can't start in on so little--half of what you make costs Birdie's
clothes. _Ach_, when I think what that girl is used to! Every comfort
she has--you can't give her like she's used to, Mr. Gump."
"I told all that to Birdie, Mrs. Katzenstein--I can't give her what
she's got at home, and she should take her time to decide."
"That's easy enough to say now after it's in everybody's mouth."
"That Loeb Brothers should play you such a trick," said Mr.
Katzenstein--"a boy that's built up a trade like you!"
"_Ach_, my baby!" sobbed Mrs. Katzenstein. "And now the whole town
already knows it! If only he had known this last night, before it was
too late!"
"Salcha, how you talk!"
"My own husband turns against me!"
"That they should start little, mamma, is just so good as they should
start big. My boy, you got a good head; and with a good head and a good
heart you got just so good a start as you need. Go 'way, you foolisher
children! You make me sick with your crying and _gedinks_!"
"Such a father I got, Marcus! What did I tell you, how he would
act--what did I tell you?"
She kissed her father lightly on the cheek.
"Go 'way, you children!" he repeated. "You got it too good as it
is--ain't it, mamma?"
"I guess you're right, Rudolph; but how I had plans for that girl, papa
can tell you, Marcus! You're a good boy, Marcus, and she's got her heart
set on you; but I--I hate it how everybody can talk now--something to
talk about for them all!"
"They should talk!" said Mr. Katzenstein, lighting a cigar. "And talk
and talk!"
"What I ordered embroidered linens enough for five rooms now I don't
know, Birdie! If you want him I say you should have him--but how I had
plans for that girl!"
"I'll work for her, all right, Mrs. Katzenstein. It will be five rooms
before you know it--this don't mean, Mrs. Katzenstein--maw!--that I
won't ever get up."
"Kiss me, Marcus," said Mrs. Katzenstein. "That she should be happy is
all I care."
"Now, Marcus, we'll go up and see Mamma Gump."
"Get ready, little Birdie," he said.
"Good night, Marcus! You're a good boy, and you'll be good to our baby.
Even if she ain't got it so grand, she's got a good husband--that's more
than Meena Ginsburg's got."
"Run along, you children," said Mr. Katzenstein. "Here, Marcus, put a
cigar in your pocket--one of Goldstein's ten-cent specials."
"I don't smoke, paw," said Marcus.
He went out, his arm linked in Birdie's. Their laughter drifted
backward.
Mrs. Katzenstein resumed her chair in the warm glow of the logs--her
full face, with the scallop of double chin, was suddenly old and lined;
her husband drew up his curved-back rocker beside her.
"Mamma, you shouldn't take on so. Everything comes for the best."
"You can talk, papa! Now I had even told Mrs. Ginsburg for sure she
should have one of those Ninety-sixth Street apartments."
"You women folks make me sick! You should be glad we got our health,
mamma, and good men for our girls."
"I guess you're right, papa. He's a grand young man!"
"A good boy--_ach_, how tired I am!"
"Stretch out your feet, papa. It's warm by the fire."
The light flickered over their faces and sent long shadows wavering and
dancing back of them.
Mr. Katzenstein settled deeper in his chair; his head, bald on top and
with a fringe of bristles over the ears, was hunched down between his
shoulders.
"You've been a good mother, Salcha."
"Not such a mother as you've been a father--me and them girls never
wanted for one thing, even when you couldn't afford it as now."
"Ah--ho!" sighed Mr. Katzenstein.
"You're tired, papa, and it's late. Here, I'll unlace your shoes for
you."
"No; in a minute I go to bed--such a back-ache!"
"She's got a good man; and, like you say, that's the main thing,"
repeated Mrs. Katzenstein, intent on self-conviction. "It ain't always
the money."
"_Ya, ya!_" said Mr. Katzenstein.
"Look at us when we was down on Grand Street! We was happy--You remember
that green-plush dress I had, papa?"
"Yes, Salcha."
"Don't go to sleep sitting there, papa; you'll take cold."
Mr. Katzenstein's fingers, that were never straight, closed over the
veined back of his wife's hand.
"In a minute I go to bed."
"If she had known what was coming when he asked her last night it might
be different; but now it's too late, and everything is for the best."
"Yes, mamma."
"She's happy--and that's the main thing."
"Time flies," he said, with his eyes on the flames. "Only yesterday she
was a baby!"
"Ain't it so, papa? We had 'em, and we suffered for 'em, and now we give
'em up; that's what it means to raise a family."
"Salcha," he said, his fingers stroking hers gently, "we're getting
old--ain't it, old lady?"
"Yes," she said, rocking rhythmically; "twenty-eight years now! We've
had good times, and we've had bad times."
"Good--and--bad--times," he repeated.
They watched the flames.
After a while Mr. Katzenstein's head fell forward on his chest and he
dozed lightly.
The clock ticked somberly and with increasing loudness; twice it
traveled its circle, and twice it tonged the hour. The gas-logs burned
steadily and kept the shadows dancing. Off somewhere a dog bayed; a
creak, which is one of the noises that belong solely to after midnight,
came from the direction of one of the windows.
Mr. Katzenstein woke with a start and jerked his head up.
"Mamma!" he cried, dazed with sleep. "Mamma! Birdie! Mamma!"
"Yes, papa," she replied, smiling at him and with her hand still beneath
his; "I'm here."
BREAKERS AHEAD
In the ink-blue shrieking trail of the twenty-two-hour Imperial flyer,
Slateville lay stark alongside the singing tracks as if hurtled there
like a spark off a speed-hot emery wheel.
The Imperial flyer swooped through the dun-colored village like the
glance of a lovely coquette shoots through her victim's heart and leaves
it bare.
At eight-one the far-off Imperial voice hallooed through the darkness
like a conquering hero whose vanguard is a waving sword which flashes in
the sunlight before he and his steed come up out of the horizon.
At eight-four a steam yodel shook the panes and lamp-chimneys of
Slateville, a semaphore studded with a ruby stiffened out against the
sky, and a white eye--the size of a bicycle-wheel--flashed down the
tracks.
Then the howl of a fiend, and a mile-long checkerboard of lighted
car-windows, and cinders rattling against them like hail.
A fire-boweled engine with a grimy-faced demon leaning out of his
red-hot cab, and, on every alternate night, a green eye with a black
pupil which winked a signal from that same heat-roaring cab and from a
dirt-colored frame shanty in a dirt-brown yard, where a naked tree
stretched its thin arms against the sky, an answering eye which gleamed
through a bandana-bound lantern and outlined the Hebe-like silhouette of
a woman in the window.
Then the flash of a mahogany-lined dining-car with nodding _vis-a-vis_,
pink-shaded candles and white-coated, black-faded genii of the bowl and
weal; an occasional vague figure peering through cupped hands out from
an electric-lighted berth; a plate-glass observation-car with figures
lounging in shallow leather chairs like oil-kings and merchant princes
and only sons in a Fifth Avenue club, and a great trailing plume of
smoke that lingered for a moment and died in the still tingling air.
For a full half-hour, even an hour, after the Imperial flyer had gouged
through the village the yellow lights of Slateville burned on behind its
unwashed windows, which were half opaque with train-dust and the grimy
finger-prints of children. Then they began to flick out, here,
there--here, there. In a slate-roofed shanty beside the quarry, in an
out-of-balance bookkeeper's office in the Slateville Varnish Factory, in
the Red Trunk general store and post-office, the parson's study, a
maiden's bedroom, in the dirt-colored frame house, another slate-roofed
shanty beside the quarry, another, and yet another. Here, there--here,
there.
The clerk in the signal-tower slumped in his chair, the doctor's
tin-tired buggy rattled up a hilly street that was shaped like a crooked
finger, and away beyond the melancholy stretches of close-bitten
grazing-land and runty corn-fields the flyer shrieked upward, and the
miles scuttled the echoes back to Slateville.
On an alternate night that was as singingly still as the inside of a cup
the flyer tore through the village with the cinders tattooing against
its panes and the white eye searching like a near-sighted cylcopean
monster.
But from the red fireman's cab the green lantern with the black
bull's-eye painted on the outward side dangled unlit, and in the
dirt-colored house, behind drawn shades, the Hebe-like figure was
crouched in another woman's arms, and, in the room adjoining, John
Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.
Who-o-o-p! Who-o-o-p!
"Listen, Cottie, listen!"
"'Sh-h-h-h, darlin'."
The crouching women crouched closer together, a dove-note in the
crooning voice of one like the coo of a mate. "'Sh-h-h, darlin'."
"There it goes, Cottie. Gawd, just like nothing had happened."
"'Sh-h-h, dearie; lay still!"
"Listen. The engine's playin' a different tune on the tracks; it's
lighter and smoother."
"Yes--yes--'sh-h-h."
"Just hear, Cottie; they got the old diner on. I know her screech."
"I hear, dearie."
"And the Cleveland sleeper wasn't touched, neither. Hear her. They say
she didn't even leave the tracks. He used to say she had a rattle like a
dice-box. Just the same, it was the smooth-runnin' Washington sleeper
lit on the engine. Listen, Cottie, oh, listen! Just like nothin' had
happened."
"Don't tremble so, darlin'. That's life every time--it just rides over
its dead."
"He hated the flyer, oh--oh--"
"Don't take on so, Della darlin'. He died on his job."
"He hated the flyer; he--"
"He could have jumped like Jim Dirkey did, and lived to face the shame
of it, but he died on his job. You can always say your man died on his
job, Della darlin'."
Della raised her crouching head and brushed the hair back from her eyes.
Helen's face that launched a thousand ships was no more fair.
"That he did--didn't he, Cottie? He died on his job."
"Sure he did, darlin'--sure he did."
"You remember--you remember, Cottie, the first night they put him on the
flyer?"
"Try to forget it, Della, and don't go gettin' all
excited--there--there."
"I was over home that night with you and maw, and--and he came in for
supper with the news and--and he was like a funeral about bein'
promoted."
"Yes, I remember."
"Even with the extra pay he was for stickin' to the accommodation,
because he loved her insides."
"And because it was a chance to spite you."
"But I--I was all for the flyer. I told him he was afraid of her speed,
and he hauled off and nearly hit me for callin' him a coward before you
and maw, and you up and--"
"He was rough with you, Della, but he wouldn't 'a' dared do it with me
there. I had him bluffed, all righty; he wouldn't 'a' done it with me
and maw there."
"Lots maw would 'a' cared. Poor maw! She never knew nothing else but
abuse, herself."
"Paw wasn't so bad, Della--he always brought home the envelope."
"John--he made me eat the words when we got home that night; but, just
the samey, he--he wouldn't 'a' took the Imperial, Cottie, if I hadn't
nagged him to it--he wouldn't have!"
"Well, what if he wouldn't? You wouldn't 'a' married him, neither, if he
hadn't nagged you to it when paw died, and he knew you had a stepmother
that was devilin' and abusin' the life out of us--you."
"He used to say, when he came home with a face as black as a crazy
devil's, that coaling the flyer was just like stoking hell. She ate and
ate and bellowed for more. He hated the flyer, he did. He stoked her
with more hate than coal, and I drove him to it, Cottie. I put the hole
in his head."
"Aw, no, dearie! Nobody ever made John Blaney do nothing he didn't want
to do. He's dead now and can't take up for hisself, but he was hard as
nails--even if he was my brother-in-law."
"'Sh-h-h, Cottie, little sister."
"I always say, Della, Gawd knows I ain't got a cinch! I hate the factory
like I hate a green devil, and you know what it is to live around maw's
doggin' and abuse, but it's like I tole Joe the other night: I wouldn't
marry the finest man livin' before I'd had my chance to try out what I
had my heart set on. I told him he could save his breath. I'm goin' to
take a chance on gettin' out of this dump--not on tyin' up to it."
"Joe's a good boy, Cottie. He's a saint alongside of what John was.
Steady fellows and foremen ain't layin' around loose, dearie. He's a
good boy, Cottie--none finer."
"Della! You ain't--"
"No; I ain't urgin' you, Cottie. I ain't sayin' you're not right to hold
off, but Joe's the finest boy in these parts, ain't he?"
"That ain't sayin' much. You wasn't a big-enough gambler, Della. You
remember how I begged you the night before the wedding to hold off. I
ain't goin' to make your mistake. You ought 'a' done what Lily
done--took a chance. Tessie says her pictures were all pasted up outside
of Indianapolis last week. Lily Divette in the 'Twinkling Belles.' If
Lily Maloney with her baby face and--"
"I--I stuck to John to the end, though--didn't I, Cottie? Nobody can say
I didn't stick to him--can they, Cottie?"
"No, no! Now don't go gettin' excited again, dearie."
"Oh, Gawd, Gawd, Cottie. I--I feel--so--so--queer!"
"Yes, darlin', I know!"
The cryptic quiescence of death hung over the unpainted pine bedchamber
and chilled their skin like damp in a cave seeps through clothing. From
the far side of the bed a lamp wavered against a tin reflector and
danced through their hair like firelight in copper; wind galloped over
the flat country, shook the box-shaped house, and whinnied on every
flue.
Cottie, whose head was Tiziano's Flora yet more radiant, held her
sister's equally radiant head close to her warm bosom, and through the
calico of her open-at-the-throat waist, her heart pumped the
organ-prelude of Life--Life in the midst of Death.
"Della darlin'--don't--don't be afraid to talk to me. Ain't--ain't I
your--sister?"
"What--what--"
"I--I know--what you're thinkin', Della--"
"'Sh-h-h; not now!"
"You're thinkin' that you're--that you're _free_, now,
darlin'--free--ain't you?"
"'Sh-h-h-h!"
"Free, darlin'--think--there ain't nothin' can hold you! A hundred
dollars' benefit-money and--"
"Gawd, Cottie--Cottie--'sh-h-h! Him layin' in there dead! It--it ain't
no time to talk about that now. Anyways, you're the one to go. I'll stay
with maw."
Her words tumbled, and her tones were galvanized with fear and fear's
offspring, superstition. She glanced toward the half-open door with eyes
two shades too dark.
"No, no, Della; you're the oldest. You go first, and I--I'll stick it
out with maw till--she's gettin' feebler every day, Delia, and I'll be
joinin' you some day not far off."
"'Sh-h-h; it ain't right. I--I'll give her--half the benefit-money,
Cottie, but it's a sin to--"
"You and folks make me sick. If the devil hisself was to die you'd
snivel and bury him in priest's robes. What John _was_ he _was_--dyin'
didn't change it. Ten days ago you were standin' at this very window
answering his signal and hating him with every swing of the lantern."
"Cottie, you mustn't!"
"I used to see you sit across from him at the table, and when he yelled
at you or wanted to pet you I've seen you run your finger-nails into you
palms from hatin' him, clear in till they bled, like you used to do
when you was a kid and hated any one, and now, just because he's dead--"
"Oh, Gawd, I never done the right thing by him! He was my husband. Look
how bare I kept everything from him. He used to come home from a
forty-eight-hour shift and say this house reminded him of hell with the
fire gone out. I never did the right thing by him."
"He didn't by you, neither."
"He was my husband."
"He knew if we'd 'a' had the money to light out and do like Lily he
wouldn't 'a' stood a show of bein' your husband, though. He knew, from
the day they put the bandages on maw's eyes, thet he was just the only
way out for us. He knew one of us had to quit the factory and stay home
with her--and where was the money comin' from? He knew."
"Yes, he knew, Cottie. Even on the New York accommodation, that time on
the wedding-trip, trouble began right off. When that fellow on the train
got talkin' to me and told me he could give me a job in the biggest show
on Broadway, he nearly hauled off and raised a row right there on the
train when he came back and seen me talkin' to him."
"If only you'd got the fellow's name, Della, and his street in New
York!"
"How could I, when John came back and began snarlin' like--"
"Would you know him if you seen him again, Della? Think, darlin', would
you?"
"Would I? In my sleep I'd know him. He was a short fellow with eyes so
little they didn't show when he laughed, and a mouth full of gold teeth
that stuck out like a buck's. And say, Cottie, for diamonds! A diamond
horseshoe scarf-pin as big as a dollar!"
"There's money in it, Della. Look at Lily. Tessie says she's diamond
rings to her knuckles."
"John knew what took the life out of me, from that day on. He used to
say if he ever laid eyes on that little bullet-headed, rat-eyed sport,
as he called him, he'd shake the life out of him. Just like that!"
"Faugh! he wouldn't 'a' had the nerve!"
"Don't you forget he knew what was eatin' us, Cottie."
"Well, wasn't it our right--a beauty like you in this dump?"
"And you?"
Their faces, startlingly alike, were upturned, and in their eyes was the
golden fluid of dawn.
"He knew. You remember that letter Lily wrote when you asked her to get
you in her show?"
"Do I?"
"He found it in my pocket one night and read it, and laughed and
laughed. He used to know it by heart, and he'd cackle it to me whenever
he caught me red-eyed from cryin'."
"That letter she wrote out of jealousy? He seen that?"
"Yeh! 'Stay home, dearie,' he used to sing to me, laughin' to split his
sides; 'stay home, like Della did, and make happiness and a home for
yourself.'"
"Gawd!"
"Then he'd go off in a real fit of laughin' again. 'You ain't got no
ideas of the breakers ahead, Cottie dearie,' he'd holler, 'and in this
business there ain't many of us got the strength to fight 'em.'"
"Wasn't that like him--stealin' a letter!"
"Then he'd laugh some more, wag his finger at me and make me cry, and
keep yellin' 'Breakers ahead! Breakers ahead!'"
"There, there, dearie; it's all over, now. He was too dumb and too mean
to know that Lily was as jealous as a snake of me and you--always, even,
when we was kids. Sure she don't want us in her show--we'd walk away
with it. John was too dumb to see the letter was only--"
"'Sh-h-h; it's a sin to run down the dead."
"Anyway, you never lied to John like he did to you. I can still hear him
that dark night, down by the quarry, trying to scare you. Lyin' to you
about what girls got to buck up against in the city, that night, when
they first put the bandages on maw's eyes, and he was beggin' and
beggin' you to marry him."
"Gawd! I was ashamed to listen to some of the things he tried to scare
me with that night."
"He couldn't answer when I piped up about his cousin, Tessie Hobbs,
that went to St. Louis to learn millinery and sends home four dollars a
week. He couldn't answer that, could he?"
"No, he couldn't, Cottie."
A silence--the great stone silence of a coliseum--closed in about them.
Della shivered and burrowed her head deeper into her sister's lap.
"Aw, Gawd, us talkin' like this, with him layin' in there!"
"If he wasn't layin' in there we wouldn't be talkin'."
A shutter swung in on its hinges.
"There, there! It ain't nothin' but the wind, Della."
"He was goin' to fix that shutter to-day when he was off shift. Gawd, he
didn't have no more idea of dyin' than I did!"
"That's just like maw. Sometimes in the night I can almost hear her stop
breathin'--she's so weak, but she's always talkin' about next year--next
year."
"It'll be awful for you, little sister, with me gone and you alone with
her."
"It--it ain't a sin to say it, Delia. She--she ain't here for long, and
I'll be comin' to join you soon. You'll tell 'em I'm comin'."
"Gawd, how I wish we was going together, little sister! Leavin' you is
just like leavin' my heart. There's nobody I love like you, Cottie."
"Della darlin', look at Lily--she went alone."
"I--I ain't afraid--you got the best voice of us two, but I'll make the
way for you, dearie. I'll make it easier for you to come."
"It won't be long."
"If I could only have got his name that time on the train, Cottie!"
"You got Lily's boardin'-house, dearie. Ain't that something?"
"Oh, darlin'--him layin' in there!"
"Don't begin that again, dearie."
"Listen, Cottie--listen--that can't be the six-thirty accommodation
already, is it? It ain't the funeral-day already, is it?"
"Yes, dearie; but it's a long way off. See, it's just gettin' light
through the crack in the shade."
"Don't raise it, Cottie. It's a sin to let in the light, with him layin'
there and dead."
"Darlin', it ain't goin' to hurt him, and the lamp's low. See; there
ain't no harm in raisin' it--look how light it's gettin'!"
Off toward the east dawn trembled on the edge of eternity and sent up,
as if the earth were lighting the horizon, a pearlish light shotted with
pink. A smattering of stars lingered and trembled as though cold. They
paled; dawn grew pinker, and the black village, with its naked trees
standing darkly against the sky, sent up wispy spirals of smoke. A
derrick in the jagged bowl of the quarry moved its giant arms slowly,
and a steam-whistle shrieked.
The New York accommodation hallooed to the trembling dawn and tore
through Slateville.
The sisters pressed their white faces close to the cold pane and watched
it rush into the sunrise. A cock crowed to the dawn, and, from afar,
another. A dirt-team rumbled up the road, and the steam-whistle from the
quarry blew a second reveille.
"You--you take the accommodation, darlin'. It's cheaper, and you'll be
feelin' scary about the flyer for a while. You can catch it down by
Terre Haute at five-thirty-one, Monday morning--eh, darlin'?"
"So--so soon, Cottie--only three days after, and him hardly cold."
"Don't let's drag it out, darlin'."
"Oh, Cottie, I'll be waitin' for you! There won't be a day that I won't
be waitin' for you. There's nothin' I love like you."
Their faces were close and wet with tears, and the first ray of sun
burnished their heads and whitened their white bosoms.
"Kiss me, Cottie."
"Della--Della!"
"My little sister!"
"You're goin', Della--try to think, darlin', what it means--you're
goin'."
"'Sh-h-h, dearie--'sh-h-h. Yes--I--I'm goin'."
And in the room adjoining John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.
* * * * *
The city has a thousand throats, its voice is like a storm running on
the wind, and like ship-high waves plunging on ship-high rocks, and like
unto the undertone of lost souls adrift in a sheol of fog and water.
The voice of the city knows none of the acoustic limitations of
architects and prima donnas. Its dome is as high as fifty-story
sky-scrapers, and its sounding-board the bases of a thousand thousand
tired brains.
It penetrates the Persian-velvet hangings of the most rococo palace
toward which the sight-seeing automobile points its megaphone, and beats
against brains neurotic with the problems of solid-gold-edged bonds and
solid-gold cotillion favors. It is the birth-song of the tenement child
and the swan-song of the weak. It travels out over fields of new-mown
hay and sings to the boy at the plow. It shouts to the victor and
whispers to the stranger.
Through the morning bedlam of alarm-clocks, slamming doors, the rattle
of ash-cans, and the internal disorders of a rooming-house, came the
voice a-whispering to Della.
Out from the mouths of babes and truck-drivers, out from the mouths of
debutantes and coal-stokers, out from the mouths of those who toil and
those who spin not. Drifting over the sea of housetops, up from the
steep-walled streets. The laugh of the glad, the taut laugh of the mad;
the lover's sigh, and the convict's sigh--and, beneath, like arpeggio
scales under a melody, the swiftly running gabble-gabble of life.
Della stirred on her cot, raised her arms, and yawned to the
faun-colored oblong of October sky; breathed in the stale air and salty
pungency of bad ventilation and the city's breakfast-bacon, and swung
herself out of bed.