Just Around the Corner Part 20

Youth has rebound like a rubber ball. Batted up against the back fence, she bounces back into the heart of a rose-bush or into the carefully weeded, radishless radish-bed of the kitchen garden.

Mrs. Trimp rose from the couch-bed davenport of the Bopp sitting-dining-sleeping-room, with something of the old lamps burning in her eyes and a full-lipped mouth to which clung the memory of smiles.

Even Psyche, abandoned by love, smiled a specious smile when she posed for the scalpel.

Eddie Bopp reached out a protective arm and drew Goldie by the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt-waist down to the couch-bed davenport again.

"Take it easy there, Goldie. Don't get yourself all excited again."

"But it's just like you say, Eddie--I got the law on my side. I got him on the grounds of cruelty if--if I show nothin' but--but this cheek."

"Sure, you have, Goldie; but you just sit quiet. Addie, come in here and make Goldie behave her little self."

"I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!"

Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk.

"You poor little kid!"

Addie hobbled in from the kitchen.

"I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too."

G.o.d alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fas.h.i.+oned her in clay and water, even as you and me--from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes.

He fas.h.i.+oned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender--broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit s.h.i.+ning through--Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was suns.h.i.+ne on dew.

"You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie.

You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?"

"Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!"

"Eat, Goldie--gwan."

"I ain't hungry--honest!"

"Quit standing over her, Eddie; you make her nervous. Let me feed you, Goldie."

"Gee! Ain't you swell to me!" Ready tears sprang to her eyes.

"Like you ain't my old chum, Goldie! It don't seem so long since we were working in the same office and going to Recreation Pier dances together, does it?"

"Addie! Addie!"

"Do you remember how you and me and Ed and Charley Snuggs used to walk up and down Ninth Avenue summer evenings eating ice-cream cones?"

"Do I? Oh, Addie, do I?"

"I'm glad we had them ice-cream days, Goldie. They're melted, but the flavor ain't all gone." Addie's face was large and white and calm-featured, like a Botticelli head.

"You two girls sure was cut-ups! Remember the night Addie first introduced us, Goldie? You came over to call for her, and us three went to the wax-works show on Twenty-third Street. Lordy, how we cut up!"

"And I started to ask the wax policeman if we was allowed to go past the rail!" They laughed low in their throats, as if they feared to raise an echo in a vale of tears. "It's like old times for me to be staying all night with you again, Addie. It's been so long! He--he used to get mad like anything if I wanted to see any of the old crowd. He knew they didn't know any good of him. He was always for the sporty, all-night bunch."

"Poor kid!"

"Don't get her to talking about it again, Eddie; it gets her all excited."

"He could have turned me against my own mother, I was that crazy over him."

"That," said Addie, softly, "was _love_! And only women can love like that; and women who do love like that are cursed--and blessed."

"I'm out of it now, Addie. You won't never send me back to him--you won't ever?"

"There now, dearie, you're gettin' worked up again. Ain't you right here, safe with us?"

"That night at Hinkey's was the worst, Goldie," said Eddie. "It makes my blood boil! Why didn't you quit then; why?"

"I ain't told you all, neither, Eddie. One night he came home about two o'clock, and I had been--"

"Just quit thinking and talking about him, Goldie. You're right here, safe with me and Eddie; and he's going to get you a job when you're feeling stronger. And then, when you're free--when you're free--"

Addie regarded her brother with the tender aura of a smile on her lips and a tender implication in her eyes that scurried like a frightened mouse back into its hole. Eddie flamed red; and his ears, by a curious physiological process, seemed to take fire and contemplate instant flight from his head.

"Oh, look, Ad. We got to get a new back for your chair. The stuffin's all poking through the velvet."

"So it is, Eddie. It's a good thing you got your raise, with all these new-fangled dangles we need."

"To-night's his lodge night. He never came home till three--till three o'clock, lodge nights."

"There you go, Goldie--back on the subject, makin' yourself sick."

"Gee!"

"What's the matter, Goldie?"

"To-night's his lodge. I could go now and get my things while he ain't there--couldn't I?"

"Swell! I'll take you, Goldie, and wait outside for you."

"Eddie, can't you see she ain't in any condition to go running round nights? There's plenty time yet, Goldie. You can wear my s.h.i.+rt-waists and things. Wait till--"

"I got to get it over with, Addie; and daytimes Eddie's working, and I'd have to go alone. I--I don't want to go alone."

"Sure; she can't go alone, Addie; and she's got to have her things."

Eddie was on his feet and beside Goldie's palpitating figure, as though he would lay his heart, a living stepping-stone, at her feet.