside, the flakes had ceased and the sinister-looking side street lay
in a white hush, a single line of scraggly footsteps crunched into the
snow of the sidewalk. A clock from a sky-scraping tower rang out eight,
its echoes singing like anvils in the sharp, thin air. On the cross-town
street the shops were full of light and activity, crowds wedging in and
out. Marjorie Clark pulled at her strength and ran.
At the Twenty-second Street corner she paused for the merest moment
for breath and for a quick glance into the dark lane of the diverging
street. The double row of stone houses, blank-faced and shouldering
one another like paper dolls cut from a folded newspaper, stood back
indistinctly against the night, most of the high stoops cushioned
in untrod snow, the fourth of them from the right, lean-looking and
undistinguished, except that the ash-can at its curb was a glorified urn
of snow.
As she stood there the ache in Marjorie Clark's throat threatened to
become articulate. She took up her swift pace again, but onward.
Ten minutes later, within the great heated mausoleum of the Pennsylvania
Terminal, she bought a ticket for Glendale. On track ten the
eight-eighteen had already made its first jerk outward as she made her
dash for it.
In the spick swaddling clothes of new-laid snow, its roadways and garden
beds, macadamized streets and runty lanes all of one identity, Glendale
lay in a miniature valley beneath the railroad elevation; meandered down
a slight hillside and out toward the open country.
Immediately removed from the steep flight of stairs leading down from
the gabled station, small houses with roofs that wore the snow like
coolies' hoods appeared in uncertain ranks forming uncertain streets.
Lights gleamed in frequent windows, throwing squares of gold-colored
light in the snow.
Here and there where shades were drawn the grotesque shadow of a
fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket
fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white
arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the very stoops
of adjoining houses.
Two blocks from the left of the station Marjorie Clark paused in the
white shower of one of these arc-lights. The wind had hauled around to
the north and its raw breath galloped across the open country, stinging
her.
Across the street, diagonal, a low house of too many angles, the snow
banked in a high drift across its north flank, stood well back in
shadow, except that on the peak of its small veranda, and clearly
defined by the arc-light, a weather-vane spun to the gale.
Marjorie Clark ducked her head to the onslaught of wind and crossed the
street, kicking up a fine flurry of snow before her. A convoy of trees
stood in military precision down the quiet avenue, their bare branches
embracing her in immediate shadows. The gate creaked when she drew it
backward, scraping outward and upon the sidewalk a hill of loose snow.
Before that small house a garden lay tucked beneath its blanket, a
scrawny line of hedge fluted with snow inclosing it and a few stalks
that would presently flower. The hood of the dark veranda, surmounted
with its high ruche of snow, seemed to incline, invitational.
Yet when Marjorie Clark pulled out the old-fashioned bell-handle her
face sickened as she stood and she was down the steps again, the
tightness squeezing her throat, her gloved hands fumbling the gate
latch, and her knee flung against it, pressing it outward.
In the moment of her most frenzied attitude a golden patch of light from
an opened door streamed out and over her. In its radiance a woman's
wide-bosomed, wide-hipped silhouette, hand bent in a vizor over her
eyes, leaned forward, and, rushing past her and down the plushy steps,
the bareheaded figure of Mr. Charley Scully, a red and antiquated red
wool indoor jacket flying to the wind, and a forelock of his shiny hair
lifted.
"Marjie!"
She backed against the gate.
"Marj! Marjie?"
"I--No, no--I--I--"
"Why, little one! Marjie! Marjie!"
"I--No--no--"
But her inertia was of no moment, and very presently, Charles Scully's
strong right arm propelling her, she was in the warm, bright-lighted
hallway, its door closing her in and the wide-bosomed, wide-hipped
figure in spotted silk fumbling the throat fastenings of her jacket, and
the stooped form of Charley Scully dragging off her thin rubber shoes.
"Whew! they're soaking wet, ma. Get her a pair of Till's slippers or
something."
"Don't jerk the child like that, son. Pull 'em off easy."
Through glazed eyes Marjorie Clark, balancing herself first on one foot,
then the other, the spotted silk arm half sustaining her, could glimpse
the scene of an adjoining room: a fir-tree standing against a drawn
window-blind half hung in tinsel fringe, and abandoned in the very act
of being draped; a woman and a child stooping at its base. Above a
carved black-walnut table and from a mother-of-pearl frame, a small
amateur photograph of Marjorie Clark smiled out at herself.
The figure in spotted silk dragged off the wet jacket and hurried with
it toward the rear of the hallway, her left foot dragging slightly.
"Just a second, dearie-child, until I find dry things for you. Son, stop
fussing around the lamb until she gets rested."
But on the first instant of the two of them standing alone there in
the little hallway, Charley Scully turned swiftly to Marjorie Clark,
catching up her small hand. His eyes carried the iridescence of bronze.
"Marjie," he said, "to--why, to think you'd come! Why--why, little
Marjie!"
"I--oh, Charley-boy, I--"
"What, little one? What?"
"I--I dun'no'."
"What is it, hon? Ain't you as glad as I am?"
"I dun'no', only I--I--I'm scared, Charley--scared, I guess."
"Why, you just never was so safe, Marjie, as now--you just never was!"
She could not meet the eloquence of his eyes, but his smile was so near
that the tightness at her throat seemed suddenly to thaw.
"Charley-boy," she said.
But at the sound of returning footsteps she sprang backward, clasping
her hands behind her. A copper-haired woman with a copper-haired child
in the curve of her arm moved through the lighted front room and toward
them. Her smile was upturned, with a dimple low in one cheek, like a
star in the cradle of a crescent moon. Charley Scully turned his vivid
face toward her.
"Till," he cried, "she come, anyway. Looka, she's come!"
"Yes, I--I've come," said Marjorie Clark. There was a layer of hysteria
in her voice.