The Vertical City Part 30

"Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected.

Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it."

"But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you are and what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you going to do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips were taking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device.

"Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of great pink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!"

"Wouldn't tell what?"

He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying to fasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyes there. Only the neutral, tricky tan.

"You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more important than anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared like her to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little school friends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton.

For G.o.d's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care so terribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'll tell her then. But for G.o.d's sake, Morton, let us live--now!"

"Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to one of these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lie to her won't be a lie any more."

"Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?"

"I'll marry you."

"You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gotten on a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over the jar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're so easy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can get the coward words out. Marry you! You fool!"

It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, sucking back her lower lip, then hurling.

"Well, Hattie," he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that's pretty plain."

"I reckon it is, Morton."

"All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to the grave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something to know I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out of here for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it."

"I'd advise you to."

"No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Ent.i.tled to a little natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. The girl. No harm."

"You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn't tell--that--child!"

"Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well, you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'."

"You can't put your foot--"

"Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Course there's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. I wouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I even know where she goes to school. Mighty nice selection you made, Hattie, Miss Harperly's."

"You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with her tongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips.

They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if she could not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O G.o.d!

Marcia!

That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately she could manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! She must keep them firm in the slippery s.h.i.+ne of the comedy black.

"Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab."

"How do you know it's--up?"

"Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural to put it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate."

"So--you _have_--been watching."

"Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got to town--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's a mighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl brings your--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a family of Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon."

"O--G.o.d!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rolling suddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for G.o.d's sake!

Please!"

He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheek and its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid's dress.

"By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream if you handle it right, honey."

"My way is the right way for me."

"But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on the job. Promote it!"

"Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of your mother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of your wildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you in South America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way you squandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. The alfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't get your hands on my affairs. My way suits me!"

The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in the circular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the door and the hairy voice that came through.

"All out!"

"Yes," she said, without knowing it.

"You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman like you, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something with a fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regard for the girl. Black-face!"

"What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kept her like a lily!"

"Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eating humble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart, I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwich to-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years is the truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's done every day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there cream will--"

She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leaves scuttling ahead of wind.

"The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, piece by piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to you again is, 'Get out!'"

"All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin'

to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!"

"No. It's late. She's--"

"Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another.

If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'd let me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but if I were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me."

"Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer without trying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Would a hundred--two hundred--"

"I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--"