Part 11

"It was the feather in your cap did it, Jimmie. I can see you yet, stepping up with that innocent grin of yours. You think I didn't know you were flirting? Cousin from Long Island City! 'Say,' I says to myself, I says, 'I look as much like his cousin from Long Island City, if he's got one, as my cousin from Hoboken (and I haven't got any) would look like my sister if I had one.' It was that sassy little feather in your hat!"

They would laugh over this ever-green reminiscence on Sunday park benches and at intermission at moving pictures when they remained through it to see the show twice. Be the landlady's front parlor ever so permanently rented out, the motion-picture theater has brought to thousands of young city starvelings, if not the quietude of the home, then at least the warmth and a juxtaposition and a deep darkness that can lave the sub-basement throb of temples and is filled with music with a hum in it.

For two years and eight months of Saturday nights, each one of them a semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, Gertie Slayback and Jimmie Batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the White Kitchen. Then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of Broadway, content, these two who had never seen a lake reflect a moon, or a slim fir pointing to a star, that life could be so manifold. And always, too, on Saturday, the tenth from the last row of the De Luxe Cinematograph, Broadway's Best, Orchestra Chairs, fifty cents; Last Ten Rows, thirty-five. The give of velvet-upholstered chairs, perfumed darkness, and any old love story moving across it to the ecstatic ache of Gertie Slayback's high young heart.

On a Saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the six-o'clock closing of Hoffheimer's Fourteenth Street Emporium, Miss Slayback, whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy, emerged from the Bargain Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store adjoining, her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing crowd.

At six o'clock Fourteenth Street pours up from its basements, down from its lofts, and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores, shows, and arcades, in a great homeward torrent--a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the Subway, the Elevated, and the surface car, and then spreads thinly into the least pretentious of the city's homes--the five flights up, the two rooms rear, and the third floor back.

Standing there, this eager tide of the Fourteenth Street Emporium, thus released by the six-o'clock flood-gates, flowed past Miss Slayback. White-nosed, low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold vanity-cases. Older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a yard-stick; young men still impatient of their clerkship.

It was into the trickle of these last that Miss Slayback bored her glance, the darting, eager glance of hot eyeballs and inner trembling. She was not so pathetically young as she was pathetically blond, a treacherous, ready-to-fade kind of blondness that one day, now that she had found that very morning her first gray hair, would leave her ashy.

Suddenly, with a small catch of breath that was audible in her throat, Miss Slayback stepped out of that doorway, squirming her way across the tight congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing this elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme anxiety to keep in view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along with the crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band.

At Broadway, Fourteenth Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into Union Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across this park Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of a slight dent in the crown. At Broadway, some blocks before that highway bursts into its famous flare, Mr. Batch, than whom it was no other, turned off suddenly at right angles down into a dim pocket of side-street and into the illuminated entrance of Ceiner's Café Hungarian. Meals at all hours. Lunch, thirty cents. Dinner, fifty cents. Our Goulash is Famous.

New York, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block than any other area in the world, Babylon included, loves thus to dine linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on mission and commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy, Illinois, fifteen minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown Delmonico's. Spaghetti and red wine have set New York racing to reserve its table d'hôtes. All except the Latin race.

Jimmie Batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the cosmopolite. His digestive range included _borsch_ and _chow main_; _risotta_ and "ham and."

To-night, as he turned into Café Hungarian, Miss Slayback slowed and drew back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining office-building. She was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow smaller from chill, was nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones.

The wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally one turned for a backward glance at her standing there so frankly indeterminate.

Suddenly Miss Slayback adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over immaculately new white ones, entered Ceiner's Café Hungarian. In its light she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her cheeks had a deepening value to the blue of her eyes, and a black velvet tam-o'-shanter revealing just the right fringe of yellow curls is no mean aid.

First of all, Ceiner's is an eating-place. There is no music except at five cents in the slot, and its tables for four are perpetually set each with a dish of sliced radishes, a bouquet of celery, and a mound of bread, half the stack rye. Its menus are well thumbed and badly mimeographed. Who enters Ceiner's is prepared to dine from barley soup to apple strudel. At something after six begins the rising sound of cutlery, and already the new-comer fears to find no table.

Off at the side, Mr. Jimmie Batch had already disposed of his hat and gray overcoat, and tilting the chair opposite him to indicate its reservation, shook open his evening paper, the waiter withholding the menu at this sign of rendezvous.

Straight toward that table Miss Slayback worked quick, swift way, through this and that aisle, jerking back and seating herself on the chair opposite almost before Mr. Batch could raise his eyes from off the sporting page.

There was an instant of silence between them--the kind of silence that can shape itself into a commentary upon the inefficacy of mere speech--a widening silence which, as they sat there facing, deepened until, when she finally spoke, it was as if her words were pebbles dropping down into a well.

"Don't look so surprised, Jimmie," she said, propping her face calmly, even boldly, into the white-kid palms. "You might fall off the Christmas tree."

Above the snug, four-inch collar and bow tie Mr. Batch's face was taking on a dull ox-blood tinge that spread back, even reddening his ears. Mr. Batch had the frontal bone of a clerk, the horn-rimmed glasses of the literarily astigmatic, and the sartorial perfection that only the rich can afford not to attain.

He was staring now quite frankly, and his mouth had fallen open. "Gert!" he said.

"Yes," said Miss Slayback, her insouciance gaining with his discomposure, her eyes widening and then a dolly kind of glassiness seeming to set in. "You wasn't expecting me, Jimmie?"

He jerked up his hand, not meeting her glance. "What's the idea of the comedy?"

"You don't look glad to see me, Jimmie."

"If you--think you're funny."

She was working out of and then back into the freshly white gloves in a betraying kind of nervousness that belied the toss of her voice. "Well, of all things! Mad-cat! Mad, just because you didn't seem to be expecting me."

"I--There's some things that are just the limit, that's what they are. Some things that are just the limit, that no fellow would stand from any girl, and this--this is one of them."

Her lips were trembling now. "You--you bet your life there's some things that are just the limit."

He slid out his watch, pushing back. "Well, I guess this place is too small for a fellow and a girl that can follow him around the town like a--like----"

She sat forward, grasping the table-sides, her chair tilting with her. "Don't you dare to get up and leave me sitting here! Jimmie Batch, don't you dare!"

The waiter intervened, card extended.

"We--we're waiting for another party," said Miss Slayback, her hands still rigidly over the table-sides and her glance like a steady drill into Mr. Batch's own.

There was a second of this silence while the waiter withdrew, and then Mr. Batch whipped out his watch again, a gun-metal one with an open face.

"Now look here. I got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of us has got to clear. You--you're one too many, if you got to know it."

"Oh, I do know it, Jimmie! I been one too many for the last four Saturday nights. I been one too many ever since May Scully came into five hundred dollars' inheritance and quit the Ladies' Neckwear. I been one too many ever since May Scully became a lady."

"If I was a girl and didn't have more shame!"

"Shame! Now you're shouting, Jimmie Batch. I haven't got shame, and I don't care who knows it. A girl don't stop to have shame when she's fighting for her rights."

He was leaning on his elbow, profile to her. "That movie talk can't scare me. You can't tell me what to do and what not to do. I've given you a square deal all right. There's not a word ever passed between us that ties me to your apron-strings. I don't say I'm not without my obligations to you, but that's not one of them. No, siree--no apron-strings."

"I know it isn't, Jimmie. You're the kind of a fellow wouldn't even talk to himself for fear of committing himself."

"I got a date here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you----"

"You're the guy who passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First regiment."

"I'll show you my regiment some day."

"I--I know you're not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie. I--I wouldn't have you there for anything. Don't you think I know you too well for that? That's just it. Nobody on God's earth knows you the way I do. I know you better than you know yourself."

"You better beat it, Gertie. I tell you I'm getting sore."

Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost edged with hysteria. "Come on, Jimmie--out the side entrance before she gets here. May Scully ain't the company for you. You think if she was, honey, I'd--I'd see myself come butting in between you this way, like--like a--common girl? She's not the girl to keep you straight. Honest to God she's not, honey."

"My business is my business, let me tell you that."

"She's speedy, Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it."

"When I want advice about my friends I ask for it."

"It's not the good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she ain't got any. It's you. She's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's what's got me scared."

"Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet under your chin."

"She's always had her eyes on you, Jimmie. Ain't you men got no sense for seein' things? Since the day they moved the Gents' Furnishings across from the Ladies' Neckwear she's had you spotted. Her goings-on used to leak down to the basement, alrighty. She's not a good girl, May ain't, Jimmie. She ain't, and you know it. Is she? Is she?"

"Aw!" said Jimmie Batch.

"You see! See! Ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?"

"Aw--maybe I know, too that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn up where she's not----"

"If you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl like May likes to be seen out with, she couldn't find you with magnifying glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had swallowed it. She's not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow like you needs behind him. If--if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them five hundred dollars----"

"It would be my business."

"It'll be your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would."

"It would be my own spontaneous combustion."

"You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid. With them few dollars you wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think you would. You and her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. Cigar-stores ain't the place for you, Jimmie. You seen how only clerking in them was nearly your ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out. They ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling."

"You know it all, don't you?"

"Oh, I'm dealing it to you straight! There's too many sporty crowds loafing around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. I found you in one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, a----"

"Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too."

"Don't throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job in a department store has begun to do for you. And you're making good, too. Higgins teld me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there won't be a fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher."

"Aw!"

"Don't throw it all over, Jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair and a few dollars to ruin yourself with."

He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door.

"Don't keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie. You haven't got the constitution to stand her pace. It's telling on you. Look at those fingers yellowing again--looka----"

"They're my fingers, ain't they?"

"You see, Jimmie, I--I'm the only person in the world that likes you just for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you. That's what counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of."

"We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three."

"I know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to the right job, and I know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the dogs any easier."

"To hear you talk, you'd think I was about six."

"I'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and lazy and selfish and----"

"Don't forget any."

"And I know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and I know, too, that you--you don't care as much--as much for me from head to toe as I do for your little finger. But I--like you just the same, Jimmie. That--that's what I mean about having no shame. I--do like you so--so terribly, Jimmie."

"Aw now--Gert!"

"I know it, Jimmie--that I ought to be ashamed. Don't think I haven't cried myself to sleep with it whole nights in succession."

"Aw now--Gert!"

"Don't think I don't know it, that I'm laying myself before you pretty common. I know it's common for a girl to--to come to a fellow like this, but--but I haven't got any shame about it--I haven't got anything, Jimmie, except fight for--for what's eating me. And the way things are between us now is eating me."

"I---- Why, I got a mighty high regard for you, Gert."

"There's a time in a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out."

"I understand, Gert, but----"

"For two years and eight months, Jimmie, life has got to be worth while living to me because I could see the day, even if we--you--never talked about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a fellow would want to settle down to making a little two-by-four home for us. A little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and----"

"For God's sake, Gertie, this ain't the time or the place to----"

"Oh yes, it is! It's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks that you didn't see me coming first."

"But not now, Gert. I----"

"I'm not ashamed to tell you, Jimmie Batch, that I've been the making of you since that night you threw the wink at me. And--and it hurts, this does. God! how it hurts!"

He was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight collar.

"I--never claimed not to be a bad egg. This ain't the time and the place for rehashing, that's all. Sure you been a friend to me. I don't say you haven't. Only I can't be bossed by a girl like you. I don't say May Scully's any better than she ought to be. Only that's my business. You hear? my business. I got to have life and see a darn sight more future for myself than selling shirts in a Fourteenth Street department store."

"May Scully can't give it to you--her and her fast crowd."

"Maybe she can and maybe she can't."

"Them few dollars won't make you; they'll break you."

"That's for her to decide, not you."

"I'll tell her myself. I'll face her right here and----"

"Now, look here, if you think I'm going to be let in for a holy show between you two girls, you got another think coming. One of us has got to clear out of here, and quick, too. You been talking about the side door; there it is. In five minutes I got a date in this place that I thought I could keep like any law-abiding citizen. One of us has got to clear, and quick, too. Gad! you wimmin make me sick, the whole lot of you!"

"If anything makes you sick, I know what it is. It's dodging me to fly around all hours of the night with May Scully, the girl who put the tang in tango. It's eating around in swell sixty-cent restaurants like this and----"

"Gad! your middle name ought to be Nagalene."

"Aw, now, Jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. It--it's only my--my fear that I'm losing you, and--and my hate for the every-day grind of things, and----"

"I can't help that, can I?"

"Why, there--there's nothing on God's earth I hate, Jimmie, like I hate that Bargain-Basement. When I think it's down there in that manhole I've spent the best years of my life, I--I wanna die. The day I get out of it, the day I don't have to punch that old time-clock down there next to the Complaints and Adjustment Desk, I--I'll never put my foot below sidewalk level again to the hour I die. Not even if it was to take a walk in my own gold-mine."

"It ain't exactly a garden of roses down there."

"Why, I hate it so terrible, Jimmie, that sometimes I wake up nights gritting my teeth with the smell of steam-pipes and the tramp of feet on the glass sidewalk up over me. Oh, God! you dunno--you dunno!"

"When it comes to that, the main floor ain't exactly a maiden's dream, or a fellow's, for that matter."

"With a man it's different. It's his job in life, earning, and--and the woman making the two ends of it meet. That's why, Jimmie, these last two years and eight months, if not for what I was hoping for us, why--why--I--why, on your twenty a week, Jimmie, there's nobody could run a flat like I could. Why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. I--Don't throw away what I been building up for us, Jimmie, step by step! Don't, Jimmie!'

"Good Lord, girl! You deserve better'n me."

"I know I got a big job, Jimmie, but I want to make a man out of you, temper, laziness, gambling, and all. You got it in you to be something more than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. It's only you ain't got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall and--a--and a sporty girl. If--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as they do, Jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table for life."

"Aw--there you go again!"

"I can't help it, Jimmie. It's because I never knew a fellow had what's he's cut out for written all over him so. You're a born clerk, Jimmie."

"Sure, I'm a slick clerk, but----"

"You're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk, the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. I know what I'm talking about. I know your measure better than any human on earth can ever know your measure. I know things about you that you don't even know yourself."

"I never set myself up to nobody for anything I wasn't."

"Maybe not, Jimmie, but I know about you and--and that Central Street gang that time, and----"

"You!"

"Yes, honey, and there's not another human living but me knows how little it was your fault. Just bad company, that was all. That's how much I--I love you, Jimmie, enough to understand that. Why, if I thought May Scully and a set-up in business was the thing for you, Jimmie, I'd say to her, I'd say, if it was like taking my own heart out in my hand and squashing it, I'd say to her, I'd say, 'Take him, May.' That's how I--I love you, Jimmie. Oh, ain't it nothing, honey, a girl can come here and lay herself this low to you----"

"Well, haven't I just said you--you deserve better."