Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
act that would take 'em off their feet. That new 'Heavenly Twin' show
that Al read us the first act of, with Cottie and me featured, and you
doin' the Columbine--gee--"
"'Sh-h-h-h! There--he--is--knockin'."
"It can't be Hy already. I--I ain't dressed yet, Hy--just a minute! Oh,
it's a telegram, Ysobel; take it, like a good girl."
"Say, it ain't another from Third Row Bobbie, is it? You ought to tip
him off that he's wastin' his pin-money on you, hon'."
Della ripped the flap, read, and very suddenly sat down on the
silver-fox coat. The color drained out of her face, and her breath came
irregularly as if her heart had missed a beat.
"Della--Del--darlin'--what's the matter?"
"Oh, Gawd!"
"What, darlin'--what?"
"Read!"
Ysobel peered across the bare shoulder, her slim silk legs tiptoed and
her neck arched.
Maw buried yesterday. Money you sent for her birthday
paid funeral. Am ready. Wire directions.
COTTIE.
"Aw--aw, Del darlin'--honest, I--I don't know what to say, only
it--only--it ain't like she was your _real_ mother, Del darlin'. You
can't be hard hit over a blind old dame that used to make it hot as
sixty for you."
"Poor old soul--she lived like a rat and--died like one, I guess."
"With you sending her money all the time--nixy!"
"Like a rat! Poor old maw."
Della's voice was far removed, like one who speaks through the film of a
trance.
"When my old dame died I felt bad, too, but Gawd knows she wasn't
peaches and cream to have around the house. And look, darlin'--Cottie's
comin' now--look--Cottie's comin'!"
"Cottie--Cottie--comin'?"
"Sure she is--see, read, honey--'Am ready.'"
"Oh, Gawd, Ysobel, now that it's come I--I'm scared--she--she's such a
kid--she--Ysobel--I--I'm scared--I--"
"'Sh-h-h. There he is knockin', Del. Try and smile, hon'. You know how
sore a long face makes him. Maybe you won't have to go to-night,
now--smile, darlin'--smile! Come in!"
The door opened with a fling, and enter Mr. Hy Myers, an unlighted cigar
at a sharp oblique in one corner of his mouth, hat slightly askew, and a
full-length overcoat flung open to reveal a mink lining and studded
shirt-front.
"Gad," he said, dallying backward on his heels, his thumbs in the
arm-circles of his waistcoat, and regarding the shining silver
figure--"Gad, girl, you're all right."
Della drew back against the dressing-table and twirled the rings on her
fingers.
"I--I got bad news, Hy. I can't go to-night. Here, read for yourself."
He reached for the paper, passing Ysobel as if she belonged to the
trappings of the room.
"I--I can't--go to-night, Hy."
He read with the sharp eyes of a gray hawk of the world, and drew his
coat together in a gesture of buttoning up.
"Don't pull any of that stuff on me, Beauty. Just because the old devil
you've been tellin' me about--"
"Oh--you--you--"
"Them ain't real tears--you'd be laughin' in your sleeve if you had any
on. Come on; step lively, Beauty. I ain't givin' this blow-out to be
made a fool out of. Give her a daub of color there, Du Prez."
"Hy! She was my stepmother, and--"
"Come, Beauty, what you actin' up for? Ain't that doll you've been
piping about all these months comin' now that the old woman is out of
the way? Bring her on and lemme have a look at her. If she's in your
class, lemme look her over."
"Gimme--a minute, Hy. I--I just wanna send--a wire."
"Sure; tell her to come on. I'll send it for you. I'll look her over,
and--"
"No--no! Let Ysobel send it. You do it, Ysobel. Here, gimme your pen,
Hy."
She wrote with her breath half a moan in her throat, and her bosom
heaving and flashing the diamond heart.
"Send it right off, Ysobel darlin'--read it and send it off, darlin'."
She daubed a rabbit's foot under each eye and slid into the silver-fox
coat.
"Read it, darlin', and send it."
Ysobel read slowly like a child spelling out its task.
Breakers--ahead. Stay at home, dearie.
DELLA.
Through eyes that were magnified through the glaze of tears Ysobel
burrowed her head in the silver-fox collar.
"Oh, Del--Del darlin'--I'm wise--but, oh, my darlin'."
"Come on. Whatta you think this is, a soul-kiss scene--you two?"
"Comin', Hy--comin'."
"Della darlin'."
"Good night, Ysobel; lemme go, dearie--lemme go."
Then out through a labyrinth of stacked scenery, with her elbow in the
cup of his hand, and the silver shimmering in the gloom.
"Gad, you will have that scrawny little hanger-on around and gettin' on
my nerves! If I weren't always humorin' the daylights out of you she
wouldn't spoil a ballet of mine for fifteen minutes, she--"
"It's darn little I ask out of you, but you gotta lemme have her--you
gotta lemme have that much, or the whole blame show can--"
"Keep cool, there, Tragedy Queen, and watch your step! I don't want you
limpin' in there to-night with a busted ankle on top of your long face."
They high-stepped through a dirty passageway stacked with stage
bric-a-brac, out into a whiff of night air, across a pavement, and into
a wine-colored limousine.
He climbed in after her, throwing open the great fur collar of his coat
and lighting his cigar.
They plunged forward into the white flare of Broadway, and within her
plate-glass inclosure she was like a doomed queen riding to her destiny.
"Light up there, Dolly! No long face to-night! The crowd's going to be
there waitin' for you. Look at me, you little devil--you little devil!"
"Gawd, what are you made of? Ain't you got _no_ feelings?"
"Tush! You ain't real on that talk. I know you better'n you know
yourself. Ain't I told you that you can bring the little sister on and
lemme look her over? There's nothin' I wouldn't do for you, Beauty. You
got me crazy to-night over you. Eh! Pretty soft for a little hayseed
like you!"
She smiled suddenly, flashed her teeth, cooed in her throat, and reared
her white throat out of its fur like a swan rears its head out of its
snowy neck.
"I--I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second,
Hy. I--I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune
up--before--we get there. Just a minute, Hy."
"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"
"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."
"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do
you, Beauty?"
She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery,
and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each
other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.
"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann,
answer like a good girl. Love me?"
"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."
"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to
answer--love me?"
"Aw, now--"
"One--two--three--four--five--"
"Yes."
THE GOOD PROVIDER
Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton
nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the
arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and
motor-cars.
Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and
Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown
the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the
five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.
The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that
slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the
five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.
Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom
of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed.
Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts
bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring.
Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious
underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men
pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the
flower-seed catalogue.
The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his
thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down
plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.
For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of
Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until one year the
interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the
city.
Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and
one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large,
light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The
new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars
and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign
across the sidewalk and instituted a trading-stamp system. But in spite
of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising space in the
Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binswanger felt the suction of the city
drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took
invoice and frowned at what he saw.
The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binswanger
observed it across the family table one Saturday, and paused in the epic
rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large,
soft-fleshed face.
"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I
get the blues."
Mr. Binswanger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the
bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room
through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design
like coarse lace across his inquiring features.
"Right away you get what, Becky?"
"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't
remember."
"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she
puts on me yet, children."
"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the
padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed
backward the mane of his black pompadour.
"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."
Mr. Binswanger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.
"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in
stock ain't--"
"See, ma, you started something."
"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy
comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to
be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now
your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something
what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"
Miss Pearl Binswanger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and
showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin.
The same scarf of sunshine fell like a Spanish shawl across her
shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which
was small and dark as Giaconda's.
"I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa
about--about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the
store was on fire."
"Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses."
"No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head
dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything
what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pass your papa the dumplings, Poil.
Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?"
"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a
false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at
me no more."