Chapter VII: Part 7

The women exchanged the ghastly simulacrum of a smile, and the meal resumed in silence. Only small beads sprang out on the shiny surface of Mr. Binswanger's head like dewdrops on the glossy surface of leaves, and twice his fork slipped and clattered from his hand.

"So excited you get right away, Julius. Nervous as a cat you are."

"I--I ain't got the strength no more, Becky. Pink sleeping-tablets I got to take yet to make me sleep. I ain't got the strength."

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't get excited. In the spring we go home. You don't want, Julius, to spoil everything right this minute. Ain't it enough the way our Poil has come out in these five months? Such a grand time that goil has had this winter. Do you want that the Teitlebaums should know all our business and spoil things?"

"I--I wish sometimes that name I had never heard in my life. In my days a young girl--"

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; we won't talk about it now--we change the subject."

"I--"

"Look over there, will you, Poil? Always extras the Teitlebaums have on their table. Paprica, and what is that red stuff? Chili sauce! Such service we don't get. Pink carnations on their table, too. To-morrow at the desk I complain. Our money is just as good as theirs."

Miss Binswanger raised her harried eyes from her plate and smiled at her mother; she was like a dark red rose, trembling, titillating, and with dewy eyes.

"Don't stare so, mamma."

"Izzy, are you going to stay home to-night? One night it won't hurt you. Like you run around nights to dance-halls ain't nothing to be proud of."

"Now start something, mamma, so pa can jump on me again. If Pearlie and Max are going to use the front room this evening, what shall I do? Sit in a corner till he's gone and I can go to bed?"

"I should care if he goes to dance-halls or not. What I say, Becky, don't make no difference to my son. Take how I begged him to hold on his job!"

"If you're done your dessert wait till we get up-stairs, papa. The dining-room knows already enough of our business."

Miss Binswanger pushed back from the table to her feet. Tears rose in a sheer film across her eyes, but she smiled with her lips and led the procession of her family from the gabbling dining-room, her small, dark head held upward by the check-rein of scorched pride and the corner of her tear-dimmed glance for the remote table with the centerpiece of pink carnations.

By what seemed demoniac aforethought the Binswanger three-room suite was rigidly impervious to sunlight, air, and daylight. Its infinitesimal sitting-room, which the jerking backward of a couch-cover transformed into Mr. Isadore Binswanger's bedchamber, afforded a one-window view of a long, narrow shaft which rose ten stories from a square of asphalt courtyard, up from which the heterogeneous fumes of cookery wafted like smoke through a legitimate flue.

Mr. Binswanger dropped into a veteran arm-chair that had long since finished duty in the deluxe suite, and breathed onward through a beard as close-napped as Spanish moss.

He was suddenly old and as withered as an aspen leaf trembling on its rotten stem. Vermiculate cords of veins ran through the flesh like the chirography of pain written in the blue of an indelible pencil; yellow crow's-feet, which rayed outward from his eyes, were deep as claw-prints in damp clay.

"Becky, help me off with my shoes; heavy like lead they feel."

"Poil, unlace your papa's shoes. Since I got to dress for dinner I can't stoop no more."

Miss Binswanger tugged daintily at her father's boots, staggering backward at each pull.

"_Ach_, go way, Pearlie! Better than that I can do myself."

"See, mamma; nothing suits him."

Mrs. Binswanger regarded her husband's batrachian sallowness with anxious eyes; her large bosom heaved under its showy lace yoke, and her short, dimpled hands twirled at their rings.

"To-night, Julius, if you don't do like the doctor says I telephone him to come. That a man should be such a coward! It don't do you no good to take only one sleeping-tablet; two, he said, is what you need."

"Too much sleeping-powder is what killed old man Knauss."

"_Ach_, Julius, you heard yourself what Dr. Ellenburg said. Six of the little pink tablets he said it would take to kill a man. How can two of 'em hurt you? Already by the bed I got the box of 'em waiting, Julius, with an orange so they don't even taste."

"It ain't doctors and their _gedinks_, Becky, can do me good. Pink tablets can't make me sleep. I--_ach_, Becky, I'm tired--tired."

Isadore rose from the couch-bed and punched his head-print out of the cushion.

"Lay here, pa."

"Na, na, I go me to bed. Such a thing full of lumps don't rest me like a sofa at home. Na, I go me to bed, Becky."

Isadore relaxed to the couch once more, pillowed his head on interlaced hands, yawned to the ceiling, blew two columns of cigarette-smoke through his nostrils, and watched them curl upward.

"This ain't so worse, pa."

"I go me to bed."

"For a little while, Julius, can't you stay up? At nine o'clock comes Max to see Poil. I always say a young man thinks more of a young girl when her parents stay in the room a minute."

Isadore fitted his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes and flung one reclining limb over the other.

"What Max Teitlebaum thinks of Pearlie I already know. To-day he invited me to lunch with him."

"Izzy!"

"Izzy! Why you been so close-mouthed?"

Mrs. Binswanger threw her short, heavy arm full length across the table-top and leaned toward her son, so that the table-lamp lighted her face with its generous scallop of chin and exacerbated the concern in her eyes.

"You had lunch to-day with Max Teitlebaum, and about Poil you talked!"

"That's what I said."

Miss Binswanger leaned forward in her low rocker, suddenly pink as each word had been a fillip to her blood, and a faint terra-cotta ran under the olive of her skin, lighting it.

"Like--fun--you--did!"

"All right then, missy, I'm lyin', and won't say no more."

"I didn't mean it, Izzy!"

"Izzy, tell your sister what he said."

"Well, right to my face she contradicts me."

"Please, Izzy!"

"Well, he--he likes you, all righty--"

"Did he say that about me, honest, Izz?"

Her breath came sweet as thyme between her open lips, and her eyes could not meet her mother's gaze, which burned against her lids.

"See, Poil! Wake up a minute, papa, and listen. When I mentioned Max Teitlebaum, papa, you always said a grand boy like one of the Teitlebaum boys, with such prospects, ain't got no time for a goil like our Poil. Always I told you that you got to work up the appetite. See, papa, how things work out! See, Poil! What else did he have to say, Izzy--he likes her, eh?"

Isadore turned on his side and flecked a rim of ash off his cigarette with a manicured forefinger.

"Don't get excited too soon, ma. He didn't come out plain and say anything, but I guess a boy like Max Teitlebaum thinks we don't need a brick house to fall on us."

"What you mean, Izzy?"

"What I mean? Say, ain't it as plain as the nose on your face? You don't need two brick houses to fall on you, do you?"

Mrs. Binswanger admitted to a mental phthisis, and threw out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"Believe me, Izzy, maybe I am dumb. So bad my head works when your papa worries me, but what you mean I don't know."

"Me neither, Izzy!"

"Say, there ain't much to tell. He likes Pearlie--that much he wasn't bashful to me about. He likes Pearlie, and he wants to go in the general store and ladies' furnishing goods business. Just clothing like his father's store he hates. Why should he stay in a business, he says, that is already built up? His two married brothers, he says, is enough with his father in the one business."

"Such an ambitious boy always anxious to do for hisself. I wish, Izzy, you had some of his ambitions. You hear, Poil, in the same business as papa he wants to go?"

Mrs. Binswanger rocked complacently, a smile crawled across her lips, and she nodded rhythmically to the tilting of her rocking-chair, her eyes closed in the pleasant phantasmagoria of a dream.

Mr. Binswanger slumped lower in his chair.

"A good head for business that Max Teitlebaum has on him. Like your mamma says, Izzy, you should have one just half so good."

"There you go again, pa, pickin', pickin'! If you'd give a fellow a start and lend him a little capital--I'd have some ambition, too, and start for myself."

Mr. Binswanger leaped forward full stretch, as a jetty of flame shoots through a stream of oil.

"For yourself! On what? From where would I get it? Cut it out from my heart? Two months already I begged you to come out by me in the store and see if you can't help start something to get back the trade--How we need young blood in the store to get--"

"Aw, I--"

"Five thousand dollars I give you for to lose in the ladies' ready-to-wear. Another white elephant we need in the family yet. Not five thousand dollars outside my insurance I got to my name, and even if I did have it I wouldn't--"

"Julius!"

"I mean it, so help me! Even if I did have it, not a cent to a boy what don't listen to his old father."

"For God's sakes, pa, quit your hollering; if you ain't got it to your name I'm sorry for Pearlie."

"For me?"

"You think, pa, a boy like Max Teitlebaum, a boy that banker Finburg's daughter is crazy after, is getting married only because you got a nice daughter?"

"What do you mean, Izzy?"

"The woods are full of 'em just as nice. I didn't need no brick house to fall on me to-day at lunch. He didn't come right out and say nothing, but when he said he wanted to get in a business he could build up, right away I seen what he meant."

"What?"

"Sure I seen it. I guess his father gives him six or seven thousand dollars to get his start, and just so much he wants from the girl's side. He can get it easy, too. If--if you'd fork over, pa, I--him and I could start maybe together and--"

"You--you--"

"Your papa, Izzy, can do for his girl just like the best can do for theirs Julius, can't you?"

"_Gott in Himmel!_ I--I--you--you pack of wolfs, you!"

"Such names you can't call your wife, Julius! Just let me tell you that! Such names you can't call me!"

Anger trembled in Mrs. Binswanger's vocal cords like current running over a wire. But Mr. Binswanger sprang suddenly to his feet and crashed the white knuckles of his clenched fist down on the table with a force that broke the flesh. The red lights of anger lay mirrored in the pool of his eyes like danger lanterns on a dark bridge are reflected in black water.

"Wolfs--wolfs, all of you! You--you--to-night you got me where I am at an end! To-night you got to _know_--I--I can't keep it in no more--you got--to _know_ to-night--to-night!"

His voice caught in a tight knot of strangulation; he was dithering and palsied.

"To-night--you--you got to know!"

A sudden trembling took Mrs. Binswanger.

"For God's sakes, know what, Julius--know what?"

"I'm done for! I'm gone under! Till it happened you wouldn't believe me. Two years I seen it coming, two years I been fightin' and fightin'--fightin' it by myself! And now for yourselves you look in the papers two weeks from to-morrow, the first of March, and see--I'm done for--I'm gone under, I--"

"Julius--my God, you--you ain't, Julius, you ain't!"

His voice rose like a gale.

"I'm gone under--I ain't got twenty cents on the dollar. I'm gone, Becky. Beat up! To-morrow two weeks the creditors, they're on me! My last extension expires, and they're on me. I been fightin' and fightin'. Twenty cents on the dollar I can't meet, Becky--I can't, Becky, I can't! I been fightin' and fightin', but I can't, Becky--I--can't! I'm gone!"

"Pa."

"Julius, Julius, for God's sakes, you--you don't mean it, Julius--you--don't--mean it--you're fooling us--Julius!"

Small, cold tears welled to the corners of his eyes.

"I'm gone, Becky--and now he--he wants the shirt off my back--he can have it, God knows. But--but--_ach_, Becky--I--I wish I could have saved _you_--but that a man twice so strong as his father--_ach, Gott_, what--what's the use? I'm gone, Becky, gone!"

Mr. Isadore Binswanger swung to his feet and regarded his parent with the dazed eyes of a sleepwalker awakening on a perilous ledge.

"Aw, pa, for--for God's sake, why didn't you tell a fellow? I--we--aw, pa, I--I can knuckle down if I got to. Gee whiz! how was a fellow to know? You--you been cuttin' up about everything since--since we was kids; aw, pa--please--gimme a chance, pa, I can knuckle down--pa--pa!"

He approached the racked form of his father as if he would throw himself a stepping-stone at his feet, and then because his voice stuck in his throat and ached until the tears sprang to his eyes he turned suddenly and went out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

The echo hung for a moment.

Miss Binswanger lay whitely in her chair, weakened as if the blood had flowed out of her heart. From the granitoid square at the base of the air-shaft came the rattle of after-dinner dishes and the babble of dialect. Mr. Binswanger wept the tears of physical weakness.

"I--I'm gone, Becky. What you want for Poil I can't do. I'm gone under. We got to start over again. It was the interurban done it, Becky. I needed new capital to meet the new competition. I--I could have stood up under it then, Becky, but--but--"

"_Ach_, my husband--for myself I don't care. _Ach_, my husband."

"I--I'm gone, Becky--gone."

He rose to his feet and shambled feebly to his bedroom, his fingers feeling of the furniture for support, and his breath coming in the long wheezes of dry tears. And in the cradle of her mother's arms Miss Binswanger wept the hot tears of black despair; they seeped through the showy lace yoke and scalded her mother's heart.

"Oh, my baby! _Ach_, my husband! A good man like him, a good man like him!"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't--cry."

"Nothing he ever refused me, and now when we should be able to do for our children and--"

"Don't cry, mamma, don't cry."

"If--if he had the money--for a boy like Max--he'd give it, Poil. Such a good husband--such--_ach_, I go me in to papa now--poor papa. I've been bad, Poil; we must make it up to him; we--"

"'Sh-h-h!"

"We got to start over again, Poil--to the bone I'll work my fingers, I--"

"'Shh-h-h, mamma,'sh-h-h--somebody's knocking."

They raised their tear-ravaged faces in the attitude of listening, their eyes salt-bitten and glazed.

"It's--it's Izzy, baby. See how sorry he gets right away. He ain't a bad boy, Poil, only always I've spoilt him. Come in, my boy--come in, and go in to your papa."

The door swung open and fanned backward the stale air in a sharp gust, and the women sprang apart mechanically as automatons, the sagging, open-mouthed vacuity of surprise on Mrs. Binswanger's face, the tears still wet on her daughter's cheeks and lying lightly on her lashes like dew.

"Mr. Teitlebaum."

"Max!"

Mr. Teitlebaum hesitated at the threshold, the flavor of his amorous spirit tasty on his lips and curving them into a smile.

"That's my name! Hello, Pearlie girlie! How-dye-do, Mrs. Binswanger--what what--"

He regarded them with dark, quiet eyes, the quick red of embarrassment running high in his face and under his tight-fitting cap of close-nap black hair.

"Ah, excuse me; I might have known. I--I'm too early. Like my mother says, I was in such a hurry to--to get back here again I--I nearly got out and pushed the Subway--I--you must excuse me. I--"

"No, no; sit down, Mr. Teitlebaum. Pearlie ain't feelin' so well this evening; she's all right now, though. Such a cold she's got, ain't you, Poil?"

"Yes--yes. Such a cold I got. Sit--sit down, Max."

He regarded her with the rims of his eyes stretched wide in anxiety.

"Down at supper so well you looked, Pearlie; I says to my mother, like a flower you looked."

A fog of tears rose sheer before her.

"Her papa, Mr. Teitlebaum, he ain't so well, neither. Just now he went to bed, and he--he said to you I should give his excuses."

"So! Ain't that too bad, now!"

"Sit down, Max, there, next to mamma."

He leaned across the table toward the little huddle of her figure, the gentle villanelle of his emotions writ frankly across his features.

"Pearlie--"

"She'll be all right in a minute, Mr. Teitlebaum--like her papa she is, always so afraid of a little sickness."

"Pearlie, ain't you going to look at me?"

She sprang from his light hand on her shoulder, and the tears grew to little globules, trembled, fell. Then a sudden rod of resolution straightened her back.

"We--I been lying to you, Max; I ain't--sick!"

"Poil!"

"I--I think I know, little Pearlie!"

"Poil!"

"No, no; it's best we tell the truth, mamma."

"Ya, ya. Oh, my--"

"We--we're in big trouble, Max. Business trouble. The store, ever--ever since the traction--it ain't been the same."

"I know, little Pearlie. I--"

"Wait a minute, Max. We--we ain't what you maybe think we are. To-morrow two weeks we got to meet creditors and extension notes. We can't pay with even twenty cents on the dollar. We're gone under, Max!"

"I--"

"We ain't got it to meet them with. Papa--if a man like papa couldn't make it go nobody could--"

"Such a man, Mr. Teitlebaum, so honest, so--"

"Shh-h-h, mamma."

"It's our--my fault, Max. He was afraid even last year, but I--even then I was the one that wanted the expense of the city. Mamma didn't want it--he didn't--it--was me--I--I--"

"My fault, too, Poil--_ach, Gott_, my fault! How I drove him! How I drove him!"

"We--we got to go back home, Max. We're going back and help him to begin over again. We--we been driving him like a pack of wolves. He never could refuse nobody nothing. If he thought mamma wanted the moon up he was ready to go for it; even when we was kids he--"

"_Ach_, my husband, such a good provider he's always been! Such a husband!"

"Always we got our way out of him. But to- night--to-night, Max, right here in this chair all _little_ he looked all of a sudden. So little! His back all crooked and all tired and--and I done it, Max--I ain't what you think I am--oh, God, I done it!"

"_Ach_, my--"

"Don't cry, mamma. 'Sh-h-h-h! Ain't you ashamed, with Mr. Teitlebaum standing right here? You must excuse her, Max, so terrible upset she is. 'Sh-h-h-h, mamma--'sh-h-h-h! We're going back home and begin over again. 'Sh-h-h-h! You won't have to dress for supper no more like you hate. We'll be home in time for your strawberry-preserves season, mamma, and rhubarb stew out of the garden, like papa loves. 'Sh-h-h-h! You must excuse her, Max--you must excuse me, too, to-night--you--come some other time--please."

"Pearlie!" He came closer to the circle of light, and his large features came out boldly. "Pearlie, don't you cry neither, little girl--"

"I--I ain't."

"All what you tell me I know already."

"Max!"

"Mr. Teitlebaum!"

"You must excuse me, Mrs. Binswanger, but in nearly the same line of business news like that travels faster than you think. Only to-day I heard for sure--how--shaky things stand. You got my sympathies, Mrs. Binswanger, but--but such a failure don't need to happen."

Mrs. Binswanger clutched two hands around a throat too dry to swallow.

"He can't stand it. He isn't strong enough. It will kill him. Always so honest to the last penny he's been, Mr. Teitlebaum, but never when he used to complain would I believe him. Always a great one for a poor mouth he was, Mr. Teitlebaum, even when he had it. So plain he always was, and now I--I've broke him--I--I--"

"'Sh-h-h-h, mamma! Do you want papa should hear you in the next room? 'Sh-h-h-h! Please, you must excuse her, Max."

"Pearlie"--he placed his hand lightly on her shoulder--"Pearlie--Mrs. Binswanger, you must excuse me, too, but I got to say it--while--while I got the courage. Can't you guess it, little Pearlie? I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you, Pearlie, since the first month you came to this hotel to live."

"Max!"

"_Ach, Gott!_"

"I only got this to say to you: I love you, little Pearlie. To-day, when I heard the news, I was sorry, Pearlie, and--and glad, too. It made things look easier for me. Right away I invited Izzy to lunch so like a school-boy I could hint. I--two years I been wanting to get out of the store, Pearlie, where there ain't a chance for me to build up nothing. Like I told Izzy to-day, I want to find a run-down business that needs building up where I can accomplish things."

"Max!"

"I wanted him to know what I meant, but like--like a school-boy so mixed up I got. Eight thousand dollars I got laying for a opening. This failure--this failure don't need to happen, Pearlie. With new capital and new blood we don't need to be afraid of tractions and competitions--with me and Izzy, and my eight thousand dollars put in out there, we--we--but this ain't no time to talk business. I--you must excuse me, Mrs. Binswanger, but--but--"

"Poil, my baby! Max!"

"I love you, Pearlie girlie. Ever since we been in the same hotel together, when I seen you every day fresh like a flower and so fine, I--I been heels over head in love with you, Pearlie. You should know how my father and my married brothers tease me. I--I love you, Pearlie--"

She relaxed to his approaching arms, and let her head fall back to his shoulder so that her face, upturned to his, was like a dark flower, and he kissed her where the tears lay wet on her petal-smooth cheeks and on her lips that trembled.

"Max!"

"My little girlie!"

Mrs. Binswanger groped through tear-blinded eyes.

"This--this--ain't no place for a--old woman, children--this--this--_ach_, what I'm sayin' I don't know! Like in a dream I feel."

"Me, too, mamma; me, too. Like a dream. Ah, Max!"

"I tiptoe in and surprise papa, children. I surprise papa. _Ach_, my children, my children, like in a dream I feel."

She smiled at them with the tears streaming from her face like rain down a window-pane, opened the door to the room adjoining gently, and closed it more gently behind her. Her face was bathed in a peace that swam deep in her eyes like reflected moonlight trailing down on a lagoon, her lips trembled in the hysteria of too many emotions. She held the silence for a moment, and remained with her wide back to the door, peering across the dim-lit room at the curve-backed outline of her husband's figure, hunched in a sitting posture on the side of the bed.

Beside him on the white coverlet a green tin box with a convex top like a miniature trunk lay on one end, its contents, bits of old-fashioned jewelry, and a folded blue document with a splashy red seal, scattered about the bed.

She could hear him wheeze out the moany, long-drawn breaths that characterized his sleepless nights, his face the color of old ivory, wry and etched in the agony of carrying his trembling palm closer, closer to his mouth.

Suddenly Mrs. Binswanger cried out, a cry that was born in the unexplored regions of her heart, wild, primordial, full of terror.

It was as if fear had churned her blood too thick to flow, and through her paralysis tore the spasm of a half-articulate shriek.

"Jule--Jule-ius--Jule-ius!"

His hand jerked from his lips reflexly, so that the six small pink tablets in the trembling palm rolled to the corners of the room. His blood-driven face fell backward against the pillow, and he relaxed frankly into short, dry sobs, hollow and hacking like the coughing of a cat. His feet lay in the little heap of jewelry and across the crumpled insurance policy.

"Becky--it--it's all what I--I could do--it's--it--"

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

She dragged her trembling limbs across the room to his side. She held him to her so close that the showy lace yoke transformed its imprint from her bosom to the flesh of his cheek. She could feel his sobs of hysteria beating against her breast, and her own tears flowed.

They racked her like a storm tearing on the mad wings of a gale; they scalded down her cheeks into the furrows of her neck. She held him tight in the madness of panic and exultation, and his arm crept around her wide waist, and his tired head relaxed to her breast, and her hands were locked tight about him and would not let him go.

"We--we're going _home_, Julius--we--we're going home."

"Ya, ya, Becky, it's--it's all right. Ya, ya, Becky."

SUPERMAN

The canker of the city is loneliness. It flourishes--an insidious paradox--where men meet nose to nose in Subway rushes and live layer on layer in thousand-tenant tenement houses. It thrives in three-dollars-a-week fourth-floor back rooms, so thinly partitioned that the crumple of the rejection-slip and the sobs of the class poetess from Molino, Missouri, percolate to the four-dollars-a-week fourth-floor front and fuddle the piano salesman's evening game of solitaire. It is a malignant parasite, which eats through the thin walls of hall bedrooms and the thick walls of gold bedrooms, and eats out the hearts it finds there, leaving them black and empty, like untenanted houses.

Sometimes love sees the To Let sign, hangs white Swiss curtains at the window, paints the shutters green, plants a bed of red geraniums in the front yard, and moves in. Again, no tenant applies; the house mildews with the damp of its own emptiness; children run when they pass it after dark; and the threshold decays. The heart must be tenanted or it falls out of repair and rots. Doctors called in the watches of the night to resuscitate such hearts climb out of bed reluctantly. It is a malady beyond the ken of the stethoscope.

One such heart beat in a woman's breast so rapidly that it crowded out her breath; and she pushed the cotton coverlet back from her bosom, rose to her elbow, and leaned out beyond her bed into the darkness of the room.

"Jimmie? Essie? That you, Jimmie?"

The thumping of her heart answered her, and the loud ticking of a clock that was inaudible during the day suddenly filled the third-floor rear room of the third-floor rear apartment. The continual din of the street slumped to the intermittent din of late evening; the last graphophone in the building observed the nine-o'clock silence clause of the lease at something after ten, and scratched its last syncopated dance theme into the tired recording disk of the last tired brain. An upholstered chair, sunk in the room's pool of darkness, trembled on its own tautened springs, and the woman trembled of that same tautness and leaned farther out.

"Who's there? That you, Jimmie?"

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!

She huddled the coverlet up under her chin and lay back on her pillow, but with her body so rigid that only half her weight relaxed to the mattress; and behind her tight-closed eyes flaming wheels revolved against the lids. Tears ran backward toward her ears like spectacle-frames and soaked into the pillow, a mouse with a thousand feet scurried between the walls.

"Essie? Jimmie, that you?"

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!

More tears leaked out from her closed eyes and found their way to her mouth, so that she could taste their salt. Then for a slight moment she dozed, with her body at full stretch and hardly raising the coverlet, and her thin cheek cupped in the palm of her thin hand. The mouse scurried in a light rain of falling plaster, and she woke with her pulse pounding in her ears.

"Jimmie? Jimmie? Who's there?"

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock!

Sobs trembled through her and set the bed-springs vibrating, and she buried her head under her flat pillow and fell to counting the immemorial procession of phantom sheep that graze the black grasses of the Land of Wakeful Hours and lead their sleepless shepherds through the long, long, long pastures of the night.

"Three hundred 'n' five; three hundred 'n' six; three hundred 'n' seven; three hundred 'n'--Jimmie?"

A key scratched at the outer lock, and she sprang two-thirds from the bed, dragging the coverlet from its moorings.

"Jimmie, that you?"

"Sure, ma! 'Smatter?"

She relaxed as though her muscles had suddenly snapped, her tense toes and fingers uncurled, and the blood flowed back.

"I--Nothin', Jimmie; I was just wondering if that was you."

"No, ma; it ain't me--it's my valet coming home from a dance at his Pressing Club. You ain't sick, are you, ma?"

"No. What time is it, Jimmie? It's so dark."

"You been havin' one of your spells again, ma?"

"No, no, Jimmie."

"Didn't you promise to keep a light going?"

"I'm all right."

"Ouch! Geewhillikins, ma, if you'd burn half a dime's worth of gas till me and Essie get home from work nights we'd save it in wear and tear on our shins. I ain't got no more hips left than a snake."

"It's a waste, Jimmie boy; gas comes so high."

"You should worry, ma! Watch me light 'er up!"

"Be careful in there, Jimmie! Stand on a chair. I got a little supper spread out on the table for Essie and her friend. You take a sandwich yourself--"

"Forty cents in tips to-day, ma."

"Forty cents!"

"Yeh; and a dame in Seventieth Street gimme a quarter and hugged the daylights out of me till my brass buttons made holes in me and cried brineys all over the telegram, and made me read it out loud twice, once for each ear: 'Unhurt, Sweetheart, and homeward bound--Bill.' Can you beat it? Five cents a word!"

"Jimmie, wasn't you glad to carry her a message like that?"

"It's a paying business, ma, if you're lucky enough to deal only in good news."

A chair squealed on its castors, a patch of light sprang through the transom, and the chocolate-ocher bedroom and its chocolate-ocher furniture emerged into a chocolate-ocher half-light.

"Jimmie?"

"Huh?"

"I'm--I wish--Oh, nothin'!"

"Ain't you feelin' right, in there, ma?"

"Yes, Jimmie; but--but come in and talk to your old mother awhile, my boy."

"Surest thing you know! Say, these are some sandwiches! You must 'a' struck pay-dirt in your sardine-mine, ma."

"They're for her gen'l'man friend, Jimmie."

The door flung open and threw an island of light pat on the bed. In the gauzy stream the face on the pillow, with the skin drawn over the cheeks tight as a vellum on a snare-drum, was vague as a head by Carriere after he had begun to paint through the sad film of his growing blindness.

"Jimmie, my boy!"

"Hello, ma!"

"Ain't your cheeks cold, though, Jimmie? It's right sharp out, ain't it? And Essie in her thin coat! You--you're a little late to-night, ain't you, Jimmie?"

He drew his loose-jointed figure up from over the bedside; and his features, half-formed as a sculptor's head just emerging from the marble, took on the easy petulance of youth, and he wiped the moist lips' print off his downy cheek with the back of his hand.

"Ah, there you go again! You been layin' here frettin' and countin' the minutes again, ain't you? Gee, it makes a fellow sore when he just can't get home no sooner!"

"No, no, Jimmie; I been layin' here sleepin' sound ever since I went to bed. I woke up for the first time just now. I'm all right, Jimmie, only--only--"

"Honest, ma, you ought to ask the company to put me in short-pants uniform, day duty, carrying telegrams of the day's catechism to Sunday-school classes."

"I--Don't fuss at me, Jimmie! I--I guess I must 'a' had one of them smothering spells, and I didn't wait up for Essie and Joe to-night. I'm all right now, Jimmie--all right."

He placed his heavy hand on her brow in half-understanding sympathy.

"Geewhillikins, why don't you tell a fellow? You want some of that black medicine, ma. You--gee!--you ain't lookin' kinda blue-like round the gills, are you? Old man Gibbs said we should send for him right away if--"

"No, no, Jimmie; I'm all right now."

"Look! I brought you a carnation one of the operators gimme--one swell little queen, too. You want some of that black medicine, ma?"

"I'm all right now, Jimmie. It was just earlier in the evening I kinda had a spell. Ain't that pink pretty, though! Here, put it in the glass, and gimme a French kiss. Always ashamed like a big baby when it comes to kissin', ain't you? Ashamed to even kiss your old ma!"

"Aw!" He shuffled his feet and bent over her, with the red mounting above the gold collar of his uniform.

"And such a mamma-boy you used to be before you had to get out and hustle--such a mamma-boy, and now ashamed to give your old ma a kiss!"

"Ashamed nothin'! Here, ma, I'll smooth your hair for you the wrong way like Essie used to do when you came home from the store dead after the semiannual clearings."

"No, no, Jimmie; these days I ain't got no more hair left to smooth."

"You look good to me."

"Aw, Jimmie, quit stringing your old ma. How can a stack o' bones look good to anybody?"

"You do."

"Your papa used to say so, too, Jimmie; but in them days my hair was natural curly--little cute, springy curls like Essie's. The first day he seen me he fell for 'em; and the night before he died, Jimmie, with you and Essie asleep in your folding-cribs and me little thinkin' that the next week I'd be back in the department clerking again, he took me in his arms and--"

"Yes, yes; I know, ma--but didn't old man Gibbs say not to get excited? Lay back and don't talk, ma. I can feel your heart beatin' way down in your hands."

"You're all tired out, ain't you, Jimmie?--too tired to listen to my talk; but you're going to wait up for your sister's young man to-night, ain't you, my boy? Go wet your hair and smooth it down. You'll wanna see him, Jimmie."

"Fine chance."

"Sure he's coming to-night, Jimmie. I got their supper all waitin'; and, see, there's my flowered wrapper at the foot of the bed, so I can get up and go in when--"

"Aw, cut out the comedy, ma! She ain't comin' straight home after the show any more'n a crooked road; and if she does he ain't coming with her."

"Jimmie, she promised sure to-night."

"Didn't she promise last night and the night before and the night before that?"

"But this afternoon when she left for the matinee, Jimmie, I wasn't feelin' so well, and she promised so sure."

"Them girl ushers down there is too lively a bunch for her, ma. Ushin' in a theayter is next to bein' in the chorus--only--"

"Jimmie!"

"Sure it is--only it ain't so good one way, and it ain't so bad another. This new-fangled girl ushin' gets my goat, anyways. It ain't doin' her any good."

"Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, don't I know it? I hated to see her take it--her so little and cute and pretty and all! Night-work ain't nothin' for our Essie."

"Sure it ain't!"

"But what could we do, Jimmie? After I gave out, her six a week in the notions wasn't a drop in the bucket. What else could we do, Jimmie?"

"Just you wait, ma! This time next year life'll be one long ice-cream soda for you and her. Wait till my dynamo gets to charging like I want her to--I'll be runnin' this whole shebang with a bang!"

"You're a good boy, Jimmie; but a kid of seventeen ain't expected to have shoulders for three."

"Just the samey, I showed a draft of my dynamo to the head operator, ma, and he's comin' up Sunday to have a look. Leave it here on the table just like it is, ma. You'll be ridin' in your Birdsong self-charging electric automobile yet!"

She let her fingers wander up and down his cheek and across his shoulders and into his uneven nappy hair.

"Poor Jimmie! If only you had the trainin'! Miss Maisie was up from the store to-day in her noon-hour and seen it standing here next to my bed; and she thought it was such a pretty-lookin' dynamo, with its copper wires and all."

"You didn't let her--"

"No--honest, Jimmie! See--it ain't been touched; I didn't even let her go near the table's edge. She wanted to know when I was comin' back to the store--she says the corsets have run down since they got the new head saleslady, Jimmie."

"If I'd 'a' been here I'd 'a' told her you ain't going back."

"Sometimes I--I think I ain't, neither, Jimmie."

"What?"

"Nothin'."

"When you get well, ma, then I--"

"Then I'm going back on my job, Jimmie. Eighteen years--not countin' the three years your papa lived--at doing one thing sort of makes you married to it. I got my heart as set as always, Jimmie, on gettin' you in at the Electric Training School next door. If I hadn't broke down--"

"Nix for mine, ma!"

"Every day I sit by the window, Jimmie, and see the young engineers and electricians who board there goin' to work; and it breaks my heart to think of you, with your mind for inventions, runnin' the streets--a messenger boy--just when I was beginnin' to get where I could do for you."

"Aw, cut that, ma! Don't I work round on my dynamo every morning till I go on duty? Wouldn't I look swell with an electricity book under my arm? I'd feel like Battling John drinking tea out of an egg-shell."

"The trainin'-school's the place for you, Jimmie. If you'd only take the dynamo over to the superintendent and show him where you're stuck he'd help you, Jimmie. I been beggin' you so long, and if only you wasn't so stubborn!"

"I ain't got the nerve buttin' in over there; it's for fellows who got swell jobs already."

"There's classes for boys, too, Jimmie; the janitor told me. Just go to-morrow and show your dynamo. It won't hurt nothin', and maybe they'll know just what the trouble is--it's only a little thing, Jimmie--three times in succession it worked last night, didn't it? It won't hurt to go, Jimmie--just to go and show it."

"Nix; I ain't got the nerve. You just wait! I ain't got the trainin'; but didn't I sell my double lens the day after I got the patent? Didn't I make that twenty-five just like battin' your eye?"

"The janitor says you was robbed in it, Jimmie."

"We should worry! Didn't we get a rockin'-chair and a string of beads and a tool-chest out of it?"

"It ain't you worries me so much, Jimmie. Here, put your head here on the pillow next to me, Jimmie. My heart's actin' up to-night. It ain't you worries me you're a man like your papa was and can hit back; but Essie--if only Essie--"

"You don't handle her right, ma; you're too easy-going with her. Since she went on her new job she's gettin' too gay--too gay!"

"Jimmie!"

"Sure she is. Like I told her last night when she came in all hours from dancing--if she didn't take that war-paint off her face I'd get her in a corner and rub it off till--"

"I've begged her and begged her, Jimmie, just as hard as I ever begged you about the dynamo, to wash her face of it. It's eatin' me, Jimmie--eatin' me! There wasn't a girl in the store that didn't envy that girl her complexion. Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, it ain't paint alone--it's where it can lead to."

"She needs an old-time spankin'."

"Them girls down at the theayter where she works put them ideas in her head. It's only of late with her, Jimmie. Wasn't she like a little baby when I had her across from me in the notions?"

"She's gotta keep her face clean or I'll--"

"She needs somebody strong like her papa was to handle her, Jimmie. She's stubborn in ways, like you, and needs somebody older, my boy--somebody strong that can handle her and love her all at once."

"She's gotta quit sneakin' home at all hours. She don't pay no attention to me; but she's gotta quit or I--I'll go down and smash up that whole theayter crowd of 'em!"

"If she'd 'a' had a father to grow up under it would 'a' been different. He was one of the strongest men in the power-house, Jimmie. Mechanics make strong men, my boy, and that's why my heart's set on you, Jimmie, takin' up where he left off."

"It's that job of hers, ma; it ain't no hang-out for her down there round the lights. She's gettin' too gay. I'll smash that ticket-speculator to gelatin if he don't show up or leave her alone!"

"'Sh-h-h, Jimmie! He's her young man; she says he's a upright and honorable young man with intentions."

"Where she hidin' him, then?"

"He--he's bashful about comin', Jimmie. Last night on her knees right here by this bed she told me, Jimmie, with her eyes like saucers, that he's said everything but come right out and ask her."

"What's the matter? Is he tongue-tied?"

"A fine fellow, she says, Jimmie--up to date as a new dime, makin' from thirty to forty a week. Get that, Jimmie? Gawd--forty a week! On forty a week, Jimmie, what they could do for themselves and for you!"

"I wanna look him over first. I knew a fellow in that game got forty a week and ninety days once, too."

"Jimmie!"

"There's a bunch of speculators used to hang round the Forty-second Street telegraph office, with one eye always on the cop and the other always open for rubes. They was all hunchbacks from dodging the law."

"He ain't one of them kind, Jimmie."

"Then why don't he have a roof over his head instead of doing sidewalk business?"

"Ticket-speculatin' is like any other business, Essie says. Profit is profit, whether you make it on a sheet of music, a washboard, or a theayter ticket."

"Then why don't he show his face round here, instead of runnin' her round night after night when she ought to be home sleepin'?"

"Gawd, Jimmie! I don't know, except what she says. I just feel like I couldn't stand her not bringing him to-night--like--like I couldn't stand it, Jimmie."

"Lay easy there, ma."

"They're young, I guess, and gotta have life; but I lay here with it in front of me all night, long after she gets home and is sleepin' here next to me as light as a daisy. She's so little and pretty, Jimmie."

"I wanna get my glims on him--"

"What, Jimmie?"

"I wanna see him."

"Me, too, Jimmie. I wouldn't care much about anything else if I could see him once; and if he is big and strong like your father was--"

"That gang don't come big and strong. They got big heads and little necks."

"The kind of fellow that would know how to treat you when you got stubborn, and would put his hand on your shoulder and not try to drive you. If he was a man like that, Jimmie, the kind you and Essie needs, I--I'd stop fightin'; I'd fold my hands and say to God: 'Ready! Ready right this minute!'"

"Ready for what, ma?"

"Ready, Jimmie, my boy. Just hands folded and ready--that's all."

"Aw, cut it, can't you, ma? I--ma, quit scarin' a fellow. Quit battin' your eyes like that. Tryin' to flirt with me, ain't you, ma? Quit it, now! Lemme get you some of that black medicine--you're gettin' one of your spells. Lemme run down-stairs and send Lizzie Marks for old man Gibbs?"

"No, no, Jimmie--don't leave me! Hold me, my boy, so I can feel your face. Don't cry, Jimmie; there ain't nothin' to cry about."

"Cut the comedy, ma! I ain't cryin'; I'm sweatin'."

"Jimmie, are--you--there? I feel so--so heavy."

"Sure I am, ma--right here, holding you in my arms. Feel! There's the scar where old Gibbs sewed my face the time I got hit with a bat--feel, ma--see, it's me."

"What's that, Jimmie, on the foot of the bed movin'?"

"See, ma--that's your flowered glad-rag. You're go-goin' to put it on when Essie and her gen'l'man friend come in. It ain't movin'; I shoved it."

"Don't muss it, Jimmie."

"No. See, I smoothed out its tail--it's a sash for you, ma."

"Jimmie, you won't leave me? It gets so dark and--the mice--"

"You couldn't pry me away with a crowbar, ma! I'll hold you till you yell leggo. Lemme go for old Gibbs, ma; you're breathing heavy as a pump."

"No, no, Jimmie; don't leave me."

"Sure I won't; but you're all twitchin' and jumpin', ma. Just leave me run down and send Lizzie Marks for him."

"No, no, Jimmie; I'm all right."

"Sure, ma? You--you're actin' up so funny."

"It ain't nothin'--only I'm an old woman, Jimmie. All of a sudden I got old and broke. It ain't the same in the department, Jimmie, with Essie gone from the notions across the aisle. Always when we were overstocked in the corsets she--she--Essie--"

"Aw, ma, you ain't talkin' straight. Lemme have old man Gibbs."

"I'm talking straight, Jimmie. Ain't I layin' right here in your arms and ain't my hair caught round one of your brass buttons?--quit pullin', Jimmie! Essie's hair is so bright, Jimmie. I can see it shinin' in the dark when she's sleepin'."

"Some hair the kid's got! Remember the night you took me and her to--"

"'Sh-h-h-h! Ain't that them coming? Ain't it, Jimmie? I ain't equal to gettin' up, Jimmie. Bring 'em in here and tell--"

"Like fun it's them! Whatta you bet right now they're holding down a table for two at the Palais du Danse? Swell joint!"

"Oh, Gawd, Jimmie!"

"I was kiddin', ma--only kiddin'. Open your eyes, ma. Gwan! Be a sport and open up! Remember, ma, when I was a kid, how I used to make you laff and laff, makin' a noise like a banjo--plunka-plunk-plunk-plunk-plunka-plunk?"

"Yes, Jimmie."

"I knew I'd get a laff out of you--plunka-plunk-plunka-plunk!"

"Yes, Jimmie, my boy! Go on! I like to lay here and remember back. Essie was always grabbin' your spoon--I used to slap her little hands and--"

"Ma, open your eyes! Don't go off in one of 'em again."

"See, they're open, Jimmie! I can see your gold buttons shinin' and shinin'--I ain't sleepin'; I'm only waitin'."

"She ain't had time to get home yet, ma. They gotta pick up programs and turn in lost articles and all."

"Put your arms round me, Jimmie. I keep slippin' and slippin'."

"Lemme run for old man Gibbs, ma? Please!"

"No, no, Jimmie. Sing like you used to when you was a little kid, Jimmie; I used to laff and laff."

"Plunka-plunk-plunk-plunk!"

"'Sh-h-h! There's the chimes--you won't never tell me the right time nights, when I ask you, Jimmie."

"It ain't late, ma."

"'Sh-h-h! What time is that? Listen!"

"It's early. Don't you count chimes, ma--it's a sign of snow to count 'em, and Essie's got her thin jacket on. Listen! This is a swell one I know: Plunk! Plunk! Plunk! Plunk!"

"'Sh-h-h, Jimmie! One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--"

"See, it ain't late."

"'Leven! You can't cheat me; I heard the last one."

"'Leven already? Well, whatta you know about that? Them chimes is always ahead of themselves."

"Jimmie, my boy, quit playin' with your old ma."

"They'll be comin' soon now."

"Don't leave me, Jimmie."

"Sure, I won't--see!"

"Jimmie! Jim-mie--"

"Ma! Ma, for Gawd's sakes, open your eyes! Ma darlin'--please--please--"

"Sing, Jimmie, like--a banjo."

"Plunka-plunk-plunka-plunk!"

* * * * *

On that last boom of eleven the Stuyvesant Theater swung its doors outward as the portals of a cuckoo clock fly open on the hour, and women in fur-collared, brocaded coats, which wrapped them to the ankles, and carefully curved smiles that Watteau knew so well and Thackeray knew too well, streamed out into the radium-white flare of Broadway, their delicate fingers resting lightly on the tired arms of tired business men, whose faces were like wood-carving and whose wide white shirt-fronts covered their hearts like slabs.

Almost before the last limousine door had slammed, and the last tired business man had felt the light compelling pressure of the delicate finger-tips on his arm and turned his tired eyes from the white lights to the whiter lights of cafes and gold-leaf hotels, the interior of the Stuyvesant Theater, warm and perfumed as the interior of a jewel-box, blinked into soft darkness. Small figures, stealthy _espions_ of the night, padded down thick-carpeted aisles flashing their pocket searchlights now here, now there, folding rows of velvet seats against velvet backs, reaching for discarded programs and seat-checks, gathering up the dainty debris of petals fallen from too-blown roses, an occasional webby handkerchief, an odd glove, a ribbon.

Then the dull-red eyes above the fire-exits blinked out, the sea of twilight deepened, and the small searchlights flashed brighter and whiter, glow-worms in a pit of night.

"For Pete's sakes! Tell Ed to give back them lights; my lamp's burnt out."

"Oh, hurry up, Essie! You girls up there in the balcony would kick if you was walkin' a tight rope stretched between the top stories of two Flatiron Buildings."

"It's easy enough for you to talk down there in the orchestra, Lulu Pope. Carriage shoes don't muss up the place like Subway shoes."

"Gimme the balcony in preference to the orchestra every time."

"What about us girls 'way up here in the chutes? Whatta you say about us, Lulu Pope--playin' handmaids to the gallery gods?"

"Chutes the same. I used to be in the chutes over at the Olympic, and six nights out of the week I carried water up the aisles without a stop. Lookin' each row in the eye, too!"

"Like fun!"

"Sure's my name's Lulu Pope! Me an' a girl named Della Bradenwald used to play Animal or Vegetable Kingdom every entr'acte with the fireman."

"Oh-h-h! Say, Loo, you oughtta see what I found up here in Box E!"

"Leave it to Essie Birdsong for a find! What is it this time--the diamond star the blonde queen in Upper E was wearin'?"

"A right-hand, number five and a half--white stitchin'."

"Can you beat it? And you ain't never had a claim yet at the box-office."

"I knew my luck would break, Lulu. My little brother Jimmie says if you break a comb your luck breaks with it. I broke one this morning. Whatta you bet now I begin to match every one of my five left-hand gloves, without a claim from the office?"

"Lucky kid!"

Conversation curved from gallery to loge box, and from loge to balcony.

"Gee! Look at this amber butterfly! I seen it in her hair when I steered her down the aisle. She must be stuck on something about this show--third time this week, and not on paper, neither."

"Amber, is it, Sadie? I'll trade you for the tortoise-shell one I found in G 4; amber'll go swell with my hair."

"Whatta you bet she claims it?"

"Nix."

"Say, did you hear Wheelan flivver her big scene to-night? I was dozin' in the foyer and she tripped over her cue so hard she woke me up."

"I should say so! I was standing next to the old man, and he let out a line of talk that was some fireworks; he said a super in the mob scene could take her place and beat her at pickin' up cues."

"Ready, Sadie?"

"Yes; wait till I turn in one gent's muffler and a red curl."

"Are you done up there, too, Essie?"

"Yes; but you needn't wait for me, Loo. If you're in a hurry I'll see you down in the locker-room."

Seats slammed; laughter drifted; searchlights danced and flashed out as though suddenly doused with water; and the gold, crystal, velvet, and marble interior of the Stuyvesant Theater suddenly vanished into its imminent wimple of blackness.

In the bare-walled locker-room Miss Essie Birdsong leaned to her reflection in the twelve-inch wavy mirror and ran a fine pencil-line along the curves of her eyebrows.

"Is this right, Loo?"

"Swell! Your eyes look two shades darker."

"Gee!"

Miss Birdsong smiled and leaned closer.

"The girls all out, Loo?"

"Yeh; hurry up and lemme have that mirror, Ess--Harry gets as glum as glue if I keep him waiting."

Miss Pope adjusted a too-small hat with a too-long pheasant's wing cocked at a too-rakish angle on her brass-colored hair, and powdered at her powdered cheek-bones.