Part 22

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."

He set up a jingling in his left pocket. "I am, am I?"

"Well, I'm not going."

"When you going to cut this comedy, Marj?"

"I'm not. I'm just beginning."

"Breaking into high society, eh? Fine chance."

"Yes, with the gang of you down there hanging on like the plague, I got a swell chance, nix."

"It's because we know you too well, Marj. Knew you when you had two black pigtails and used to carry a bucket into the family entrance of Harry's place, crying with madness every time your old man sent you. Gad! I can see you yet, sweetness, with your big black eyes blacker than ever, and steering home your old man from off a jamboree."

"God! sometimes I wake up in the night just like him and ma was still alive and me and her was sitting there listening to him creak up the stairs on his bad nights. I wake up, I can tell you, in a sweat--right in a sweat."

"I knew you in them days, kiddo, just like you knew me. That's why you can't pull nothing over on a fellow, kiddo, that's had as many pulls on your all-day suckers as I have. You're a little quitter, you are, and sometimes I think you're out for bigger game."

"It don't mean because a girl was born in the mud she's got to stick there, does it?"

"No, but she can't pretend she don't know one of the old mud-turtles when she sees one."

"Mud-turtle is the right name."

"The crowd has got your number, all right, kiddo; they know you're out after bigger game. You're a little turncoat, that's what they say about you."

"Turncoat! Who wouldn't turn a coat they was ashamed of? I guess you all don't remember how I used to say, even back in those years when I was taking tickets down at Lute's old Fourteenth Street Amusement Parlors, how when my little minute came I was going to breeze away from the gang down there?"

"I remember, all righty."

"How I was going to get me a job up-town here, where I could get in with a decent crowd of girls, and not be known for the kind down there that you and all of 'em knew I--I wasn't."

"Sure we knew."

"Yes, but what good does that do me? Can a dirty little yellow-haired snip over in the Fancy Fruits give me the once-over and a turn-down? She can. And why? Because I ain't certified. I come from a counterfeit crowd, and who's going to take the trouble to find my number and see if it's real?"

"Aw, now--"

"Didn't a broken-down old granny over in the Thirty-fourth Street house where I roomed give me notice last week, because Addie Lynch found me out one night and came to see me, lit up like a Christmas tree?"

"That's why I say, Marj, stick to the old ones who know you."

"Like May Pope used to say, a girl might as well have the game as the name."

"If I was a free man, Marj, I'd--"

"Where has the strait and narrow got me to, I'd like to know? Sometimes I think it's nothing but a blind alley pushing me back."

"If I was a free man, Marj--"

"Let me meet a slick little up-stage fellow that doesn't have to look two ways before he walks the wrong beat in daylight; let me meet a fellow like that, and where does it get me?"

"I'm no saint, Marj, but there ain't a beat in town I'd have to look two ways on. Ask any cop--"

"Does the slick little up-stage fellow get my number? He does not. I'd like to see one of them ask that dirty little yellow-head over in the Fancy Fruits to go home with him. A little Nobody-Home like her, just because she was raised in an amen corner of the Bronx and has a six-foot master-mechanic brother to call for her every time she works fifteen minutes later, she can wear her hands crossed on her chest and a lily stuck in 'em and get away with it, too."

"You're right, kiddo; you got more sand than ten of such put together."

"I'm as good as her and better. I'm not so sure by a long shot that any of those baby faces would say no if they was ever invited to say yes. Watch out there, that cab, Blink. Gee! your nerves are as steady as gelatin."

They were veering through the crowds and out into the soft flurry of the storm. Flakes like pulled-out bits of cotton floated to their shoulders, resting there. Seventh Avenue, for the instant before the eye left the great Greek façade of the Pennsylvania Terminal, was like a dream of Athens seen through the dapple of white shadows. Immediately the eye veered, however, the great cosmopolis formed by street meeting avenue tore down the illusion. Another block and second-hand clothing shops nudged one another, their flapping wares for sale outside them like clothes-wash on a line, empty arms and legs gallivanting in the wind. A storm-car combed through the driven snow, scuttling it and clearing the tracks. Down another block the hot, spicy smell of a Mexican dish floated out between the swinging doors of an all-night bar. A man lurched out, laughing and crying.

Marjorie Clark's companion steered her past and turned toward her, his twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.

"Poor kiddo!" he said. "Just send them to me for reference. I can do some tall vouching for you."

"The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting the indigoes much deeper, there's no telling where they'll land me. The game as well as the name ain't all poetry, let me tell you that."

Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly, and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward, keen and close to hers.

"I've been telling you that for five years, girl."

"Now don't go getting me wrong, Blink."

"If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my health and my looks and--"

"If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song. You ain't man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a mother that's pulling her down to Hades with her. Take it from me, if there wasn't something in me that's just sorry for you, I wouldn't walk these here blocks with you. Sometimes when I look at you right hard, Blink, honest, it looks to me like the coke's got you, Blink."

"Now, Marjie--"

"You wouldn't tell me if it had. But you got the twitches, all righty."

"It's me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you."

"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a girl."

"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."

"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."

"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin amen notions."

"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl? Gee!"

"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets sometimes. All fuzzed over like."

"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I guess."

She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping back over one shoulder.

"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living hell sitting on the water-wagon for you, have I?"

"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."

"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there. But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"

"You can't pump that into me, Blink."

His voice narrowed to a nasal quality. "I didn't send her and the kid a whole Christmas box like you wanted me to, did I? I didn't stick a brand-new fiver in the black-silk-dress pattern, knowing all the while she'd have it drunk up before she opened the creases out. I didn't, did I?"

They were approaching the intersection of a wide and white-lighted cross-town street. The snowfall had lightened. Marjorie Clark let her gaze rest for the moment upon her companion, and her voice seemed suddenly to nestle deep in her throat.

"Gee! Blink, if I thought any of the--the uplift stuff I've tried to pump into you had seeped in. Gee! if I could think that, Blink!"

Tears lay close to the surface of her words, and his lean face was thrust farther forward in affirmation.

"It has, Marj. All I got to do is to think of you and those big black eyes of yours shining, and I could lead a water-wagon parade."

"It's the habits, Blink, you got to watch most. For a minute to-night you looked like coke and--and it scared me. Don't let the coke get you, Blink. For God's sake, don't!"

"I sent her a fiver, Marj, and a black silk, and a doll with real hair for the kid. Y'oughtta seen, Marj, real hair on it."

"That was fine, Blink. Fine!"

"Where you going? Aw, come, Marj. For the love of Mike, you're not going."

"Yes, yes. I got to go. This is Twenty-second Street, my corner. That's where I room; that fourth house to the right. That dark one. I got to go."

"Where?"

"Where do you s'pose? Home."

"What's doin' there?"

"N-nothing."

"Whatta you going to do Christmas Eve? Sit in your two-by-four and twiddle your thumbs?"

Immediate sobs rose in her throat. "Lord!" she said, "I dun'no'! I dun'no'!"

He set up the jangling again. "It's Christmas Eve, Marj."

"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!"