Just Around the Corner Part 53

"Yeh; and a dame in Seventieth Street gimme a quarter and hugged the daylights out of me till my bra.s.s b.u.t.tons made holes in me and cried brineys all over the telegram, and made me read it out loud twice, once for each ear: 'Unhurt, Sweetheart, and homeward bound--Bill.' Can you beat it? Five cents a word!"

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

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

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

"Jimmie?"

"Huh?"

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

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

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

"Surest thing you know! Say, these are some sandwiches! You must 'a'

struck pay-dirt in your sardine-mine, ma."

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

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

"Jimmie, my boy!"

"h.e.l.lo, ma!"

"Ain't your cheeks cold, though, Jimmie? It's right sharp out, ain't it?

And Essie in her thin coat! You--you're a little late to-night, ain't you, Jimmie?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You look good to me."

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

"You do."

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

"Yes, yes; I know, ma--but didn't old man Gibbs say not to get excited?

Lay back and don't talk, ma. I can feel your heart beatin' way down in your hands."

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

"Fine chance."

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

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

"Jimmie, she promised sure to-night."

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

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

"Them girl ushers down there is too lively a bunch for her, ma. Us.h.i.+n'

in a theayter is next to bein' in the chorus--only--"

"Jimmie!"

"Sure it is--only it ain't so good one way, and it ain't so bad another.

This new-fangled girl us.h.i.+n' gets my goat, anyways. It ain't doin' her any good."

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

"Sure it ain't!"

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