The Vertical City Part 2

She spread the lace out on her lap.

Ostensibly to the hotel lobby they were as casual as, "My mulligatawny soup was cold to-night," or, "Have you heard the new one that Al Jolson pulls at the Winter Garden?" But actually the roar was higher than ever in Mrs. Samstag's ears and he could feel the plethoric red rus.h.i.+ng in flashes over his body.

"Marry me, Carrie," he said, as if to prove that his stiff lips could repeat their incredible feat.

With a woman's talent for them, her tears sprang.

"Mr. Latz--"

"Louis," he interpolated, widely eloquent of eyebrow and posture.

"You're proposing, Louis!" She explained rather than asked, and placed her hand to her heart so prettily that he wanted to crush it there with his kisses.

"G.o.d bless you for knowing it so easy, Carrie. A young girl would make it so hard. It's just what has kept me from asking you weeks ago, this getting it said. Carrie, will you?"

"I'm a widow, Mr. Latz--Louis--"

"Loo--"

"L--loo. With a grown daughter. Not one of those merry-widows you read about."

"That's me! A bachelor on top, but a home man underneath. Why, up to five years ago, Carrie, while the best little mother a man ever had was alive, I never had eyes for a woman or--"

"It's common talk what a grand son you were to her, Mr. La--Louis--"

"Loo."

"Loo."

"I don't want to seem to brag, Carrie, but you saw the coat that just walked out on Mrs. Gronauer? My little mother she was a humpback, Carrie, not a real one, but all stooped from the heavy years when she was helping my father to get his start. Well, anyway, that little stooped back was one of the reasons why I was so anxious to make it up to her. Y'understand?"

"Yes--Loo."

"But you saw that mink coat. Well, my little mother, three years before she died, was wearing one like that in sable. Real Russian. Set me back eighteen thousand, wholesale, and she never knew different than that it cost eighteen hundred. Proudest moment of my life when I helped my little old mother into her own automobile in that sable coat.

"I had some friends lived in the Gren.o.ble Apartments when you did--the Adelbergs. They used to tell me how it hung right down to her heels and she never got into the auto that she didn't pick it up so as not to sit on it.

"That there coat is packed away in cold storage now, Carrie, waiting, without me exactly knowing why, I guess, for--the one little woman in the world besides her I would let so much as touch its hem."

Mrs. Samstag's lips parted, her teeth showing through like light.

"Oh," she said, "sable! That's my fur, Loo. I've never owned any, but ask Alma if I don't stop to look at it in every show window. Sable!"

"Carrie--would you--could you--I'm not what you would call a youngster in years, I guess, but forty-four isn't--"

"I'm--forty-one, Louis. A man like you could have younger."

"No. That's what I don't want. In my lonesomeness, after my mother's death, I thought once that maybe a young girl from the West, nice girl with her mother from Ohio--but I--funny thing, now I come to think about it--I never once mentioned my little mother's sable coat to her. I couldn't have satisfied a young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matches that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible to my own age."

"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"

"G.o.d love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent."

"I'm--that way."

"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this hotel because it's the best I can do under the circ.u.mstances. But at heart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess, you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?"

"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"

"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud of."

"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'"

"I knew it!"

"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--"

"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat enough herself to keep a bird alive."

"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr.

Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just the same, that's me every time. Right out with the truth from the start."

"It shows you're a clever little manager to be able to do it."

"We lived big and spent big while my husband lived. He was as shrewd a jobber in knit underwear as the business ever saw, but--well, you know how it is. Pneumonia. I always say he wore himself out with conscientiousness."

"Maybe you don't believe it, Carrie, but it makes me happy what you just said about money. It means I can give you things you couldn't afford for yourself. I don't say this for publication, Carrie, but in Wall Street alone, outside of my brokerage business, I cleared eighty-six thousand last year. I can give you the best. You deserve it, Carrie. Will you say yes?"

"My daughter, Loo. She's only eighteen, but she's my shadow--I lean on her so."

"A sweet, dutiful girl like Alma would be the last to stand in her mother's light."

"But remember, Louis, you're marrying a little family."

"That don't scare me."

"She's my only. We're different natured. Alma's a Samstag through and through. Quiet, reserved. But she's my all, Louis. I love my baby too much to--to marry where she wouldn't be as welcome as the day itself.

She's precious to me, Louis."

"Why, of course! You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would want you to feel different?"

"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children, she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spend the night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it, but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takes care of me."

"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a room for her."

"Loo!"

"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascal Friedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better business head you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Dayton the other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a big new clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out of their eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical Supply Company doubled their excess-profit tax last year."