“Who said anybody wanted to change it?”
He patted her arm again very closely. “You’re a wonderful girl, Clara.”
They turned up the stoop of Mrs. Schulem’s boarding-house, strictly first-class. How they flourish in the city, these institutions of the Not Yet, the Never Was, the Never Will Be, and the Has Been! They are the half-way houses going up and the mausoleums coming down life’s incline, and he who lingers is lost to the drab destiny of this or that third-floor-back hearthstone, hot and cold running water, all the comforts of home. That is why, even as she moved up from the rooming to the boarding-house and down from the third-floor back to the second-story front, there was always under Clara Bloom’s single bed the steamer-trunk scarcely unpacked, and in her heart the fear that, after all, this might not be transiency, but home. That is why, too, she paid her board by the week and used printed visiting-cards.
And yet, if there exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem’s was of it. None of the boiled odors lay on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor. The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two more of him were also genii of the basement dining-hall, two low rooms made into one and entirely bisected by a long-stemmed T of dining-table, and between the lace-curtained windows a small table for two, with fairly snowy napkins flowering out of its water-tumblers, and in its center a small island of pressed-glass vinegar-cruet, bottle of darkly portentous condiment, glass of sugar, and another of teaspoons.
It was here that Miss Bloom and Mr. Lipkind finally settled themselves, snugly and sufficiently removed from the T-shaped battalion of eyes and ears to insure some privacy.
“Well,” said Mr. Lipkind, unflowering his napkin, spreading it across his knees, and exhaling, “this is fine!”
There was an aura of authoritativeness seemed to settle over Miss Bloom.
This to one of the black-faced genii: “Take care of us right to-night, Johnson, and I’ll fix it up with you. See if you can’t manage it in the kitchen to bring us a double portion of those banana fritters I see they’re eating at the big table. Say they’re for Miss Bloom. I’ll fix it up with you.”
“Now, Clara, don’t you go bothering with extras for me. This is certainly fine. Sorry you never asked me before.”
“You know why I never asked you before.”
“Why, you never saw the like how pleased ma was. She was the first one to fall in with the idea of my coming to-night.”
She dipped into a shallow plate of amber soup. “I know,” she said, “all about that.”
“Ma’s a good sport about being left at home alone.”
“How do you know? You never tried it until to-night. I’ll bet it’s the first time since that night you first met me, five years ago, at Jerome Fertig’s, and it wouldn’t have been then if she hadn’t had the neuralgia and it was your own clerk’s wedding.”
He laid down his spoon, settling back a bit from the table, pulling the napkin across his knees out into a string.
“I thought we’d gone all over that, Clara.”
“Yes; but where did it get us? That’s why we’re here to-night, Sam–to get somewheres.”
He crumbed his bread. “What do you mean, Clara?”
She forced his slow gaze to hers calmly, her hands outstretched on the table between them. “I’ve made up my mind, Sam. Things can’t go on this way no longer between us.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“I mean that we’ve either got to act or quit.”
He was rolling the bread pills again, a flush rising. “You know where I stand, Clara, on things between us.”
“Yes, Sam, and now you know where I stand.” The din of the dining-room surged over the pause between them. Still in the purple hat, and her wrap thrown back over her chair, she held that pause coolly, level of eye. “I’m thirty-one now, Sam, three weeks and two days older than you. I don’t see the rest of my days with the Arnstein Ribbon Company. I’m not getting any younger. Five years is a long time out of a girl’s life. Five of the best ones, too. She likes to begin to see her future when she reaches my age. A future with a good providing man. You and me are just where we started five years ago.”
“I know, Clara, and I’d give my right hand to change things.”
“If I’d been able to save a cent, it might be different. But I haven’t–I’m that way. I make big and spend big. But you can’t blame a girl for wanting to see her future. That’s me, and I’m not ashamed to say it.”
“If only, Clara, I could get you to see things my way. If you’d be willing to try it with ma. Why, with a little diplomacy from you, ma’d move heaven and earth to please you.”
“There’s no use beginning that, Sam; it’s a waste of time. Why–why, just the difference in the way me and–and your mother feel on money matters is enough. There’s no use to argue that with me; it’s a waste of time.”
He lifted and let droop his shoulders with something of helplessness in the gesture. “What’s the use, then? I’m sure I don’t know what more to say to you, Clara. Oh, don’t think my mother don’t realize how things are between us–it’s all I can do to keep denying and denying.”
“Well, you can’t say she knows from my telling.”
“No; but there’s not a day she don’t say to me, particularly these last few times since you been breaking your dates with us pretty regular–I–well she sees how it worries me, and there’s not a day she don’t say to me, ‘Sammy,’ she said to me, only this morning, ‘if I thought I was keeping you and Clara apart–‘”
“A blind man could see it.”
“There’s not a day passes over her head she don’t offer to go to live with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting her that time nearly killed her.”
“Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody.”
“It’s my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn’t no more live with Isadore Katz than she could fly. He’s a fine fellow and all that, but she’s not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and the children’s food and things like Isadore loves to. She’s used to her own little home and her own little way.”
“Exactly.”
“If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. ‘Sammy,’ she wrote to me that time after ma’s visit out there, ‘I love our mother like you do, but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home and her own ways of doing.'”
“I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that.”
“It’s not nerve, Clara; it’s the truth. Ruby’s a good girl in her way.”
“What about you–ain’t your life to be thought of? Ain’t it enough she was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest in a ladies’ ready-to-wear store out there?”
“Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or any other kind further down-town that she’d want to pick out for herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don’t know it, but on your Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o’clock in the morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you’ll like.”
“I’m not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she’s a grand woman, and I admire a fellow that’s good to his mother. I always say, ‘Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow will be good to his wife.'”
“I’m not pretending to say ma mayn’t be a little peculiar in her ways, but you never saw an old person that wasn’t, did you? Neither am I saying it’s exactly any girl’s idea to start out married life with a third person in–“
“I’ve always swore to myself, Sam, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, that if I can’t marry to improve myself, I’m going to stay single till I can. I’m not a six-dollar-a-week stenog that has to marry for enough to eat. I can afford to buy a seventy-five dollar suit every winter of my life and twelve-dollar shoes every time I need them. The hat on my head cost me eighteen-fifty wholesale, without having to be beholding to nobody, and–“
“Ma don’t mean those things, Clara. It’s just when she hears the price girls pay for things nowadays she can’t help being surprised the way things have changed.”
“I’m not a small potato, Sam. I never could live like a small potato.”
“Why, you know there’s nothing I like better than to see you dressed in the best that money can buy. You heard what I said about that hat just now, didn’t you? Whatever it cost, it’s worth it. I can afford to dress my little wife in the best that comes. There’s nothing too good for her.”
“Yes; but–“
“All ma needs, Clara, is a little humoring. She’s had to stint so all her life, it’s a little hard to get her used to a little prosperity. Take me. Why, if I bring her home a little shawl or a pockabook that cost, say, ten dollars, you think I tell her? No. I say, ‘Here’s a bargain I picked up for three ninety-eight,’ and right away she’s happy with something reduced.”
“Your mother and me, Sam, and, mind you, I’m not saying she isn’t a grand old lady, wasn’t no more made to live together than we was made to fly. I couldn’t no more live her way than she could live mine. I’ve got a practical head on my shoulders–I don’t deny it–and I want to improve ourselves in this world when we marry, and have an up-to-date home like every young couple that starts out nowadays.”
“Sure, we–“
“That flat of yours up there or any other one under the conditions would be run like the ark. I’m an up-to-date girl, I am. There’s not a girl living would be willing to marry a well-off fellow like you and go huck herself in a place she couldn’t even have the running of herself or have her own say-so about the purse-strings. It may sound unbecoming, but when I marry I’m going to better myself, I am.”
“I–why–“
“If she can’t even stand for her own son-in-law walking into his own kitchen in his own house–Oh, you don’t find me starting my married life that way at this late date. I haven’t held off five years for that.”
Mr. Lipkind pushed back his but slightly tasted food, lines of strain and a certain whiteness out in his face. “It–it just seems awful, Clara, this going around in a circle and not getting anywheres.”
“I’m at the end of my rope, I am.”
“I see your point in a way, Clara, but, my God! a man’s mother is his mother! It’s eating up my life just as it’s eating yours, but what you going to do about it? It just seems the best years of our life are going, waiting for God knows what.”
Hands clasped until her finger-nails whitened, Miss Bloom leaned across the table, her voice careful and concentrated. “Now you said something! That’s why you and me are here alone together to-night. There’s not going to be a sixth year of this kind of waiting between us. Things have got to come to a head. I’ve got a chance, Sam, to marry. Eddie Leonard has asked me.”
“I–thought so.”
“Eddie Leonard ain’t a Sam Lipkind, but after the war his five-thousand-dollar job is down at Arnstein’s waiting for him, and he’s got a good stiff bank-account saved as good as yours and–and no strings to it. I believe in a girl facing those facts the same as any other facts. Why, I–this war and all–why, if anything was to happen to you to-morrow–us unmarried this way–I’d be left high and dry without so much as a penny to show for the best five years of my life. We’ve got to do one thing or another, Sam. I believe in a girl being practical as well as romantic.”
“I–see your point, Clara.”
“I’m done with going around in this circle of ours.”
“You mean–“
“You know what I mean.”
The lower half of Mr. Lipkind’s face seemed to lock, as it were, into a kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. “I’ll see Eddie Leonard burning like brimstone before I let him have you!”
“Well?”
“God! I don’t know what to say–I don’t know what to say!”
“That’s your trouble, Sam; you’re so chicken-hearted you–“
“My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings are to you, there’s no power on earth can make me quit having to be him as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you–but if I got to pay with her happiness for–ours–then I never want happiness to the day I die.”
“In other words, it’s the mother first.”
“Don’t put it that way–it’s her–age–first. It ain’t what she wants and don’t want; it’s what she’s got to have. My mother couldn’t live away from me.”
“She could if you were called to war.”
There was something electric in the silence that followed, something that seemed to tighten the gaze of each for the other.
“But I haven’t been–yet.”
“The next draft will get you.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, what’ll you do then?”
“That’s something me and ma haven’t ever discussed. The war hasn’t been mentioned in our house for two years–except that the letters don’t come from Germany, and that’s a grief to her. There’s enough time for her to cross that bridge when we come to it. She worries about it enough.”
“If I was a man I’d enlist, I would!”
“I’d give my right hand to. Every other night I dream I’m a lieutenant.”
“Why, there’s not a fellow I know that hasn’t beaten the draft to it and enlisted for the kind of service he wants. I know a half a dozen who have got in the home guard and things and have saved themselves by volunteering from being sent to France.”
“I wouldn’t dodge the front thataway. I’d like to enlist as a private and then work myself up to lieutenant and then on up to captain and get right into the fray on the front. I–“
“You bet, if I was a fellow, I’d enlist for the kind of home service I wanted–that’s what Eddie and all the fellows are doing.”
“So would I, Clara, if I was what you call a–free man. There’s nobody given it more thought than me.”
“Well, then, why don’t you? Talk’s cheap.”
“You know why, Clara, to get back to going around in a circle again.”
“But you’ve got to go, sooner or later. You’ve got a comfortable married sister and independent circumstances of your own to keep your mother; you haven’t got a chance for exemption.”
“I don’t want exemption.”
“Well, then, beat the draft to it.”
“I–Most girls ain’t so anxious to–to get rid of their best fellows, Clara.”
“Silly! Can’t you see the point? If–if you’d enlist and go off to camp, I–I could go and live near you there like Birdie Harberger does her husband. See?”
“You mean–“
“Then–God forbid anything should happen to you!–I’m your wife. You see, Sam?”
“Why, Clara–“
“You see what I mean. But nothing can happen this way, because if you try to enlist in some mechanical department where they need you in this country–you see, Sam? See?”
“I–see.”
“Your mother would have to get used to things then, Sam–it would be the easiest for her. An old lady like her couldn’t go trailing around the outskirts of a camp like your wife could. Think of the comfort it’ll be to her to have me with you if she can’t be. She’ll get so used to–living alone–“
“I–You mustn’t talk that way to me, Clara. When I’m called to serve my country, I’m the first one that will want to go. I’ve given more money already than I can afford to help the boys who are at the front. So far as I’m concerned, enlisting like this with–with you–around, would be the happiest thing ever happened to me, but–well, you see for yourself.”
“You mean, then, you won’t?”
“I mean, Clara, I can’t.”
She was immediately level of tone again and pushed back, placing her folded napkin beside her place, patting it down.
“Well, then, Sam, I’m done.”
“‘Done,’ Clara?”
“Yep. That lets me out. I’ve given you every chance to make this thing possible. Your mother is no better and no different than thousands and thousands of other mothers who are giving their sons, only, she is better off than most, because she’s provided for. It’s all right for a fellow’s mother to come first, maybe, but if his wife isn’t even to come second or third or tenth, then it’s about time to call quits. I haven’t made up my mind to this in a day. I’m done.”
“Clara–“
“Ed has asked me. I don’t pretend he’s my ideal, but he’s more concerned about my future than he is about anybody else’s. If I’m ready to leave with him on that twelve-o’clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he’s going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we’ll be married there to-morrow night, and I’ll settle down somewhere near camp as long as I can. He’s got a good nest-egg if–God forbid!–anything should happen. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”
“My God! Clara, this is awful! Eddie Leonard he’s not your kind; he–“
“I’ve given you first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don’t be a boob coming and going, Sam; you’re one now not to see things and you’ll be another one spelled backward if you don’t help yourself to your chance when it comes. You’ve got your life in front of you, and your mother’s got hers in back of her. Now choose.”
“My God! Clara, this is–terrible! Why–I’d rather be a thousand boobs than take my mother’s heart and tear it to pieces.”
“You won’t?”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t say that, Sam. Go home and–sleep on it. Think it over. Please! Come to your senses, honey. Telephone me at eleven to keep me from catching that twelve-o’clock train. Don’t let me take it with Eddie. Think it over, Sam. Honey–our–future–don’t throw it away! Don’t let me take that twelve-o’clock train!”
There were tears streaming from her eyes, and her lips, so carefully firm, were beginning to tremble. “You can’t blame a girl, Sam, for wanting to provide for her future. Can you, Sam? Think it over. Please! I’ll be praying when eleven o’clock comes to-morrow morning for you to telephone me. Please, Sam–think!”
He dropped his face low, lower toward the table, trembling under the red wave that surged over him and up into the roots of his hair. “I’ll think it over, Clara–my girl–my own girl!”
As if the moments themselves had been woven by her flying amber needles into a whole cloth of meditation, Mrs. Lipkind, beside a kitchen lamp that flowed in gracious light, knitted the long, quiet hours of her evening into fabric, her face screwed and out of repose and occasionally the lips moving. Age is prone to that. Memories love to be mumbled and chewed over–the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk.
A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on the window-ledge, gold and unswerving of eye. The silence was like the singing inside of a shell, and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind.
By nine o’clock she was already glancing up at the clock, cocking her head to each and every of night’s creaks.
By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had neither shape nor identity. Once she went down a long slit of hallway to the front door, opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor that was papered in embossed leatherette, one speckled incandescent bulb lighting it sadly. There was something impregnable, even terrible to her in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments. She tiptoed, almost ran, poor dear! with the consciousness of some one at her heels, back to the kitchen, where at least was the warm print of the cat’s presence; fell to knitting again, clacking her needles for the solace of explainable sound.
Identically with the round moment of ten Mr. Lipkind entered, almost running down the hallway.
“Hello, ma! Think I got lost? Just got to talking and didn’t realize. Haven’t been worried, ma? Afraid?”
She lifted her head from his kiss. “‘Afraid!’ What you take me for? For why should I be worried at only ten o’clock? Say, I’m glad if you stay out for recreation.”
He kissed her again, shaking out of his coat and unwinding his muffler. “I could just see you walking the floor and looking out of the window.”
“Sa-y, I been so busy all evening I didn’t have time to think. I’m not such a worrier no more like I used to be. Like the saying is–life is too short.”
He drew up beside her, lifting her needles off her work. “Little sweetheart mamma, why don’t you sit on the big sofa in the front room where it’s more comfortable?”
“You can’t make, Sammy, out of a pig’s ear a silk stocking.”
He would detain her hands, his eyes puckered and, so intent upon her.
“You had a good time, Sammy?”
“You’d be surprised, ma, what a nice place Clara boards at.”
“What did they have to eat? Good cooking?”
“Not for a fellow that’s used to my boarding-house.”‘
“What?”
“I couldn’t tell if it was soup or finger-bowls they served for the first course.”
“I know–stylish broth. Let me warm you up a little of my thick barley soup that’s left over from–“
He pressed her down. “Please, ma! I’m full up. I couldn’t. They had pink ice-cream, too, with pink cake and–“
“Such mess-food what is bad for you. I’m surprised how Clara keeps her good complexion. Let me fix you some fried–“
“Ma, I tell you I couldn’t. It’s ten o’clock. You mustn’t try to fatten me up so. In war-time a man has got to be lean.”
She sat back suddenly and whitely quiet. “That’s–twice already to-day, Sam, you talk like that.”
He took up her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes lowered. “Why not? Doesn’t it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me are–are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to each other there ain’t no war?”
She laid a quick hand to her breast. “What you mean, Sammy?”
“Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty closely, all right.”
“Sammy, you mean something!”
“Now, ma, there’s no need to get excited right away. Think of the mothers who haven’t even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go.”
“Sammy–you ‘ain’t been–“
“No, no; I haven’t.”
“You have! I can see it in your face! You’ve come home with some news to break. You been drafted!”
He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. “I tell you I haven’t! Can’t you take my word for it?”
“Swear to me, Sammy!”
“All right; I swear.”
“Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!”
“I swear–thataway.”
She was still pressing against her breathing. “You’re keeping something back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad news–O my God!”
“No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you’ve been getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you’re going to be this excitable and get yourself sick, I won’t talk over anything with you. I’ll quit.”
“You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book.”
“I’m done. If I can’t talk facts over with you without your going to pieces this way, I’m done. I quit.”
She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. “Sammy, what is it? If you don’t tell me, I can’t stand it. Sammy?”
“Will you sit quiet and not get excited?”
“Please, Sammy, I will.”
“It’s this: you see, ma, the way the draft goes. When a fellow’s called to war, drafted, he’s got to go, no questions asked. But when a fellow enlists for war, volunteers, you see, before the government calls him, then thataway he can pick out for himself the thing he wants to be in the army. Y’see? And then maybe the thing he picks out for himself can keep him right here at home. Y’see, ma–so he don’t have to go away. See the point?”
“You mean when a boy enlists he offers himself instead of gets offered.”
“Exactly.”
“You got something behind all this. You mean you–you want to enlist.”
“Now, ma–you see, if I was to enlist–and stay right here in this country–with you near the camp or, as long as it’s too rough life for you, with–with Clara there–a woman to look in on–“
“Sammy–you mean it’s enlistment!”
Her voice rose in velocity; he could feel her pulse run beneath his fingers.
“It’s the best way, ma. The draft is sure to get me. Let me beat it and keep myself home–near you. We might as well face the music, ma. They’ll get me one way or another. Let me enlist now, ma. Like a man. Right away. For my country!”
Do you know the eyes of Bellini’s “Agony in a Garden”? Can you hear for yourself the note that must have been Cassandra’s when she shouted out her forebodings? There were these now in the glance and voice of Mrs. Lipkind as she drew back from him, her face actually seeming to shrivel.
“No, Sammy! No! No! No!”
“Ma–please–“
“You wouldn’t! You couldn’t! No, Sammy–my son!”
“Ma, for God’s sake don’t go on so!”
“Then tell me you wouldn’t! Against your own flesh and blood! Tell me you wouldn’t!”
“No, no, ma! For God’s sake, don’t take a fit–a stroke–no, no; I wouldn’t–I wouldn’t!”
“Your own blood, Sammy! Your own baby cousins what I tucked you in bed with–mine own sister’s children! Her babies what slept with you. Mine own sister who raised me and worked down her hands to the bone to make it so with my young husband and baby we could come to America–no–no!”
“Mamma, for God’s sakes–“
“Three years like a snake here inside of it’s eating me–all night–all day–I’m a good American, Sammy; I got so much I should be thankful for to America. Twenty-five years it’s my home, the home where I had prosperity and good treatment, the home where I had happiness with your papa and where he lies buried, but I can’t give you to fight against my own, Sammy–to be murdered by your own–my sister what never in her life harmed a bird–my child and her children–cousins–against each other. My beautiful country what I remember with cows and green fields and clover–always the smell of clover. It ain’t human to murder against your own flesh and blood for God knows what reason!”
“Mamma, there is a reason it–“
“I tell you I’m a good American, Sammy. For America I give my last cent, but not to stick knives in my own–it ain’t human–Why didn’t I die before we got war? What good am I here? In my boy’s way for his country–his marriage–his happiness–why don’t I die?”
“Ma, I tell you you mustn’t! You’re making yourself sick. Let me fan you. Here, ma, I didn’t mean it. See–I’m holding you tight. I won’t never let go. You’re my little sweetheart mamma. You mustn’t tremble like that. I’m holding you tight–tight–little mamma.”
“My boy! My little boy! My son! My all! All in their bed together. Three. Her two. Mine. The smell of clover–my boy–Sammy–Sam–” She fainted back into his arms suddenly, very white and very quiet and very shriveled.
He watched beside her bed the next five hours of the night, his face so close above hers that, when she opened her eyes, his were merged into one for her, and the clasp of his hand never left hers.
“You all right, ma? Sure? Sure you don’t need the doctor?”
She looked up at him with a tired, a burned-out, an ashamed smile. “The first time in my life, Sammy, such a thing ever happened to me.”
He pressed a chain of close kisses to the back of her hand, his voice far from firm. “It was me, ma. I’ll never forgive myself. My little mamma, my little mamma sweetheart!”
“I feel fine, son; only, with you sitting here all night, you don’t let me sleep for worry that you ain’t in bed.”
“I love it. I love to sit here by you and watch you sleep. You’re sure you’ve no fever? Sure?”
“I’m well, Sammy. It was nothing but what you call a fainting-fit. For some women it’s nothing that they should faint every time they get a little bit excited. It’s nothing. Feel my hands–how cool! That’s always a sign–coolness.”
He pressed them both to his lips, blowing his warm breath against them.
“There now–go to sleep.”
The night-light burning weakly, the great black-walnut bedstead ponderous in the gloom, she lay there mostly smiling and always shamefaced.
“Such a thing should happen to me at my age!”
“Try to sleep, ma.”
“Go in your room to bed, and then I get sleep. Do you want your own clerks should beat you to business to-morrow?”
“A little whisky?”
“Go away; you got me dosed up enough with such _Schnapps_.”
“The light lower?”
“No. If you don’t go in your room, I lay here all night with my eyes open, so help me!”
He rose, stiff and sore-kneed, hair awry, and his eyes with the red rims of fatigue. “You’ll sure ring the little bell if you want anything, ma?”
“Sure.”
“You promise you won’t get up to fix breakfast.”
“If I don’t feel good, I let you fix mine.”
“Good night, little sweetheart mamma.”
“You ain’t–mad at me, Sam?”
“Mad! Why, ma, you mustn’t ask me a–a thing like that; it just kills me to hear you. Me that’s not even fit to black your shoes! Mad at you? Why, I–I–Good night–good–night–ma.”
* * * * *
At just fifteen minutes before seven, to the pungency of coffee and the harsh sing of water across the hall, Mrs. Lipkind in a fuzzy wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed her son awake.
“Sam! Sammy! Get up! _Thu, thu_! I can’t get him up in the morning!”
The snuggle away and into the crotch of his elbow.
“Sam-my–quarter to seven!”
He sprang up then, haggard, but in a flood of recollection and remorse. “Ma, I must ‘a’ dropped off at the last minute. You all right? What are you doing up? Go right back! Didn’t I tell you not to get up?”
“I been up an hour already; that’s how fine I feel. Get up, Sammy; it’s late.”
He flung on his robe, trying to withdraw her from the business of looping back the bed-clothing over the footboard and pounding into the pillows.
“I tell you I won’t have it! You got to lay in bed this morning.”
“I’m all right, Sammy. Wouldn’t I say so if I wasn’t?” But she sat down rather weakly on the edge of the bed, holding the right side of her, breathing too hard.
“I–I shouldn’t have beat that pillow is all. Let me get my breathing. I’m all right.” Nevertheless, she let him relax her to his pillow, draw the covers down from the footboard, and cover her.
“This settles it,” he said, quietly. “I’m going to get a doctor.”
She caught his hand. “If–if you want to get me excited for sure, just you call a doctor–now–before I talk with you a minute–I want to talk–I’m all right, Sammy, if you let me talk to you. One step to that telephone, and I get excited–“
“Please, ma–“
“Sammy?”
“Yes.”
“Will you listen to me and do like I want it?”
“Yes.”
“I–been a bad old woman.”
“That’s right–break my heart.”
“I got a brave boy for a son, and I want to make from him a coward.”
“Ma–please!”
“I laid saying to myself all night, a mother should have such a son like mine and make things hard for him yet!”
“Please, get it all out of your head–“
“From America what has given to me everything I should hold back my son from fighting for. In war, it ain’t your own flesh and blood what counts; it’s the flesh and blood of your country–not, Sam? I been thinking only it’s my family affair. If God lets be such a terrible thing like war, there is somewhere a good reason for it. I want you to enlist, Sammy, for your country. Not for in an office, but for where they need you. I want you to enlist to get some day to be such a lieutenant and a captain like you used to play it with tin soldiers. I want–“
“Mamma, mamma, you know you don’t mean it!”
“I want it, I tell you. All night I worked on it how dumb I’ve been, not right away to see it–last night. With Clara near you in the camp–“
“Ma, I didn’t mean it that way; I–“
“Clara near you for a woman to look in on, I been so dumb not to right away see it. I’m glad you let it out, Sam. I wouldn’t take five thousand dollars it didn’t happen–I feel fine–I want it–I–“
“I didn’t mean it, ma–I swear! Don’t rub it in this way–please–please–“
“Why, I never wanted anything in my life like I want this, Sammy–that you should enlist–a woman to look in on–I been a bad woman, Sammy, I–I–oh–“
It was then that Mr. Lipkind tore to the telephone, his hands so frenzied that they would not properly hold the receiver.
At eight o’clock, and without even a further word, Mrs. Lipkind breathed out quietly, a little tiredly, and yet so eloquent of eye. To her son, pleading there beside her for the life she had not left to give, it was as if the swollen bosom of some stream were carrying her rapidly but gently down its surface, her gaze back at him and begging him to stay the current.
“Mamma! Darling! Doctor–please–for God’s sakes–please–she wants something—she can’t say it–give it to her! Try to make her tell me what she wants–she wants something–this is terrible–don’t let her want something–mamma–just one word to me–try–try–O my God–Doctor–“
A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare which had begun to set in from the pillow.
By ten o’clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the _sotto-voce_ comings and goings, all the black-coated _parvenus_ that follow the wake of death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot’s wheel, a boyhood property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval, twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed against the pane.
Just so the iciness that had locked Samuel Lipkind seemed suddenly to melt in a tornado of sobs that swept him, felled him into a prostration of the terrible tears that men weep.
At a training-camp–somewhere–from his side of a tent that had flapped like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow that was stiff with chill and night damp.
Out over the peaked city that had been pitched rather than built, and on beyond over the frozen stubble of fields, sounded the bugle-cry of the reveille, which shrills so potently:
I can’t get ’em up; I can’t get ’em up; I can’t get ’em up in the morn–ing!
EVEN AS YOU AND I
There is an intensity about September noonday on Coney Island, aided and abetted by tin roofs, metallic façades, gilt domes, looking-glass fronts, jeweled spires, screaming peanut and frankfurter-stands, which has not its peculiar kind of equal this side of opalescent Tangiers. Here the sea air can become a sort of hot camphor-ice to the cheek, the sea itself a percolator, boiling up against a glass surface. Beneath the tin roofs of Ocean Avenue the indoor heat takes on the kind of intense density that is cotton in the mouth and ringing in the ears.
At one o’clock the jibberwock exteriors of Ocean Avenue begin fantastic signs of life. The House of Folly breaks out, over its entire façade, into a chicken-pox of red and green, blue and purple, yellow, violet, and gold electric bulbs. The Ocean Waves concession begins its side-splitting undulations. Maha Mahadra, India’s foremost soothsayer (down in police, divorce, and night courts as Mamie Jones, May Costello, and Mabel Brown, respectively), loops back her spangled portière. The Baby Incubator slides open its ticket-windows. Five carousals begin to whang. A row of hula-hula girls in paper necklaces appears outside of “Hawaii,” gelatinously naughty and insinuating of hip. There begins a razzling of the razzle-dazzle. Shooting-galleries begin to snipe into the glittering noon, and the smell of hot spiced sausages and stale malt to lay on the air.
Before the Palace of Freaks, a barker slanted up his megaphone, baying to the sun:
“Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u! The greatest show on the Island! Ten cents to see the greatest freak congress in the world. Shapiro’s freaks are gathered from every corner of the universe. Enter and shake hands with Baron de Ross, the children’s delight, the world’s smallest human being; age, forty-two years, eight months; height, twenty-eight inches; weight, fourteen and one-half pounds, certified scales. Enter and see the original and only authentic Siamese Twins! The Ossified Man! You are cordially invited to stick pins into this mystery of the whole medical world. Jastrow, the world’s most famous strong man end glass-eater, will perform his world-startling feats. Show about to begin! Our glass-eater eats glass, not rock candy–any one doubting same can sample it first. We have on view within, and all included in your ten-cents admission, the famous Teenie, absolutely the heaviest woman in captivity. We guarantee Teenie to tip the certified scales at five hundred and fifty-five, a weight unsurpassed by any of the heavyweights in the history of the show business. Come in and fox-trot with Teenie, the world wonder. Come in and fox-trot with her. Show begins immediately. Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u!”
Within the Palace of Freaks, her platform elevated and railed in against the unduly curious, Miss Luella Hoag, all that she was so raucously purported to be, sat back in her chair, as much in the attitude of relaxing as her proportions would permit.
There is no way in which I can hope to salve your offended estheticisms with any of Miss Hoag’s better points. What matters it that her skin was not without the rich quality of cream too thick to pour, when her arms fairly dimpled and billowed of this creaminess, and above her rather small ankles her made-to-order red-satin shoes bulged over of it, the low-cut bosom of her red and sequin dress was a terrific expanse of it, her hands small cushions of it, her throat quivery, and her walk a waddle with it. All but her face; it was as if the suet-like inundation of the flesh had not dared here. The chin was only slightly doubled; the cheeks just a shade too plump. Neither was the eye heavy of lid or sunk down behind a ridge of cheek. Between her eyes and upper lip, Miss Hoag looked her just-turned twenty; beyond them, she was antediluvian, deluged, smothered beneath the creamy billows and billows of self.
And yet, sunk there like a flower-seed planted too deeply to push its way up to bloom, the twenty-year-old heart of Miss Hoag beat beneath its carbonaceous layer upon layer, even skipped a beat at spring’s palpitating sweetness, dared to dream of love, weep of desire, ache of loneliness and loveliness.
Isolated thus by the flesh, the spirit, too, had been caught in nature’s sebaceous trick upon Miss Hoag. Life had passed her by slimly. But Miss Hoag’s redundancy was not all literal. A sixth and saving sense of humor lay like a coating of tallow protecting the surface of her. For nature’s vagary, she was pensioned on life’s pay-roll at eighteen dollars a week.
“Easy money, friends,” Miss Hoag would _ad lib_. to the line-up outside her railing; “how would some of you like to sit back and draw your wages just for the color of your hair or the size of your shoes? You there, that sailor boy down there, how’d you like to have a fox-trot with Teenie? Something to tell the Jackies about. Come on, Jack Tar, I’m light on my feet, but I won’t guarantee what I’ll be on yours. Step up and have a round.”
Usually the crowd would turn sheepish and dissolve at this Terpischorean threat. In fact, it was Miss Hoag’s method of accomplishing just that.
In the August high noon of the Coney Island Freak Palace, which is the time and scene of my daring to introduce to you the only under-thirty-years, and over-one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds, heroine in the history of fiction, the megaphone’s catch of the day’s first dribble of humanity and inhumanity had not yet begun its staring, gaping invasion.
A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the neighboring sway of Miss Hoag’s palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.
“Ain’t it a fright?” she said.
“Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!” said the Ossified Man, in a _patois_ of very south Italy.
Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.
“Hot, honey?”
The Baron, in a toy rocker that easily contained him, turned upon Miss Hoag a face so anachronistic that the senses reeled back. An old face, as if carved out of a paleolithic cherry-stone; the years furrowed in; the eyes as if they had seen, without marveling, the light of creation; even the hands, braceleted in what might have been portière-rings, leanly prehensile. When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of a patriot.
Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the tailor’s art; of form, a paleolithic child.
“Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!”
Miss Hoag billowed into silent laughter. “Little devil! That’s six you’ve sponged off me this week, you little whipper-snapper!”
The Baron screwed up into the tightest of grimaces.
“Nice Teenie–nice old Teenie!”
She tossed him a coin from the small saucerful of them on the table beside her. He caught it with the simian agility of his tiny hands.
“Nice Teenie! Nice old Teenie!”
A first group had strolled up, indolent and insolent at the spectacle of them.
“Photographs! Photographs! Take the folks back home a signed photograph of Teenie–only ten cents, one dime. Give the kiddies a treat–signed photograph of little Teenie!”
She would solicit thus, canorous of phrase, a fan of her cardboard likenesses held out, invitational.
Occasionally there were sales, the coins rattling down into the china saucer beside her; oftener a mere bombardment of insolence and indolence, occasionally a question.
This day from a motorman, loitering in uniform between runs, “Say, skinnay, whatcha weigh?”
Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional pride–that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the _ballerina_ for her double joints.
“Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?”
“O Lord!”–receding from the crowd and its trail of laughter. “O Lord! Excuse me. Good night!”
A CHILD: Missus, is all of you just one lady?
“Bless your heart, little pettie, they gimme a good measure, didn’t they? Here’s a chocolate drop for the little pettie.”
“Come away! Don’t take nothing from her!”
“I wouldn’t hurt your little girl, lady. I wouldn’t harm a pretty hair of her head; I love the kiddies.”
“Good-by, missus.”
“Good-by, little pettie.”
A MAN: Say, was you born in captivity–in this line o’ work, I mean?
“Law, no, friend! I never seen the light of the show business up to eight year ago. There wasn’t a member of my family, all dead and put away now, weighed more ‘n one-fifty. They say it of my mother, she was married at ninety pounds and died at a hundred and six.”
“You don’t say so.”
“I was born and raised on a farm out in Ohio. Bet not far from your part of the country, from the looks of you, friend. Buckeye?”
“Not a bad guess at that–Indiana’s mine.”
“Law! to my way of thinking, there’s no part of the Union got anything on the Middle States. Knock me around all you want, I always say, but let me be buried in the Buckeye State. Photographs? Signed photographs at ten cents each. Take one home to the wife, friend, out in Indiana. Come, friends, what’s a dime? Ten cents!”
The crowd, treacle-slow, and swinging its children shoulder-high, would shuffle on, pause next at the falsetto exhortations of the Baron, then on to the collapsibilities of the Boneless Wonder, the flexuosities of the Snake-charmer, the goose-fleshing, the terrible crunching of Jastrow the Granite Jaw. A commotion, this last, not unlike the steam-roller leveling of a rock road.
Miss Hoag retired then back to her chair, readjusting the photographs to their table display, wielding her fan largely.
“Lord!” she said, across the right railing, “wouldn’t this weather fry you!”
The Baron wilted to a mock swoon, his little legs stiffening at a hypotenuse.
“Ice-cream cone!” he cried. “Ice-cream cone, or I faint!”
“Poor Jastrow! Just listen to him! Honest, that grinding goes right through me. He hadn’t ought to be showing to-day, after the way they had to have the doctor in on him last night. He hadn’t ought to be eating that nasty glass.”
“Ain’t it awful, Mabel!”
“Yes, it’s awful, Mabel! A fellow snagging up his insides like Jastrow. I never knew a glass-eating artist in my life that lived to old age. I was showing once with a pair of glass-eating sisters, the Twins Delamar, as fine a pair of girls as ever–“
“Sure, the Delamars–I know ’em.”
“Remember the specialty they carried, stepping on a piece of plate glass and feeding each other with the grounds–“
“Sure.”
“Well, I sat up for three weeks running, with one of them girls–the red-haired one, till she died off of sorosis of the liver–“
“Sure enough–Lizzie Delamar!”
“Lida, the other one, is still carrying the act on street-fair time, but it won’t surprise me to hear of her next. That’s what’ll happen to Granite Jaw one of these days, too, if he–“
“Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw, ain’t cha? M-m-n! Yum-yum! Pretty soft!” When the Baron mouthed he became in expression Punchinello with his finger alongside his nose, his face tightening and knotting into cunning. “Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw! Yum–yum–yum!”
“Little devil! Little devil! I’ll catch you and spank you to death.”
“Yum! Yum!”
“It’s better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall.”
“Little peewee, you! Jastrow ain’t short. Them thick, strong-necked kind never look their height. That boy is five feet two, if he’s an inch. Them stocky ones is the build that make the strong kind. Looka him lift up that cannon-ball with just his left hand. B-r-r-r-r! Listen how it shakes the place when he lets its fall! Looka! Honest, it makes me sick! It’s a wonder he don’t kill himself.”
“Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.”
The day, sun-riddled, stare-riddled, sawdusty, and white with glare, slouched into the clanging, banging, electric-pianoed, electrifying Babylonia of a Coney Island Saturday night. The erupting lava of a pent-up work-a-week, odoriferous of strong foods and wilted clothing, poured hotly down that boulevard of the bourgeoise, Ocean Avenue. The slow, thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash of mustard to the frankfurter, the feather tickler in the eye, the barker to the ear, and the thick festival-flavored sawdust to the throat. By eleven o’clock the Freak Palace was a gelatinous congestion of the quickened of heart, of blood, of tongue, and of purse. The crowd stared, gaped, squirmed through itself, sweated.
By twelve o’clock, from her benchlike throne that had become a straitjacket to the back, a heaviness had set in that seemed to thicken Miss Hoag’s eyelids, the flush receding before doughiness.
A weary mountain of the cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature’s huge joke–a practical joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust companies, and a china pig about ready to burst.
“Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse,” she said across the left rail, but her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.
“Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!” said the Ossified Man, in Italian.
The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an eighteen-inch carpenter’s saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and around her.
Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water, draining it. “Thank God,” she said, “another day done!” and began getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around with a rubber band.
The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task. “This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg,” he said.
“It is that,” said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small memorandum-book.
“You!” cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. “You money-bag tied in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St. Louis World’s Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks.”
“You’re crazy with the heat,” said Miss Hoag. “What I’ve got out of this business, I’ve sweated for.”
Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. “Worth your weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!”
“If you don’t behave yourself, you little peewee, I’ll leave you to plow home through the sand alone. If it wasn’t for me playing nurse-girl to you, you’d have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave.”
“Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?”
The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew, and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the undershot jaw was plunged forward, the jowls bonily defined.
“Worth her weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Jastrow? She’s worth her weight in gold.”
Passing within reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de Ross to a high-flung torch.
“Lay off that noise,” said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to dangle him head downward. “Lay off, or I’ll drown you like a kitten!”
With an agility that could have swung him from bough to bough, the Baron de Ross somersaulted astride the rear of Jastrow the Granite Jaw’s great neck, pounding little futile fists against the bulwark of head.
“Leggo me! Leggo!”
“Gr-r-r-r! I’ll step on you and squash you like a caterpillar.”
“Don’t hurt him, Mr. Jastrow! Don’t let him fall off backwards. He is so little. Teenie’ll catch you if you fall, honey. Teenie’s here in back of you.”
With another double twist, the Baron de Ross somersaulted backward off the shoulder of his captor, landing upright in the outstretched skirts of Miss Hoag.
“Yah, yah!” he cried, dancing in the net of skirt and waggling his hands from his ears. “Yah, yah!”
The Granite Jaw smoothed down the outraged rear of his head, eyes rolling and smile terrible.
“Wow!” he said, making a false feint toward him.
The Baron, shrill with hysteria, plunged into a fold of Miss Hoag’s skirt.
“Don’t hurt him, Jastrow. He’s so awful little! Don’t play rough.”
THE BARON (_projecting his face around a fold of skirt_): Worth her weight in go-uld–go-uld!
“He’s always guying me for my saving ways, Jastrow. I tell him I ‘ain’t got no little twenty-eight-inch wife out in San Francisco sending me pin-money. Neither am I the prize little grafter of the world. I tell him he’s the littlest man and the biggest grafter in this show. Come out of there, you little devil! He thinks because I got a few hundred dollars laid by I’m a bigger freak than the one I get paid for being.”
Jastrow the Granite Jaw flung the crook of his walking-stick against his hip, leaning into it, the flanges of his nostrils widening a bit, as if scenting.
“You old mountain-top,” he said, screwing at the up-curving mustache, “who’d have thought you had that pretty a penny saved?”
“I don’t look to see myself live and die in the show business, Mr. Jastrow.”
“Now you said something, Big Tent.”
“There’s a farm out near Xenia, Ohio, where I lay up in winter, that I’m going to own for myself one of these days. I’ve seen too many in this business die right in exhibition, and the show have to chip in to bury ’em, for me not to save up against a rainy day.”
“Lay it on, Big Tent. I like your philosophy.”
“That’s me every time, Mr. Jastrow. I’m going to die in a little story-and-a-half frame house of my own with a cute little pointy roof, a potato-patch right up to my back steps, and my own white Leghorns crossin’ my own country road to get to the other side. Why, I know a Fat in this business, Aggie Lament–“
“Sure, me and the Baroness played Mexico City Carnival with Aggie Lament. Some heavy!”
“Well, that girl, in her day, was one of the biggest tips to the scale this business ever seen. What happens? All of a sudden, just like that–pneumonia! Gets up out of bed, eight weeks later, skin and bones –down to three hundred and sixty-five pounds and not a penny saved. I chipped in what I could to keep her going, but she just down and died one night. Job gone. No weight. In the exhibit business, just like any other line, you got to have a long head. A Fat’s got to look ahead for a thin day. Strong for a weak day. That’s why I wish, Mr. Jastrow, you’d cut out that glass-eating feature of yours.”
“How much you got, Airy-Fairy? Lemme double your money for you!”
“She’s worth her weight in gold.”
“Lemme double it!”
“Like fun I will. A spendthrift like you!”
“Which way you going?”
“We always go home by the beach. Shapiro made it a rule that the Bigs and Littles can’t ever show themselves on Ocean Avenue.”
“Come on, you little flea; I’ll ride you up the beach on my shoulder.”
“Oh, Mr. Jastrow, you–you going to walk home with me–and–Baron?”
“Come on was what I said.”
He mounted the Baron de Ross to his bulge of shoulder with veriest toss, Miss Hoag, in a multi-fold cape that was a merciful shroud to the bulk of her, descending from the platform. The place had emptied itself of its fantastic congress of nature’s pranks, only the grotesque print of it remaining. The painted snake-chests closed. The array of gustatory swords, each in flannelet slip-cover. The wild man’s cage, empty. The tiny velocipede of the Baron de Ross, upside down against rust. A hall of wonder here. A cave of distorted fancy. The Land of the Cow Jumped over the Moon and the Dish Ran away with the Spoon.
Outside, a moon, something bridal in its whiteness, beat down upon a kicked-up stretch of beach, the banana-skins, the pop-corn boxes, the gambados of erstwhile revelers violently printed into its sands. A platinum-colored sea undulated in.
The leaping, bounding outline of Luna Park winked out even as they emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist. There was a new breeze, spicily cool.
Miss Hoag breathed out, “Ain’t this something grand?”
“Giddy-ap!” cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of the Granite Jaw’s head. “Giddy-ap!”
They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria–as motley a threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.
“How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum’s boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession always stops there.”
“Good as the next,” said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.
“I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always call me ‘the Doc’ around exhibits. I say–but you just ought to heard yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself–“
“They had me crazy with pain.”
“You wasn’t so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at Albino, didn’t we, Baron?”
THE BARON _(impish in the moonlight)_: He fell for a cotton-top.
“He didn’t yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?”
“It’s this darn business,” said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of sand-spray with each stride. “I’m punctured up like a tire.”
“I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you’d only cut out the glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it–it’s a sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature.”
“Yeh–and cut down my act to half-pay. I’d be full of them tricks–wouldn’t I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I’d be a, sweet boob, wouldn’t I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!”
“What’s money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain’t human or freak nature to digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!”
Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:
“Gr-r-r-r-r!”
“She’s sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of ’em.”
“Better to have loved a short man
Than never to have loved atall.”
“Baron, I–I’ll spank!” “Worth her weight in gold!”
“Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?” “Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the Baron’s only tormenting me.”
“She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks.” “Sure I got a few dollars saved, and I ain’t ashamed of it. I’ve had steady work in this business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in Ohio and made me the offer, but that’s no sign I can be in it eight years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved.”
“Well, whatta you know–a big tent like you?”
“Ain’t a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain’t I–ain’t I just like any other–girl–twenty years old–ain’t I just like–other–girls–underneath all this?”
“Sure, sure!” said Mr. Jastrow. “How much you to the good, little one?”
“I’ve about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig.”
“‘Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better lemme double your money for you!”
“Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain’t you the torment, too?”
“Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as your little heart desires. ‘Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and take a drink on the strength of that! ‘Leven hundred to the good! Good night!”
“Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol’s poison. Mr. Jastrow–please–you mustn’t!”
“Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say–have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!”
“No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don’t take the Baron. The little fellow can’t stand alcohol. His baroness don’t want it. Anyways, it’s against the rules–please–“
“You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a gentleman. ‘Leven hundred to the good! Say, I’d see a lady as far as the devil on that. Good night!”
* * * * *
At Mrs. Bostum’s boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his first-floor back.
“Y’all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?”
The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted, the turmoil of little lines scattering.
“Aw!” he said. “Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!”
A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag’s glance and, suddenly gaining rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.
“I’m human, Baron. Maybe you don’t know it, but I’m human.”
“Now what did I do, Teenie?”
“It–it ain’t you, Baron; it–it ain’t anybody. It–it’s–only I just wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways–making our kind. Where do we belong–“
“Aw, you’re a great Heavy, Teenie–and it’s the Bigs and the Littles got the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How’d you like to be hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How’d you like to let ’em stick pins in you all for their ten cents’ worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a girl’s a fool to waste any heartache gettin’ stuck on him. That old boy’s going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How’d you like to chew glass because it’s big money and then drink it up so fast you’d got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor’s prescription–“
The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag’s cheeks, bouncing off to the cape.
“O God!” she said, her hand closing over the Baron’s, pressing it. “With us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What’s the good of ten million dollars to me–twenty millions? Last night when I went in to offer him help–him in the same business and that ought to be used to me–right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every time he looked at me, ‘Take her away! Take her away!'”
“Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.’s last night; he–“
‘”Take her away!’ he kept yelling. ‘Take her away!’ One of my own kind getting the horrors just to look at me!”
“You’re sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that’s what’s eating you–you’re sweet on the Granite Jaw–“
Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the silence re-echoed sharply.
“What if I am?” she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears staggering. “What if I am? What if I am?”
Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge. Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.
Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.
“Teenie! Jastrow’s dyin’ in his room! He’s yellin’ for you! For God’s sakes–quick–down in his room!”
In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.
“Teenie! For God’s sakes–quick! He’s yellin’ for you–“
“Coming, Mrs. Bostrum–coming–coming–coming!”
In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling above the Granite Jaw’s rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.
THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six months.
MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!
THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?
THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He’s in debt already to half the exhibit.
THE LANDLADY: He’s two weeks in arrears. Not that I’m pestering the poor devil now, but Gawd knows I–need–
THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?
MISS HOAG (_turning and stooping_): ‘Ain’t you got no relations or friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act? Are they friends of yours? ‘Ain’t you got no relatives, no–no friends, maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who’s he? ‘Ain’t you, Jastrow, got no relations?
The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward the wall, palm slapping out against it.
“Hell!” said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.
THE DOCTOR (_drawing down his shirt-sleeves_): I’ll have an ambulance around in twenty minutes.
MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?
THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.
THE LANDLADY (_apron up over her head_): Poor fellow! Poor handsome fellow!
MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!
THE DOCTOR (_rather tiredly_): Sorry, madam, but there is no alternative.
MISS HOAG: No, no! I’ll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?
THE BARON: Yeh. I’ll throw in a tenner myself. Don’t throw the poor devil to charity. We’ll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars for a nigger wild man, once when–
THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air, fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!
Miss HOAG: That’s me, Doc! That’s me! I’m going to fix just that for him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means and a place out in Ohio I can rent ’til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh milk! Leghorns! I’ll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means. I’ll pull him through, Doctor. I’ll pull him through!
THE BARON: Good God! Teenie–you crazy–
FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.
* * * * *
In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering of birds–the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of slant, dipped down over the window, giving the façade the expression of a coolie under peaked hat.
“Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind staggers?”
“I didn’t know it was in your eyes, honey. There–that better?”
Silence.
A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow. A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.
“That better, Jas?” Silence. “Better? That’s good! Now for the boy’s supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?”
Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.
“Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before I get ugly.”
“Oh, Jastrow honey, don’t begin that. Please, Jastrow, don’t begin that. You been so good all day, honey–“
“Get me a swig,” he repeated through set teeth. “You and a boob country quack of a doctor ain’t going to own my soul. I’ll bust up the place again. I ain’t all dead yet. Get me a swig–quick, too.”
“Jas, there ain’t none.”
“There is!”
“That’s just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine. That’s medicine, Jas; it ain’t to be took like drink. You know what the doc said last time. He ain’t responsible if you disobey. I ain’t–neither. Please, Jas!”
“I know a thing or two about the deal I’m getting around here. No quack boob is going to own my soul.”
“Ain’t it enough the way you nearly died last time, Jas? Honest, didn’t that teach you a lesson? Be good, Jas. Don’t scare poor old Teenie all alone here with you. Looka out there through the door. Ain’t it something grand? Honest, Jas, I just never get tired looking. See them low little hills out there. I always say they look like chiffon this time of evening. Don’t they? Just looka the whole fields out there, so still–like–like a old horse standing up dozing. Smell! Listen to the little birds! Ain’t we happy out here, me and my boy that’s getting well so fine?”
Then Jastrow the Granite Jaw began to whimper, half-moans engendered by weakness. “Put me out of my misery. Shoot!”
“Jas–Jas–ain’t that just an awful way for you to talk? Ain’t that just terrible to say to your poor old Big Tent?”
She smoothed out his pillow, and drew out his cot on ready casters, closer toward the open door.
“See, Jas–honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When I was a kid on my pap’s farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge, instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or something and look and look and look. There’s something about this soft kind of scenery that a person that’s born in it never gets tired of. Why, I’ve exhibited out in California right under the nose of the highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time.”
“I’m a lump–that’s what I am. Nine months of laying. I’m a lump–on a woman, too.”
“Why, Jas, Teenie’s proud to have you on–on her. ‘Ain’t we got plans for each other after–you get well? Why, half the time I’m just in heaven over that. That’s why, honey, if only you won’t let yourself get setbacks! That’s all the doctor says is between you and getting well. That’s all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go against the doctor’s orders. Last week your eating that steak–that drink you stole–ain’t you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and broke the lock? You–you mustn’t ever again, Jas, make me go against the doctor.”
“I gets crazy. Crazy with laying.”
“Just think, Jas; here I’ve drew out my last six hundred, ready to make first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it. Ain’t that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn’t be right, Jas; it would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for medicine and doctors. I don’t know what to make of you, honey, all those months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you’re getting well, the–the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don’t hinder your poor Teenie. The doctor told me, honey–honest, he did–one of them spells–from liquor could–could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way you are!”
“I’m a lump; that’s what I am.”
“You ain’t, Jas; you’re just everything in the world.”
“Sponging off a woman!”
“‘Sponging’! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I like that!”
“Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God’s sake gimme a swig!”
“Jas–Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I’m going to get me a man-nurse out here–honest I am!”
“A swig, Teenie.”
“Please, Jas–it’s only for bad spells–five drops mixed up in your medicine. That’s six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells.”
“Stingy gut!”
“Looka down there, honey–there’s old man Wyncoop’s cow broke tether again. What you bet he’s out looking for her. See her winding up the road.”
“Stingy gut!”
“You know I ain’t stingy. If the doctor didn’t forbid, I’d buy you ten bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I’m trying to do what the doctor says is best, Jas.”
“‘Best’! I know what’s best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss over and buy me the things I need is what’s best. I’m a man born to having money in his pocket. I’m none of your mollycoddles.”
“Sure you ain’t! Haven’t you got over ninety dollars under your pillow this minute? ‘Ain’t the boy got all the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it? Ain’t that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he’s going to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain’t it wonderful, Jas, never no showing for us again? God! ain’t that just wonderful?”
He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand, white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.
“Nice old Big Tent!”
“That’s the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells, your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you.”
“I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly.”
“I know, Jas–I know–anyway, you fix it, honey. I ‘ain’t got a kick coming–a–tub like me to have–you.”
She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,
“If–if not for one thing, Jas, you know–you know what? I think if a person was any happier than me, she–she’d die.”
“Let’s play I’m Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come on; let’s kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie–“
“Why don’t you ask me, Jas, except for what I’d be the happiest girl? Well, it’s this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you couldn’t see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so–so you got to look at me!”
“You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at you–that’s how used a fellow can get to anything. I’m going to square it up with you, too.”
“You mean it’s me will square it with you, Jas–you see if I don’t. Why, there’ll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness we’re going to have, Jas. I’m going to make this the kinda little home you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and the money beginning to come in. I’m even going to fix up the little trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit us. Just think, Jas–a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it’s funny, but there’s not one thing scares me about all these months on the place alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares sometimes that we–we’re back exhibiting. That’s why I want to keep open house for them that ain’t as lucky as us. Honest, Jas–I–I just can’t think it’s real, not, anyways, till we’ve paid down six hundred and–the fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side ‘fore comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I–I’ll make it square with you. You’ll never have a sorry day for it!”
“You’re all right, Big Tent,” said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly, lips twitching.
“Ain’t you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?”
“A little swig, Teenie–a little one, is all I ask.”
“No, no–please, Jastrow; don’t begin–just as I had you forgetting.”
“It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack country boob does. I’m a freak, I am–a prize concession that has to be treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I’m a freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there’s nothing like a swig for strength.”
“Not for you! It’s poison, Jas, so much poison! Don’t you remember what they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch out–just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to have. Wouldn’t I give it to you otherwise–wouldn’t I?”
“Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!”
“No, no, Jas! No, no, no!”
Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.
“Gimme!” he said. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it now–smash up the place! Gimme! You’re getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy. Gimme–you hear–gimme!”
“Jas–for God’s sakes–no–no!”
“Gimme! By God! you hear–gimme!” There was a wrenching movement of his body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something glittering, something steel.
“Now,” he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth–“now gimme, or by God–“
“Jas–Jas–for God’s sake have you gone crazy? Where’d you get that gun? Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning–over to my trunk for my watch-dog? Gimme that gun–Jas! You–you’re crazy–Jas!”
“You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing pointing? Well, gimme quick.”
“Jas–“
“Don’t ‘Jas’ me. I’m ugly this time, and when I’m ugly _I’m ugly!_”
“All right! All right! Only, for God’s sakes, Jas, don’t get out of bed, don’t get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I’ll get it. Wait, Jastrow; it’s all right, you’re all right. I’ll get it. See, Teenie’s going. Wait–wait–Teenie’s going–“
She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.
“Jas honey, won’t you please–“
“Gimme, was what I said–gimme and quick!”
Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.
She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.
“More like it,” he said, running his tongue around his mouth; “more like it.”
“Jas–Jas, what have you done?”
“Great stuff! Great stuff!” He kept repeating.
“If–if you wasn’t so sick, honey–I don’t know what I’d do after such a terrible thing like this–you acting like this–so terrible–God! I–I’m all trembling.”
“Great stuff!” he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting her. “Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!”
“Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is awful! Try to sleep. If only you don’t get a spell–Sleep–please!”
“You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round–he’s the one; he’s the one!”
“Yes–yes, honey. Try to sleep!”
“I wanna dream I’m Rockefeller. If there’s one thing I want to dream, it’s Rockefeller.”
“Not now–not now–“
“Lemme go to sleep like a king.”
“Yes, honey.”
“Like a king,” I said.
She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.
“There, honey. Go to sleep now–like a king.”
He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring of lamplight.
“Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow–oh, wow! If Sid could only see me now!”
“He can, honey–he can. Go to sleep. ‘Sh-h-h-h!'”
“Slide ’em under–slide ’em under–Rockefeller.”
She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over, cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.
“Jas!”
“Huh?”
“Ain’t you all right? You’re breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard. It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey–for God’s sake–quit!”
Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so much as cloud.
At nine o’clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door following almost immediately.
“Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it’s too late! It’s all over, Doctor–Doctor–it’s all over!” Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows from an uneven wick.
“You’re the Fat, ain’t you? The one that’s keeping him?”
“What–what–“
“So you’re the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy not to get lost in this world. Ain’t it like him to the T to pick a good-natured Fat?”
There entered into Miss Hoag’s front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World’s Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a cluster of sister baubles.
“If it ain’t Will to the T! Pickin’ hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?”
“Who–Whatta you–want?”
“We was playin’ the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?”
“He–Who–You–“
“You’re one of them good-natured simps, ain’t you? So was I, dearie. It don’t pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell him she was fool enough to come because he’s flat on his back.”
“I–That’s him–Jastrow–there–O my God–that’s him laying there, miss! Who are you? Sid–I thought–I never knew–Who are you? I thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here– I–O God!”
There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop the parrot.
“My God!” she said. “Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show. God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin’-glass I broke in Dayton. I–I musta!”
“It come so sudden, miss. It’s a wonder I didn’t die, too, right on the spot. I was standing here and–“
Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief, her face lifting to cry.