Part 5

"Ask her; she's my age and we been on the job together for twenty years. Long before live models was even known in the business, she and me were showing goods in the old Cunningham place on Madison Avenue."

"Even--even back there you was dead set on having good figures around the place, wasn't you, Phonzie?"

"I tell you it's economy in the end, madam, to have figures that can show off the goods to advantage."

"Oh, I'm not kicking, Phonzie, but I was just saying."

"I have been in the business long enough, madam, to learn that the greatest way in the world to show gowns is on live stock. A dame will fall for any sort of a rag stuck on a figure like Gert's, and think the waist-line and all is thrown in with the dress. You seen for yourself Van Ness order five gowns right off Gert's back to-day. Would she have fallen for them if we had shown them in the hand? Not much! She forgot all about her own thirty-eight waist-line when she ordered that pink organdie. She was seeing Gert's twenty-two inches."

"But honest, Phonzie, take a girl like Gert, even with her figure, she--Oh, I don't know, there's something about her!"

"She may rub your fur the wrong way, madam, but under all her flip ways they don't come no finer than Gert."

"No, it ain't that, only she don't always get across. Take Lipton; she won't even let her show her a gown; she's always calling for Dodo instead. Sometimes I think the trade takes exceptions to a girl like Gert, her all decked out in diamonds that--show how--how fly she must be."

"Gertie Dobriner's the best in the business, just the same, madam. She ain't stuck on her way of living no more than I am, but she's a model and she 'ain't got enough of anything else in her to make the world treat her any different than a model."

"I'm not saying she ain't a good thirty-six, Phonzie."

"I got to hand it to her, madam, when it comes to a lot of things. She may be a little skylarker, but take it from me, it ain't from choice, and when she likes you--God! honest, I think that girl would pawn her soul for you. When I was down with pneumonia--"

"I ain't saying a thing against her."

"She's no saint, maybe, but then God knows I'm not, either, and what I don't know about her private life don't bother me."

"Oh, I--I know you like her all right."

"Say, I'll bet you any amount if that girl had memory enough to learn the words of a song or the steps of a dance, she could have landed a first-row job in any musical show on Broadway. She could do it now, for that matter. Gad! did you see her to-day showing off that Queen Louise cloth-of-gold model? Honest, she took my breath away, and I been on the floor with her twenty years."

"Y-yes."

"Keep down your hips and waist-line, Gert, I always say to her, and you are good in the business for ten years yet."

"She should worry while the crop of four carats is good."

"Yes, but just the same a girl like her don't know when her luck may turn. A girl can lose her luck sometimes before she loses her figure."

"Any old time she can lose her luck with you."

"Me!"

"Yes, you!"

Madam Moores bent over the pleats in her napkin. Opposite her, his cigarette held fastidiously aloft, he regarded her through its haze.

"Well, of all things! So that--that's what you think?"

"I--I know."

"Know what?"

"That she's dead strong for you."

"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like--well, she's like a sister or--or a pal to me, but she's got about as much time for a fellow of my pace, except when she gets blue, as--as the Queen of Sheba has."

"That's what you think, maybe, but everybody else knows she--she's been after you for years, trying--"

"Aw, cut the comedy, madam. Honest, you make me sore. She's nothing to me off the floor but a darn good pal. Say, I can treat her to a sixty-cent table d'hôte twice a week; but don't you think in the back of my head, when it comes to a showdown, that I couldn't even buy silk shoelaces for a girl of her kind. I ain't her pace and we both know it. Bosh!"

"You'd like to be, all right, if--if she didn't have so many rich ones hanging around."

"Just the same, many's the time she's told me if she could land a regular fellow and do the regular thing and settle down on seventy-five a month in a Harlem flat, why she'd drop all this skylarking of hers for a family of youngsters, so quick it would make your head swim."

"Sure, that's just what I say, she--"

"Many's the time she--she's cried to me--just cried, because the kind of life she has to live don't lead to anything, and she knows it."

"I ain't blaming you for liking her, Phonzie; a girl with her figure can make an old dub like me look like--well, I just guess after her I--I must look like thirty cents to you."

"You! Say, you got more real sense in your little finger than three of Gert's kind put together."

She colored like a wild rose.

"Sense ain't what counts with the men nowadays; it's looks and--and speed like Gert's."

"Girls like Gert are all right, I tell you; but say, when it comes to real brains like yours--nobody home."

"Maybe not, but just the same it's the girls with sense get tired having the men rave about their smartness and pass on, to go rushing after a empty head completely smothered under yellow curls. That's how much _real_ brains counts for with--with you men."

He flung her a gesture, his cigarette trailing a design in smoke. "Honest, madam, you got me wrong there. A fellow like me 'ain't got the nerve to--to go after a woman like you. A girl like Dodo or Gert is my size, but I'd be a swell dub trying to line up alongside of you, now wouldn't I?"

Tears that were distilled in her heart rose to her eyes, dimming them. Her hand fluttered in among the plates and cups and saucers toward him.

"Phonzie, I--I--"

"You what?"

"I--I--Aw, nothing."

Her head fell suddenly forward in her arms, pushing the elaborate coiffure awry, and beneath the blue-checked apron her shoulders heaved.

He rose. "Madam! Why, madam, what--"

"Don't--don't pay any attention to me, Phonzie. I--I just got a silly fit on me. I'll be all right in a minute."

"Aw, madam, I--I didn't mean to make you sore by anything I said."

"You go now, Phonzie; the whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You--you go get some live one like Gert and--and take her out skylarking."

"You're sore about Gert, is that it, madam?"

"No, no. Honest, Phonzie."

"Madam, I--I just don't know what's got you. Is it something I said has hurt your feelings?"

"No, no."

He advanced with an incertitude that muddled his movements, made to cross to her side where she lay with her arms outstretched in the fuddle of dishes, made to touch her black silk sleeve where it emerged from the blue-checked apron, hesitated, sucking his lips in between his teeth, swung on his heel, then around once more, and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder.

"Madam?"

"You--you just go on, Phonzie. I--I guess I'm an old fool, anyways. It's like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip for me to try and squeeze anything but work out of my life. I--I guess I'm just nothing but an old fool."

"But, madam, how can a fellow like me squeeze anything out of life for you? Look at me! Why, I ain't worth your house room. I'm nothing but a fellow who draws his salary off a woman, and has all his life. Why, you--you earn as much in a week as I do in a month."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Look, you with a home you made for yourself and a business you built up out of your own brains, and what am I? A hall-room guy that can put a bluff across with a lot of idiot women. Look at me, forty and doing a chorus-man's work. You got me wrong, madam. I don't measure nowheres near up to you. If I did, do you think I wouldn't be settled down long ago like a regular--Aw, well, what's the use talking." He plucked at his short mustache, pulling the hairs sharply.

She raised her face and let him gaze at the ravages of her tears. "Why--why don't you come right out and say it, that I 'ain't got the looks and--the pep?"

"Madam, can't you see I'm only--"

"You--you can't run yourself down to me. You, and nobody else, has made the establishment what it is. I never had a head for the _little_ things that count. That's why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third Street. What did I know about the _big_ little things!--the carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and gold labels, all _little_ things that get _big_ results. I never had a head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models, or the French accent."

"You got the head for the big things, and that's what counts."

"That's why, when you say you can't line up alongside of me, it's no excuse."

"I--I mean it."

"Just because I got a head for designing doesn't make me a nine days' wonder. Why don't you--you come right out and say what you mean, Phonzie?"

"Why, I--I don't even know how to talk to a woman like you, madam. La-La girls have always been my pace."

"I know, Phonzie, and I--I ain't blaming you. A slick-looking fellow like you can skylark around as he pleases and don't need to have time for--the overworked, tired-out ones like me."

"Madam, I never dreamed--"

"Dreamed! Phonzie, I--I've got no shame if I tell you, but, God! how many nights I--I've lain right here on this couch dreaming of--of--"

"Well?"

"Of you and me, Phonzie, hitting it off together."

"Madam!"

Her head burrowed deeper in her arms, her voice muffed in their depth.

"Madam!"

"How many times I've dreamed, Phonzie. You and me, real partners in the business and--and in everything. Us in a little home together, one of the five-room flats down on the next floor, with a life-size kitchen and a life-size dining-room and--and a life-size--Aw, Phonzie, you--you'll think I'm crazy."

"Madam, why, madam, I just don't know."

"Them's the dreams a silly old thing like me, that never had nothing but work and--and nothing else in her life, can lay right here on this couch, night after night, and--Gawd! I--I bet you think I--I'm just crazy, Phonzie."

For answer he leaned over and took her small figure in his arms, wiping away with his sheer untried handkerchief the tears; but fresh ones sashayed down her face and flowed over her words.

"Phonzie, tell me, do you--do you--think--"

He held her closer. "Sure, madam, I do."

* * * * *

On the wings of a twelvemonth, spring had come around again and the taste of summer was like poppy-leaves between the teeth, and the perennial open shirtwaists and open street-cars bloomed, even as the distant larkspur in the distant field. At six o'clock with darkness came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward. Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried for shelter and bent into the wind.

In Madam Moores's establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out. Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to pacing the thick-nap carpet.

From a mauve-colored telephone-booth emerged Miss Gertie Dobriner, flushed from bad service and from bad air.

"Whew!"

"Get her?"

"Sure I got her. Is it such a stunt to get an address from a customer?"

"Good!"

"I says to her, I says, 'I seen it standing on the sidewalk next to your French maid and I wanted to buy one like it for my little niece.'"

"Can we get it to-night?"

"Yes, proud papa! But listen; I wrote it down, 'Hinshaw, 2227 Casset Street, Brooklyn.'"

"Brooklyn!"

"Yes, two blocks from the Bridge, and for a henpecked husband you got a large fat job on your hands if you want to make another getaway to-night. This man Hinshaw shows 'em right in his house."

"Brooklyn, of all places!"

"Right-oh!"

He snapped his fingers in a series of rapid clicks. "Ain't that the limit? If I'd only mentioned it to you this afternoon earlier, we could have been over and back by now."

"Wait until Monday then, Phonzie."

"Yes, but you ought to have heard her this morning, Gert; it's not often she gets her heart so set. To-morrow being Sunday, all of a sudden she gets a-wishing for one of the glass-top ones like she's seen around in the parks, to take him out in for the first time."

"Oh, I'm game! I'll go, but can you beat it! A trip to Brooklyn when I got a friend from Carson City waiting at his hotel to buy out Rector's for me to-night."

"You go on with him, Gert. What's the use you dragging over there, too, now that you got the address for me. I would never have mentioned it to you at all if I'd have known you couldn't just go buy the kind she wants in any department store. I'll go over there alone, Gert."

"Yes, and get stung on the shape and the hood and all. I bought just an ordinary one for my little niece once, and you got to get them shallow. Anyways, I'm going to chip in half on this. I want to get the little devil something, anyways."

"Aw no, Gert, this is my surprise."

"I guess I can chip in on a present for the kid's month-old birthday."

"Well, then, say I meet you in the Eighty-sixth Street Subway at seven, so we can catch a Brooklyn express and make it over in thirty minutes."

"Yes."

"But it's raining, Gert. Look out. Honest, I don't like to ask you to break your date to hike over there in the rain with me."

"Raining! Aw, then let's cut it, Phonzie. I got a new marcel and a cold on my chest that weighs a ton. She can't roll it on a wet Sunday, nohow."

"Paper says clear and warm to-morrow, Gert; but, honest, you don't need to go."

"You're a nice boy, Phonzie, and a proud father, but you can't spend my money for me. What you bet I get ten per cent. off for cash? Subway at seven. I'll be there."

"I may be a bit late, Gert. She ain't so strong yet, and after last night I don't want to get her nervous."

"I told you she'd be sore at me for taking you to the Ritz ball last night, and God knows it wasn't no pleasure in my life to go model-hunting with you, when I might have been joy-riding with my friend from Carson City."

"It's just because she ain't herself yet. I'm off, Gert. Till seven in the Subway!"

"Yes, till seven!"

* * * * *

When Mr. Alphonse Michelson unlocked the door of his second-floor five-room apartment, a lamp softly burning through a yellow silk lamp-shade met him with the soft radiance of home. Beside the door he divested himself of his rain-spotted mackintosh, inserted his dripping umbrella in a tall china stand, shook a little rivulet from his hat and hung it on a pair of wall antlers.

"That you, Phonzie?"

"Yes, hon, it's me."

'"Sh-h-h-h!"

He tiptoed down the aisle of hallway and into the soft-lighted front room. From a mound of pillows and sleepy from their luxury Millie Moores rose to his approach, her forefinger placed across her lips and a pale mist of chiffon falling backward from her arms.

What a masseuse is Love! The lines had faded from Millie's face and in their place the grace of tenderness and a roundness where the chin had softened. Years had folded back like petals, revealing the heart and the unwithered bosom of her.

He kissed her, pressing the finger of warning closer against her lips, and she patted a place for him on the Mexican afghan beside her.

"Phonzie!"

"How you feelin', hon?"

"Strong! If it ain't raining to-morrow, I'm going to take him out if I have to carry him in my arms. Say, wouldn't I like to feel myself rolling him in one of them white-enamel, glass-top things like Van Ness has for her last one. Ida May tried three places to get one for us."

"They're made special."

"All my life I've wanted to feel myself wheeling him, Phonzie. I used to dream myself doing it in the old place down on Twenty-third Street, when I used to sit at the sewing-table from eight until eight. Gee! I--honest, I just can't wait to see if the sun is shining to-morrow."

He kissed her again on the back of each finger, and she let her hand, pale and rather inert, rest on his hair.

"Is my boy hungry for his din-din?"

"Gee! yes! The noon appointments came so thick I had to send Eddie out to bring me a bite."

"What kind of a day?"

"Everything smooth but the designing-room. Gert done her best, but they don't take hold without you, hon. They can't even get in their heads that gold charmeuse idea Gert and I swiped at the Ritz last night."

"Did you tell them I'll be back on the job next week, Phonzie?"

"Nothing doing. You're going to stay right here, snug in your rug, another two weeks."

"Rave on, hon, but I got the nurse engaged for Monday. How's the Van Norder wedding-dress coming?"

"Great! That box train you drew up will float down the aisle after her like a white cobweb. It's a knock-out."

"Say, won't I be glad to get back in harness!"

"You got to take it slow, Mil."

"And ain't you glad it's all over, Phonzie?"

"Am I!"

"Four weeks old to-morrow, and Ida May was over to-day and says she never seen a kid so big for his age."

"He takes after my grandfather--he was six feet two without shoes."

"You ought to seen him to-day laying next to me, Phonzie. He looked up and squinted, dear, for all the world like you."

A bell tinkled. In the frame of a double doorway a seventeen-year-old maid drew back the portières on brass rings that grated. In the room adjoining and beneath a lighted dome of colored glass a table lay spread, uncovered dishes exuding fragrant spirals of steam.

"Supper! Say, ain't it great to have you back at the table again, Mil?"

"Oh, I don't know, the way--the way you went hiking off last night to--to a ball."

"Aw, now, hon, 'ain't you got that out of your system yet? For a girlie with all your good sense, if you ain't the greatest little one to get a silly gix and work it to death."

"I just made a civil remark."

"What was the use wasting that ten-dollar pair of tickets the guy from Carson City gave her, when we could use them and get some tips on some of the imports the women wore?"

"I never said to waste them."

"You know it don't hurt to get around and see what's being worn, hon. That's our business."

Tears of weakness welled to her eyes and she stooped over her plate to conceal them.

"I'm not saying anything, am I? Only--only it's right lucky she can fill my place so--so well while I--I got to be away awhile."

Her barbed comment only pricked him to happy thought. He made a quick foray into his side pocket. "I brought up one of these pink velvet roses for you to look at, Mil. It's Gert's idea to festoon these underneath the net tunic on McGrath's blue taffeta. See, like that. It's a neat little idea, hon, and Gert had these roses made up in shaded effects like this one. How you like it?"

The tiny bud lay on the table between them, nor did she take it up.

"All right."

He leaned to pat her cheek. "These are swell potatoes, hon."

Her lips warmed and opened. "I--I told her how to make 'em."

"Give me some more."

She in turn leaned to press his hand. "Such a hungry boy."

"Can I take a peek at the kid before--"

"Aw, Phonzie, and wake him up like you did last night. He'll sleep straight through now till half past twelve; that's why I didn't even tiptoe back in the bedroom myself. The doctor says the first half of the night is his best sleep; let him sleep till half past twelve, dear."

"Aw, just one peek before I go."

"Before you what?"

"I got to go out for a little while to-night, hon. On business."

"Where?"

"Slews. I got to meet him in the Subway at seven and go to Brooklyn shops with him to look over those ventilators I'm having put in the fitting-rooms."

She laid down her fork. "I thought you said he was in St. Louis?"

"He got back."

"Oh!"

"You lay down in the front room and read till I get back, hon, and maybe--maybe I'll bring you a surprise."

The meal continued in silence, but after a few seconds her throat seemed to close and she discarded the pretense of eating.

"Now don't you get sore, Mil; you never used to be like this. It's just because you're not right strong yet."

"I ain't--ain't sore."

"You are. You got a foolish idea in your head, Mil."

"Why should I have an idea? I guess I'm getting all that's coming to me for--for forcing things."

"Now, Mil, I bet anything you're still feeling sore about last night. Aren't you?"

"Sore? It ain't my business, Phonzie, if you can stay out till one o'clock one night and the next want to begin the same thing over again."

"We had to stick around last night, Mil. Gert was drawing off the models under her handkerchief and on the dance program. That's how we got the yellow charmeuse, just by keeping after it and drawing it line for line."

"I know, I know."

"Then give me a kiss and when I come back maybe--maybe I'll bring you a surprise up my sleeve, hon."