Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
alcohol-stove you wanted for your breakfasts? The girl at the counter
thought we--we were spliced."
"Yeh!" Miss Flint's voice was faint as the thud of a nut to the ground.
They shot down fifteen fireproof stories in a breath-taking elevator,
and then out on the whitest, brightest Broadway in the world, where the
dreary trilogy of Wine, Woman, and Song is played from noon to dawn,
with woman the cheapest of the three.
"How's Addie?"
"She don't complain, but she gets whiter and whiter--poor kid! I got her
some new crutches, Goldie--swell mahogany ones with silver tips. You
ought to see her get round on them!"
"I--I been so busy--night-work and--and--"
"She's been asking about you every night, Goldie. It ain't like you to
stay away like this."
Their breaths clouded before them in the stinging air, and down the
length of the enchanted highway lights sprang out of the gloom and
winked at them like naughty eyes.
"What's the matter, Goldie? You ain't mad at me--us--are you?"
Eddie took her pressed-plush elbow in the cup of his hand and looked
down at her, trying in vain to capture the bright flame of her glance.
"Nothing's the matter, Eddie. Why should I be mad? I been busy--that's
all."
The tide of home-going New York caught them in its six-o'clock vortex.
Shops emptied and street-cars filled. A newsboy fell beneath a car, and
Broadway parted like a Red Sea for an overworked ambulance, the mission
of which was futile. A lady in a fourteen-hundred-fifty-dollar
unborn-lamb coat and a notorious dog-collar of pearls stepped out of a
wine-colored limousine into the gold-leaf foyer of a hotel. A ten-story
emporium ran an iron grating across its entrance, and ten watchmen
reported for night duty.
"Aw, gee! They're closed! Ain't that the limit now! Ain't that the
limit! I wanted some pink tulle."
"Poor kid! Don't you care! You can get it tomorrow--you can work
Gregory."
"I--I wanted it for tonight."
"What?"
"I wanted it for my yoke."
They turned into the dark aisle of a side street; the wind lurked around
the corner to leap at them.
"Oh-h-h-h!"
He held tight to her arm.
"It's some night--ain't it, girlie?"
"I should say so!"
"Poor little kid!"
Eddie's voice was suddenly the lover's, full of that quality which is
like unto the ting of a silver bell after the clapper is quiet.
"You're coming home to a good hot supper with me, Goldie--ain't you,
Goldie? Addie'll like it."
She withdrew her hand from the curve of his elbow.
"I can't, Eddie--not tonight. I--tell her I'm coming over real soon."
"Oh!"
"It's sure cold, ain't it?"
"Goldie, can't you tell a fellow what's the matter? Can't you tell me
why you been dodging me--us--for two weeks? Can't you tell a
fellow--huh, Goldie?"
"Geewhillikins, Eddie! Ain't I told you it's nothing? There ain't a girl
could be a better friend to Addie than me."
"I know that, Goldie; but--"
"Didn't we work in the same office thick as peas for two whole years
before her--accident--even before I knew she had a brother? Ain't I
stuck to her right through--ain't I?"
"You know that ain't what I mean, Goldie. You been a swell friend
to poor Addie, stayin' with her Sundays when you could be havin'
a swell time and all; but it's me I'm talking about, Goldie.
Sometimes--sometimes I--"
"Aw!"
"I've never talked straight out about it before, Goldie; but you--you
remember the night--the night I rigged up like a Christmas tree, and you
said I was all the ice-cream in my white pants--the night Addie was run
over and they sent for me?"
"Will I ever forget it!"
"I was tuning up that evening to tell you, Goldie--while we were sitting
there on your stoop, with the street-light in our eyes, and you
screechin' every time a June-bug bumbled in your face!"
"Gawd, how I hate bugs! There was one in Miss Gregory's--"
"I was going to tell you that night, Goldie, that there was only one
girl--one girl for me--and--"
"Yeh; and while we were sittin' there gigglin' and screechin' at
June-bugs poor Addie was provin' that a street-car fender has got it all
over a mangling-machine."
"Yes; it's like she says about herself--she was payin' her initiation
fee for life membership into the Society of Cripples with a perfectly
good hip and a bit of spine."
"Poor Addie! Gawd, how she loved to dance! She used to spend every
noon-hour eatin' marshmallows and learning me new steps."
The wind soughed in their ears, and Goldie's skirts blew backward like
sails.
"You haven't got a better friend than Addie right now, girlie! She
always says our little flat is yours. The three of us, Goldie--the three
of us could--"
"It's swell for a girl that ain't got none of her own blood to have a
friend like that. Swell, lemme tell you!"
"Goldie!"
"Yes."
"It's like I said--I've never talked right out before, but I got a
feelin' you're slippin' away from me like a eel, girlie. You know--aw,
you know I ain't much on the elocution stuff; but if it wasn't for Addie
and her accident right now--I'd ask you outright--I would. You know what
I mean!"
"I don't know anything, Eddie; I'm no mind-reader!"
"Aw, cut it out, Goldie! You know I'm tied up right now and can't say
some of the things I was going to say that night on the stoop. You know
what I mean--with Addie's doctor's bills and chair and crutches, and
all."
"Sure I do, Eddie. You've got no right to think of anything."
She turned from him so that her profile was like a white cameo mounted
on black velvet.
"You just give me a little time, Goldie, and I'll be on my feet, all
righty. I just want some kind of understanding between us--that's all."
"Oh--you--I--"
"I got Joe's job cinched if he goes over to the other firm in March; and
by that time, Goldie, you and me and Addie, on eighty per, could--why,
we--"
She swayed back from his close glance and ran up the first three steps
of her rooming-house. Her face was struck with fear suddenly, as with a
white flame out of the sky.
"'Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" she said. "You mustn't!"
He reached for her hand, caught it and held it--but like a man who feels
the rope sliding through his fingers and sees his schooner slipping out
to sea--slipping out to sea.
"Lemme go, Eddie! I gotta go--it's late!"
"I _know_, Goldie. They been guyin' me at the office about you passin'
me up; and it's right--ain't it? It's--It's him--" She shook her head
and tugged for the freedom of her hand. Tears crowded into her eyes like
water to the surface of a tumbler just before the overflow. "It's
_him_--ain't it, Goldie?"
"Well, you won't give--give a girl a chance to say anything. If you'd
have given me time I was comin' over and tell you, and--and tell--"
"Goldie!"
"I was--I was--"
"It's none of my business, girlie; but--but he ain't fit for you. He--"
"There you go! The whole crowd of you make me--"
"He ain't fit for no girl, Goldie! Listen to me, girlie! He's just a
regular ladykiller! He can't keep a job no more'n a week for the life of
him! I used to know him when I worked at Delaney's. Listen to me,
Goldie! This here new minin' scheme he's in ain't even on the level! It
ain't none of my business; but, good God, Goldie, just because a guy's
good-lookin' and a swell dresser and--"
She sprang from his grasp and up the three remaining steps. In the sooty
flare of the street lamp she was like Jeanne d'Arc heeding the vision or
a suffragette declaiming on a soap-box and equal rights.
"You--the whole crowd of you make me sick! The minute a fellow graduates
out of the sixty-dollar-clerk class, and can afford a twenty-dollar
suit, without an extra pair of pants thrown in, the whole pack of you
begin to yowl and yap at his heels like--"
"Goldie! Goldie, listen--"
"Yes, you do! But I ain't caring. I know him, and I know what I want.
We're goin' to get married when we're good and ready, and we ain't
apologizing to no one! I don't care what the whole pack of you have to
say, except Addie and you; and--and--I--oh--"
Goldie turned and fled into the house, slamming the front door after her
so that the stained-glass panels rattled--then up four flights, with the
breath soughing in her throat and the fever of agitation racing through
her veins.
Her oblong box of a room at the top of the long flights was cold with a
cavern damp and musty with the must that is as indigenous to
rooming-houses as chorus-girls to the English peerage or insomnia to
black coffee.
Even before she lighted her short-armed gas-jet, however, a sweet,
insidious, hothouse fragrance greeted her faintly through the must, as
the memory of mignonette clings to old lace. Goldie's face softened as
if a choir invisible was singing her ragtime from above her skylight.
She lighted her fan of gas with fingers that trembled in a pleasant
frenzy of anticipation, and the tears dried on her face and left little
paths down her cheeks.
A fan of pink roses, fretted with maidenhair fern and caught with a sash
of pink tulle, lay on her coarse cot coverlet, as though one of her
dreams had ventured out of its long night.
What a witch is love!
Pink leaped into Goldie's cheeks, and into her eyes the light that
passeth understanding. Life dropped its dun-colored cloak and stood
suddenly garlanded in pink, wire-stemmed roses.
She buried her face in their fragrance. She kissed a cool bud, the heart
of which was closed. She unwrapped the pink tulle sash with fingers that
were addled--like a child's at the gold cord of a candy-box--and held
the filmy streamer against her bosom in the outline of a yoke.
* * * * *
In Mrs. McCasky's boarding-house the onward march of night was as
regular as a Swiss watch with an American movement.
At nine o'clock Mr. McCasky's tin bucket grated along the hall wall,
down two flights of banisters, across the street, and through the
knee-high swinging-doors of Joe's place.
At ten o'clock the Polinis, on the third-floor back, let down their
folding-bed and shivered the chandelier in Major Florida's second-floor
back.
At eleven o'clock Mr. McCasky's tin bucket grated unevenly along the
hall wall, down two flights of banisters, across the street, and through
the knee-high swinging-doors of Joe's place.
At twelve o'clock the electric piano in Joe's place ceased to clatter
through the night like coal pouring into an empty steel bin, and Mrs.
McCasky lowered the hall light from a blob the size of a cranberry to a
French pea.
At one o'clock the next to the youngest Polini infant lifted its voice
to the skylight, and Mr. Trimp's night-key waltzed round the front-door
lock, scratch-scratching for its hole.
In the dim-lit first-floor front Mrs. Trimp started from her light doze
like a deer in a park, which vibrates to the fall of a lady's feather
fan. The criss-cross from the cane chair-back was imprinted on one
sleep-flushed cheek, and her eyes, dim with the weariness of the
night-watch, flew to the white-china door-knob.
Reader, rest undismayed. Mr. Trimp entered on the banking-hour legs of a
scholar and a gentleman. With a white carnation in his buttonhole, his
hat unbattered in the curve of his arm, and his blue eyes behind their
curtain of black lashes, but slightly watery, like a thawing ice-pond
with a film atop.
"Hello, my little Goldie-eyes!"
Mr. Trimp flashed his double deck of girlish-pearlish teeth. When Mr.
Trimp smiled Greuze might have wanted to paint his lips for a
child-study. Women tightened up about the throat and dared to wonder
whether he wore a chest-protector and asafetida bag. Old ladies in
street-cars regarded him through the mist of memories, and as if their
motherly fingers itched to run through the heavy yellow hemp of his