Just Around the Corner Part 61

"For Gawd's sakes, she'll hear you, Jimmie!"

"You devil, you! You've killed her, I tell you! I've been holdin' her in there for two hours, with the sweat standing out on her like water--you--"

"Oh, Gawd! Jimmie, lemme run for old man Gibbs; lemme--"

"Oh no, you don't! Lizzie Marks down-stairs is gone for him--but that ain't goin' to help none; what she wants is _you_--you and your low-down sneaking friend; and she's goin' to have him, too."

"He's gone, Jimmie. What--"

"You can't come home here to-night without him--you can't! You better run after him, and run after him quick. You can't come home here to-night without him, I tell you! Whatta you going to do about it--huh?

Whatta you going to do? Quick! What?"

She trembled so she grasped the back of a chair for support, and tears ricocheted down her cheeks.

"I can't, Jimmie! He's gone by now; he's gone by now--out of sight. I can't! Please, Jimmie! I'll tell her! I'll tell her! Don't--don't you dare come near me! I'll go, Jimmie--I'll go. 'Sh-h-h!"

"You gotta get him--you can't come here to-night without him. I ain't goin' to stand for her not seeing him to-night. I--I don't care how you get him, but you ain't going to kill her! You gotta get him, or I'll--"

"Jimmie--'sh-h-h!"

"Jimmie, tell him it ain't like me to give out like this. Tell--"

"Yes, ma."

"Yes, ma--we're comin'. Joe's waitin' down at the door. I'll run down and bring him up; he--he's so bashful. In a minute, ma darlin'."

She flung open the door and fled, racing down two flights of stairs, with her steps clattering after her in an avalanche, and out into a quiet street, which sprung echoes of her flying feet.

After midnight every pedestrian becomes a simulacrum, wrapped in a black domino of mystery and a starry ephod of romance. A homeward-bound pedestrian is a faun in evening dress. Fat-and-forty leans from her window to hurtle a can at a night-yelling cat and becomes a demoiselle leaning out from the golden bar of Heaven.

In the insp.i.s.sated gloom of the street occasional silhouettes hurried in silent haste; and a block ahead of her, just emerging into a string of shop lights, she could distinguish the uneven-shouldered outline of Joe Ullman and the unmistakable silhouette of his slightly askew hat.

She sobbed in her throat and made a cup of her hands to halloo; but her voice would not come, and she ran faster.

A policeman glanced after her and struck asphalt. A dog yapped at her tall heels. Even as she sped, her face upturned and her mouth dry and open, the figure swerved suddenly into a red-lighted doorway with a crescent burning above it; and, with her eyes on that Mecca, she pulled at her strength and gathered more speed.

The crescent grew in size and redness, and its lettering sprang out; and suddenly she stopped, as suddenly as an engine jerking up before a washout.

CRESCENT POOL AND BILLIARD ROOM-- OPEN ALL NIGHT

And her heart folded inward like the petals of a moonflower.

Stretched to the limit of their resilience, the nerves act reflexly. The merest second of incert.i.tude, and then automatically she swung about, turned her blood-driven face toward the place from whence she came and groped her way homeward as Polymestor must have groped after being blinded in the presence of Hecuba.

Tears hot from the geyser of shame and pain magnified her eyes like high-power spectacle-lenses; and when she reached the dim entrance of the cliff dwelling she called home an edge of ice stiffened round her heart and her feet would not enter.

A silhouette lurched round a black corner and zigzagged toward her, and she held herself flat as a lath against the building until it and its drunken song had lurched round another corner; a couple hurried past with interlinked arms; their laughter light as foam. More silhouettes--a flat-chested woman, who wore her shame with the conscious speciousness of a prisoner promenading in his stripes; a loutish fellow, who whistled as he hurried and vaulted up the steps of the Electric Inst.i.tute three steps at a bound; an old man with an outline like a crooked finger; a shawled woman; a cab lined with vague faces, and streamers of laughter floating back from it; and, standing darkly against the cold wall, Essie, with the tears drying on her cheeks, and her whole being suddenly galvanized by a new thought.

A momentary lull in the drippy streamlet of pedestrians; she leaned out into the darkness and peered up, then down the aisle of street. A shadow came gliding toward her, and she stepped forward; but when the street-lamp fell on the cold eyes and cuttlefish stare she huddled back into her corner until the steps had receded like the stick-taps of a blind man.

Two women in the professional garb of nurses twinkled past, twitting each to each like sparrows; a man whose face was narrow and dark, bespeaking in his ancestry a Latin breed, kept close to the shadow of the buildings; and, with her finger-nails cutting her palms, she stepped out from her lair directly in his path and clasped her hands tighter to keep them from trembling.

"You--please!"

He glanced down at her yellowish face, with the daubed-on red standing out frankly, tossed her a sneer and a foreign expression, and brushed by. She darted back as though he had struck at her, and panic closed her in.

A young giant, tall as a Scandinavian out of Valhalla, with wide shoulders, a wide stride, and heavy-soled, laced-to-the-knee boots that clattered loudly, ran up the steps of the Electric Inst.i.tute, and she flashed across the sidewalk, her arm reaching out.

"You--please!"

He paused, with the street lamp full on his smiling mouth and wide-apart, smiling eyes, one foot in the act of ascending, after the manner of tailors' fas.h.i.+on-plates, which are for ever in the casual att.i.tude of mounting stairs.

"You--please! Please--"

"Aw, little lady, go home and go to bed. This ain't no time and place for a little thing like you. Here, take this and go home, little girl."

She arrested his arm on its way to his pocket, her breath crowding out her words, and the stinging red of shame burning through her rouge.

"No, no! For Gawd's sakes, no! It's--my mother--"

He brought his feet down to a level.

"Your mother?"

"Yes; she's sick--maybe dyin'. I--please--she wants to see somebody that can't--can't--"

"What, little lady?"

"She's sick--dyin' maybe. She wants to see somebody that can't--can't--"

"Take your time, little lady--can't _what_?"

"Can't come."

"Who can't come?"

"He--my young--he's a young man. She's never seen him; and if--please, if you'd come and act super--just like you was fillin' in at a show; if you'd act like my young man just for a minute--please! My friend, he can't come--he can _never_ come; but she--she wants him. You come, please! You come, please!"

She tugged at his arm, and he descended another step and peered into the exacerbated anxiety of her face.

"On the level, little lady?"

"Please--just for a minute! For somebody that's sick--maybe dyin'. Just tell her you're my young man--tell her everything's all right--everything's comin' all right for all of us, for her and--and my little brother, and--and me--you and me--like you was my young man, please, lovin' and all. And tell her how pretty her poor hair is and how everything's goin'--goin' to be all right. Come, please--it's just next door."

"Why, you poor little thing! I ain't much on play-actin'; and look at my hands all black from the power-house!"

"Please! That ain't nothin'. It'll be only a minute. Just kinda say things after me and don't let her know--don't let her know that I--I ain't got any young man. Don't let her know!"