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Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




"I mean it."

An electric bell grilled through his words. Miss Barnet sprang reflexly
from the harness of an eight-hour day.

"Aw, looka, and I wanted to sneak up before closing and get Dee Dee to
snip me two yards of red satin, and she won't cut an inch after the
bell. Ain't that luck for you? Ain't that luck?"

Her lips drew to a pout.

"Lemme get it for you, Miss Sadie. I know a girl up in the ribbons--"

"No, no, Mr. Meltzer. I--I got to charge it to Dee Dee, and, anyways,
she gets mad like anything if I keep her waiting. I gotta go. 'Night,
Mr. Meltzer! 'Night!"

She was off through the maze of the emptying store, in the very act of
pinning on her little hat with its jaunty imitation fur pompon, and he
breathed in as she passed, as if of the perfume of her personality.

At the ribbon counter on the main floor the last of a streamlet of
outgoing women detached herself from the file as Miss Barnet ascended
the staircase.

"Hurry up, Sadie."

"Dee Dee! How'd you girls up here get on your duds so soon? I thought
maybe if I'd hurry upstairs you--you'd find time to cut me a two-yard
piece of three-inch red satin for my hat, Dee Dee--to-morrow being
Sunday. Two yards, Dee Dee, and that'll make two-sixty-nine I owe you.
Aw, Dee Dee, it won't take a minute, to-morrow Sunday and all! Aw,
Dee Dee!"

Miss Barnet slid ingratiating fingers into the curve of the older
woman's arm; her voice was smooth as salve.

"Aw, Dee Dee, who ever heard of wearing fur on a hat in April? I gotta
stick a red bow on my last summer's sailor, Dee Dee."

Miss Edith Worte stiffened so that the muscles sprang out in the crook
of her arm and the cords in her long, yellowing neck. Years had dried on
her face, leaving ravages, and through her high-power spectacles her
pale eyes might have been staring through film and straining to see.

"Please, Dee Dee!"

Miss Barnet held backward, a little singsong note of appeal running
through her voice.

Miss Worte jerked forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of
cold dish-water, showed through it. Dusk in the city comes sadly,
crowding into narrow streets and riddled with an immediate quick-shot of
electric bulbs.

"'Ain't you got no sense a-tall? 'Ain't you got no sense in that curly
head of yourn but ruination notions?"

"Aw, Dee Dee!"

They were in the flood tide which bursts through the dam at six o'clock
like a human torrent flooding the streets, then spreading, thinning, and
finally seeping into homes, hall bedrooms, and Harlem flats.

Miss Edith Worte turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and
against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts around
her thin legs.

"Watch out, Dee Dee! Step down; there's a curb."

"I don't need you. It's lots you care if I go blind on the spot."

"Dee Dee!"

"God! if I didn't have nothing to worry me but red ribbons! I told the
doctor to-day while he was putting the drops in my eyes, that if he'd
let me go blind I--I--"

"Now, now, Dee Dee! Ain't you seeing better these last few days?"

"If you had heard what the doctor told me to-day when he put the drops
in my eyes you'd have something to think about besides red ribbon,
alrighty."

"I forgot, Dee Dee, to-day was your eye-doctor day. He's always scarin'
you up. Just don't pay no attention. I forgot it was your day."

"Sure you forgot. But you won't forget if I wake up alone in the dark
some day."

"Dee Dee!"

"You won't forget then. You won't forget to nag me even then for duds to
go automobiling with fly men that can't bring you no good."

"Dee Dee, I 'ain't been but one night this week. I been saving up all
my nights for--for to-night."

"To-night. Say, I can't keep you from going to the devil on skates if--"

"It's only the second time this week, Dee Dee, and I--I promised. He'll
have the limousine top off to-night--and feel, it is just like summer. A
girl's gotta have a little something once in a while."

"What do I gotta have? What do I gotta have but slave and work?"

"It's different with you, Dee Dee. You're older even than my mamma was,
and didn't you say when you and her was girls together there wasn't a
livelier two sisters? Now didn't you, Dee Dee?"

"In a respectable way, yes. But there wasn't the oily-mouthed,
bald-headed divorced man alive, with little rat eyes and ugly lips, who
could have took me or your mamma out auto-riding before or after dark.
We was working-girls, too, but there wasn't a man didn't take off his
hat to us, even if he was bald-headed and it was twenty below zero."

"Aw!"

"Yes, 'aw'! You keep running around with the kind of men that don't look
at a girl unless she's served up with rum-sauce and see where it lands
you. Just keep running if you want to, but my money don't buy you no red
ribbons to help to drive you to the devil!"

"The way you keep fussing at me, when I don't even go to dances like the
other girls! I--sometimes I just wish I was dead. The way I got to
watch the clock like it was a taximeter the whole time I'm out
anywheres. It's the limit. Even Max Meltzer gimme the laugh to-day."

"You'd never hear me say watch the clock if you'd keep company with a
boy like Max Meltzer. A straight, clean boy with honest intentions by a
girl lookin' right out of his face. You let a boy like Max Meltzer begin
to keep steady with you and see what I say. You don't see no yellow
streak in his face; he's as white as the goods he sells."

"I know. I know. You think now because he's going to be made buyer for
the white goods in September he's the whole show. Gee! nowadays that
ain't so muchy much for a fellow to be."

"No, I think the kind of fellows that fresh Mamie Grant gets you
acquainted with are muchy much. I'm strong for the old rat-eyed sports
like Jerry Beck, that 'ain't got a honest thought in his head. I bet he
gives you the creeps, too, only you're the kind of a girl, God help you,
that's so crazy for luxury you could forget the devil had horns if he
hid 'em under a automobile cap."

"Sure I am. I 'ain't seen nothing but slaving and drudging and pinching
all my life, while other girls are strutting the Avenue in their furs
and sleeping mornings as long as they want under eider-down quilts.
Sure, when a man like Jerry Beck comes along with a carriage-check
instead of a Subway-ticket I can thaw up to him like a water-ice, and I
ain't ashamed of it, neither."

They turned into a narrow aisle of street lined with unbroken rows of
steep, narrow-faced houses. Miss Worte withdrew her arm sharply and
plunged ahead, her lips wry and on the verge of tremoling.

"When a girl gets twenty, like you, it ain't none of my put-in no more.
Only I hope to God your mother up there is witness that if ever a woman
slaved to keep a girl straight and done her duty by her it was me. That
man 'ain't got no good intentions by--"

"Oh, ain't you--ain't you a mean-thinking thing, ain't you? What kind of
a girl do you think I am? If he didn't have the right intentions by me
do you think--"

"Oh, I guess he'll marry you if he can't get you no other way. Them kind
always do if they can't help themselves. A divorced old guy like him,
with a couple of kids and his mean little eyes, knows he's got to pay up
if he wants a young girl like you. Oh, I--Ouch--oh--oh!"

"Dee Dee, take my arm. That was only an ashcan you bumped into. It's the
drops he puts in your eyes makes 'em so bad to-night, I guess. Go on,
take my arm, Dee Dee. Here we are home. Lemme lead you up-stairs. It's
nothing but the drops, Dee Dee."

They turned in and up and through a foggy length of long hallway. Spring
had not entered here. At the top of a second flight of stairs a slavey
sat back on her heels and twisted a dribble of gray water from her cloth
into her bucket. At the last and third landing an empty coal-scuttle
stood just outside a door as if nosing for entrance.

"Watch out, Dee Dee, the scuttle. Lemme go in first. Gee! it's cold
indoors and warm out, ain't it? Wait till I light up. There!"

"Lemme alone. I can see."

An immemorial federation of landladies has combined against Hestia to
preserve the musty traditions of the furnished room. Love in a cottage
is fostered by subdivision promoters and practised by commuters on a
five-hundred-dollars-down, monthly-payment basis. Marble halls have been
celebrated in song, but the furnished room we have with us always at
three cents per agate line.

You with your feet on your library fender, stupefied with contentment
and your soles scorching, your heart is not black; it is only fat. How
can it know the lean formality of the furnished room? Your little
stenographer, who must wear a smile and fluted collars on eight dollars
a week, knows it; the book agent at your door, who earns eighteen cents
on each Life of Lincoln, knows it. Chambermaids know it when they knock
thrice and only the faint and nauseous fumes of escaping gas answer them
through the plugged keyhole. Coroners know it.

Sadie Barnet and Edith Worte knew it, too, and put out a hand here and
there to allay it. A comforting spread of gay chintz covered the sag in
their white iron bed; a photograph or two stuck upright between the
dresser mirror and its frame, and tacked full flare against the wall was
a Japanese fan, autographed many times over with the gay personnel of
the Titanic Store's annual picnic.

"Gee! Dee Dee, six-twenty already! I got to hurry. Unhook me while I
sew in this ruching."

"Going for supper?"

"Yeh. He invited me. This is cottage-pudding night; tell old lady Finch
when I ain't home for supper you got two desserts coming to you."

"I don't want no supper."

"Aw, now, Dee Dee!"

Miss Worte dropped her dark cape from her shoulders, hung it with her
hat on a door peg, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

"God! my feet!"

"Soak 'em."

Miss Barnet peeled off her shirt-waist. Her bosom, strong and _flat_ as
a boy's, rose white from her cheaply dainty under-bodice; at her
shoulders the flesh began to deepen, and her arms were round and full
of curves.

"Here, Dee Dee, I'm so nervous when I hurry. You sew in this ruche; you
got time before the supper-bell. See, right along the edge like that."

Miss Worte aimed for the eye of the needle, moistening the end of the
thread with her tongue and her fluttering fingers close to her eyes.

"God! I--I just 'ain't got the eyes no more. I can't see, Sadie; I can't
find the needle."

Sadie Barnet paused in the act of brushing out the cloud of her dark
hair, and with a strong young gesture ran the thread through the needle,
knotting its end with a quirk of thumb and forefinger.

"It's the drops, Dee Dee, and this gaslight, all blurry from the
curling-iron in the flame, makes you see bad."

Miss Worte nodded and closed her eyes as if she would press back the
tears and let them drip inward.

"Yeh, I know. I know."

"Sure! Here, lemme do it, Dee Dee. I won't stay out late, dearie, if
your eyes are bad. We're only going out for a little spin."

Miss Worte lay back on the chintz bedspread and turned her face to the
wall.

"I should worry if you come home or if you don't--all the comfort you
are to me."

"You say that to me many more times and you watch and see what I do; you
watch and see."

"The sooner the better."

In the act of fluting the soft ruche about her neck, so that her fresh
little face rose like a bud from its calyx, Miss Barnet turned to the
full length of back which faced her from the bed.

"That's just the way I feel about it--the sooner the better."

"Then we think alike."

"You 'ain't been such a holy saint to me that I got to pay up to you for
it all my life."

"That's the thanks I get."

"You only raised me because you had to. I been working for my own living
ever since I was so little I had to He to the inspectors about my age."

"Except what you begged out of my wages."

"I been as much to you as you been to me and--and I don't have to stand
this no longer. Sure I can get out and--and the sooner the better. I'm
sick of getting down on my knees to you every time I wanna squeeze a
little good time out of life. I'm tired paying up for the few dollars
you gimme out of your envelop. If I had any sense I--I wouldn't never
take it from you, nohow, the way you throw it up to me all the time. The
sooner the better is what I say, too; the sooner the better."

"That's the thanks I get; that's the--"

"Aw, I know all that line of talk by heart, so you don't need to ram it
down me. You gotta quit insinuating about my ways to me. I'm as straight
as you are and--"

"You--you--take off that ivory-hand breast-pin; that ain't yours."

"Sure I'll take it off, and this ruche you gimme the money to buy, and
this red bracelet you gimme, and--and every old thing you ever gimme.
Sure I'll take 'em all off. I wish I could take off these gray-top shoes
you paid a dollar toward, and I would, too, if I didn't have to go
barefoot. It's the last time I borrow from--"

"Aw, you commenced that line of talk when you was ten."

"I mean it."

"Well, if you do, take off them gloves that I bought for myself and you
begged right off my hands. Just take 'em off and go barehanded with your
little-headed friend; maybe he can buy--"

"You--Oh, I--I wish I was dead! I--I'll go barehanded to a snowball
feast rather than wear your duds. There's your old gloves--there!"

Tears were streaming and leaving their ravages on the smooth surface of
her cheeks.

"I just wish I--I was dead."

"Aw, no, you don't! There's him now, with a horn on his auto that makes
a noise like the devil yelling! There's your little rat-eyed, low-lived
fellow, now. You don't wish you was dead now, do you? Go to him and his
two divorces and his little roundhead. That's where you belong; that's
where girls on the road to the devil belong--with them kind. There he is
now, waiting to ride you to the devil. He don't need to honk-honk so
loud; he knows you're ready and waiting for him."

Miss Barnet fastened on her little hat with fingers that fumbled.

"Gimme--the key."

"Aw, no, you don't. When you come home tonight you knock; no more
tiptoe, night-key business like last time. I knew you was lying to me
about the clock."

"You gimme that key. I don't want you to have to get up, with all your
kicking, to open the door for me. You gimme the key."

"If you wanna get in this room when you come home to-night, you knock
like any self-respecting girl ain't afraid to do."

"You--oh--you!" With a shivering intake of breath Miss Barnet flung wide
the door, slamming it after her until the windows and the blue-glass
vase on the mantelpiece and Miss Worte, stretched full length on the
bed, shivered.

Two flights down she flung open the front door. There came from the
curb the bleat of a siren, wild for speed.

Stars had come out, a fine powdering of them, and the moist evening
atmosphere was sweet, even heavy. She stood for a moment in the
embrasure of the door, scenting.

"Do I need my heavy coat, Jerry?"

The dim figure in the tonneau, with his arms flung out their length
across the back of the seat, moved from the center to the side.

"No, you don't. Hurry up! I'll keep you warm if you need a coat. Climb
in here right next to me, Peachy. Gimme that robe from the front
there, George.

"Now didn't I say I was going to keep you warm? Quit your squirming,
Touchy. I won't bite. Ready, George. Up to the Palisade Inn, and let out
some miles there."

"Gee! Jerry, you got the limousine top off. Ain't this swell for
summer?"

Mr. Jerome Beck settled back in the roomy embrasure of the seat and
exhaled loudly, his shoulder and shoe touching hers.

She settled herself out of their range.

"Now, now, snuggle up a little, Peachy."

She shifted back to her first position.

"That's better."

"Ain't it a swell night?"

"Now we're comfy--eh?"

They were nosing through a snarl of traffic and over streets wet and
slimy with thaw. Men with overcoats flung over their arms side-stepped
the snout of the car. Delicatessen and candy-shop doors stood wide
open. Children shrilled in the grim shadows of thousand-tenant
tenement-houses.

"Well, Peachy, how are you? Peachy is just the name for you, eh? 'Cause
I'd like to take a bite right out of you--eh, Peachy? How are you?"

"Fine and--and dandy."

"Look at me."

"Aw!"

"Look at me, I say, you pretty little peach, with them devilish black
eyes of yours and them lips that's got a cherry on 'em."

She met his gaze with an uncertain smile trembling on her lips.

"Honest, you're the limit."

"What's your eyes red for?"

"They--they ain't."

"Cryin'?"

"Like fun."

"You know what I'd do if I thought you'd been crying? I'd just kiss them
tears right away."

"Yes, you would _not_."

"Little devil!"

"Quit calling me that." But she colored as if his tribute had been a
sheath of lilies.

They veered a corner sharply, skidding on the wet asphalt and all but
grazing the rear wheels of a recreant taxicab.

"Gad, George! you black devil you, why don't you watch out what you're
doing?"

"But, suh, I--"

"None of your black back-talk."

"Jerry!" She was shivering, and a veil of tears formed over her hot,
mortified eyes. "Gee! what are you made of? You seen he couldn't help it
when that taxi turned into us so sudden."

He relaxed against her. "Aw, did I scare the little Peachy? That's the
way they gotta be handled. I ain't ready by a long shot to let a black
devil spill my brains."

"'Shh-h. He couldn't--"

"Sure he could, if he watched. He's a bargain I picked up cheap,
anyways, 'cause he's lame and can't hold down heavy work. And bargains
don't always pay. But I'll break his black back for him if--Aw, now,
now, did I scare the little peach? Gee! I couldn't do nothing but kill
_you_ with kindness if you was driving for me. I'd just let you run me
right off this road into the Hudson Ocean if you was driving for me."

They were out toward the frayed edge of the city, where great stretches
of sign-plastered vacant lots began to yawn between isolated patches of
buildings and the river ran close enough alongside of them to reflect
their leftward lights. She smiled, but as if her lips were bruised.

"It ain't none of my put-in, but he couldn't help it, and I hate for you
to yell at anybody like that, Jerry."

"Aw, aw, did I scare the little Peachy? Watch me show the little Tootsie
how nice I can be when I want to--Aw--aw!"

"Quit."

She blinked back the ever-recurring tears.

"All tired out, too; all tired out. Wait till you see what I'm going to
buy you to-night. A great big beefsteak with mushrooms as big as dollars
and piping-hot German fried potatoes and onions. M-m-m-m! And more
bubbles than you can wink your eye at. Aw--aw, such poor cold little
hands, and no gloves for such cold little hands! Here, lemme warm 'em.
Wouldn't I just love to wrap a little Peachy like you up in a great big
fur coat and put them little cold hands in a great big muff and hang
some great big headlight earrings in them little bittsie ears. Wouldn't
I, though. M-m-m-m! Poor cold little hands!"

Her wraith of a smile dissolved in a spurt of hot tears which flowed
over her words.

"Gee! Ain't I the nut to--to cry? I--I'll be all right in a minute."

"I knew when I seen them red eyes the little Peachy wasn't up to snuff,
and her cute little devilishlike ways. What's hurting you, Tootsie? Been
bounced? You should worry. I'm going to steal you out of that cellar,
anyways. Been bounced?"

"N-no."

"The old hag 'ain't been making it hot for you, has she?"

"Sh-she--"

"Gad! that old hag gets my fur up. I had a mother-in-law once tried them
tricks on me till I learned her they wouldn't work. But the old hag
of yourn--"

"It's her eyes; the doctor must have scared her up again to-day. When
she gets scared like that about 'em she acts up so, honest, sometimes
I--I just wish I was dead. She don't think a girl oughtta have no life."

"Forget it. Just you wait. She's going to wake up some morning soon and
find a little surprise party for herself. I know just how to handle an
old bird like her."

"Sometimes she's just so good to me, and then again, when she gets sore
like to-night, and with her nagging and fussing at me, I don't care if
she is my aunt, I just _hate_ her."

"We're going to give her a little surprise party." Beneath the lap robe
his hand slid toward hers. She could feel the movement of the arm that
directed it and her own shrank away.

"But ain't I the limit, Jerry, airing my troubles to you, like you was a
policeman."

"Now, now--"

"Quit! Leggo my hand."

They were spinning noiselessly along a road that curved for the moment
away from the river into the velvet shadows of trees. He leaned forward
suddenly, enveloping her.

"I got it. Why don't you lemme kidnap you, kiddo?"

"What--"

"Lemme kidnap you to-night and give the old hag the surprise of her life
when she wakes up and finds you stolen. I'm some little kidnapper when
it comes to kidnapping, I am, kiddo. Say, wouldn't I like to take you
riding all wrapped up in a fur coat with nothing but your cute little
face sticking out."

"Aw, you're just fooling me."

"Fooling! Lemme prove it, to-night. Lemme kidnap you this very night.
I--"

She withdrew stiff-backed against his embrace.

"Is--is that what you mean by--by kidnapping me?"

"Sure. There ain't nothing I'd rather do. Are you on, Peaches? A
sensible little queen like you knows which side her bread is buttered
on. There ain't nothing I want more than to see you all bundled up in a
fur coat with--headlights in your little bittsie pink ears."

She sprang the width of the seat from him.

"You--What kind of a girl do you think I am? O God! What kind of a girl
does he think I am? Take me home--take me--What kind of a girl do you
think I am?"

He leaned toward her with a quick readjustment of tone.

"Just what I said, Peachy. What I meant was I'd marry you to-night if we
could get a license. I'd just kidnap you to-night if--if we could
get one."

"You--you didn't mean that."

"Sure I did, Peachy. Say, with a little girl of my own I ain't one of
them guys that you think I am. Ain't you ashamed of yourself,
Peachy--now ain't you?"

The color flowed back into her face and her lips parted.

"Jerry--Only a girl like me's got to be careful--that was all I meant,
Jerry. Jerry!"

He scooped her in his short arms and kissed her lips, with her small
face crumpled up against his shoulder, and she lay quiescent enough in
his embrace. Wind sang in her ears as they rushed swiftly and surely
along the oiled road, but the two small fists she pressed against his
coat lapels did not relax.

"Aw, now, Peachy, you mustn't treat a fellow cold no more! Ain't I going
to marry you? Ain't I going to set you up right in my house out in
Newton Heights? Ain't I going to give you a swell ten-room house? Ain't
you going to live right in the house with my girl, and ain't she going
to have you for a little stepmother?"

"Jerry, the--the little girl. I wonder if she wants--"

"Sure she does. Her mother gets her every other month. I'd let her go
for good if you don't want her, except it would do her mother too much
good. The courts give her to me every other month and I'll have her down
to the last minute of the last hour or bust."

"Jerry!"

"That's what I gotta keep up the house out there for. The court says I
gotta give her a home, and that's why I want a little queen like you in
it. Gad! Won't her mother throw a red-headed fit when she sees the
little queen I picked! Gad!"

"Oh, Jerry, her your first wife and all! Won't it seem funny my going in
her house and--and living with her kid."

"Funny nothing. Cloonan won't think it's funny when I tell her she's
finished running my house for me. Funny nothing. To-morrow's Sunday and
I'm going to take you out in the afternoon and show you the place, and
Monday, instead of going to your bargain bin, we're going down for a
license, and you kiss the old hag good-by for me, too. Eh, how's that
for one day's work?"

"Gee! and--and--Monday the spring opening and me not there! Jerry, I--I
can't get over me being a lady in my own house. Me! Me that hates
ugliness and ugly clothes and ugly living so. Me that hates street-cars
and always even hated boat excursions 'cause they was poor folks'
pleasures. Me a lady in my own house. Oh, Jerry!"

She quivered in his arms and he kissed her again with his moist lips
pressed flat against hers.

"Ten rooms, Peachy--that's the way I do things."

They were curving up a gravel way, and through the lacy foliage of
spring lights gleamed, and there came the remoter strains of
syncopated music.

She sat up and brushed back her hair.

"Is this the place?"

"Right-o! Now for that steak smothered in mushrooms, and, gad! I could
manage a sweetbread salad on the side if you asked me right hard."

They drew up in the flood-light of the entrance.

"'Ain't I told you not to open the door for me, George? I don't need no
black hand reaching back here to turn the handle for me. That don't make
up for bad driving. Black hands off."

"Jerry!"

They alighted with an uncramping and unbending of limbs.

"How'd some Lynnhavens taste to you for a starter, Peachy?"

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