Part 23

"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."

Her laugh was more of a cough. "There ain't no such animal."

"There ain't? I seen you trying to rope one to-day, all righty. I seen you."

"You what?"

"Sure I did. The slick guy in checks."

"You--"

"Sure I seen you. I was loafing around the station a whole hour before you seen me to-day, baby doll. I seen the whole show. Grabbed the slick little Checkers right out of the line, didn't you? Bowled him over with those black eyes of yours. Went for him right like he was a stick of candy and you was licking it, eh? Pretty slick to take in a big eyeful like that, wasn't I? Some little Checkers, he was."

Red leaped to her face. "Cut that!"

"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.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Every Soul Hath Its Song, by Fannie Hurst