Gaslight Sonatas Part 28

"You--you been mighty good to me, Joe. It's good to know--everything's--paid up."

Mr. Joe Kirby sat well forward on a straight chair, knees well apart in the rather puffy att.i.tude of the uncomfortably corpulent.

"Now, cut that! Whatever I done for you, Annie, I done because I wanted to.

If you'd 'a' listened to me, you wouldn't 'a' gone and sold out your last dud to raise money. Whatcha got friends for?"

"The way you dug down for--for the funeral, Joe. He--he couldn't have had the silver handles or the gray velvet if--if not for you, Joe. He--he always loved everything the best. I can't never forget that of you, Joe--just never."

She was pinning on her little crepe-edged veil over her decently black hat, and paused now to dab up under it at a tear.

"I'd 'a' expected poor old Blutch to do as much for me."

"He would! He would! Many's the pal he buried."

"I hate, Annie, like anything to see you actin' up like this. You ain't fit to walk out of this hotel on your own hook. Where'd you get that hand-me-down?"

She looked down at herself, quickly reddening.

"It's a warm suit, Joe."

"Why, you 'ain't got a chance! A little thing like you ain't cut out for but one or two things. Coddlin'--that's your line. The minute you're n.o.body's doll you're goin' to get stepped on and get busted."

"Whatta you know about--"

"What kind of a job you think you're gonna get? Adviser to a corporation lawyer? You're too soft, girl. What chance you think you got buckin' up against a town that wants value received from a woman. Aw, you know what I mean, Annie. You can't pull that baby stuff all the time."

"You," she cried, beating her small hands together, "oh, you--you--" and then sat down, crying weakly. "Them days back there! Why, I--I was such a kid it's just like they hadn't been! With her and my grandmother dead and gone these twelve years, if it wasn't for you it's--it's like they'd never been."

"n.o.body was gladder 'n me, girl, to see how you made a bed for yourself.

I'm commendin' you, I am. That's just what I'm tryin' to tell you now, girl. You was cut out to be somebody's kitten, and--"

"O G.o.d!" she sobbed into her handkerchief, "why didn't you take me when you took him?"

"Now, now, Annie, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. A good-lookin' woman like you 'ain't got nothing to worry about. Lemme order you up a drink.

You're gettin' weak again."

"No, no; I'm taking 'em too often. But they warm me. They warm me, and I'm cold, Joe--cold."

"Then lemme--"

"No! No!"

He put out a short, broad hand toward her.

"Poor little--"

"I gotta go now, Joe. These rooms ain't mine no more."

He barred her path.

"Go where?"

'"Ain't I told you? I'm going out. Anybody that's willin' to work can get it in this town. I ain't the softy you think I am."

He took her small black purse up from the table.

"What's your capital?"

"You--quit!"

"Ten--'leven--fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents."

"You gimme!"

"You can't cut no capers on that, girl."

"I--can work."

He dropped something in against the coins.

It clinked.

She sprang at him.

"No, no; not a cent from you--for myself. I--I didn't know you in them days for nothing. I was only a kid, but I--I know you! I know. You gimme!

Gimme!"

He withheld it from her.

"Hold your horses, beauty! What I was then I am now, and I ain't ashamed of it. Human, that's all. The best of us is only human before a pretty woman."

"You gimme!"

She had s.n.a.t.c.hed up her small hand-satchel from the divan and stood flas.h.i.+ng now beside him, her small, blazing face only level with his cravat.

"What you spittin' fire for? That wa'n't nothin' I slipped in but my address, girl. When you need me call on me. 'The Liberty, 96.' Go right up in the elevator, no questions asked. Get me?" he said, poking the small purse into the V of her jacket. "Get me?"

"Oh, you--Woh--woh--woh!"

With her face flung back and twisted, and dodging his outflung arm, she was down four flights of narrow, unused stairs and out. Once in the streets, she walked with her face still thrust up and a frenzy of haste in her stride. Red had popped out in her cheeks. There was voice in each breath--moans that her throat would not hold.

That night she slept in the kind of fifty-cent room the city offers its decent poor. A slit of a room with a black-iron bed and a damp mattress.

A wash-stand gaunt with its gaunt mission. A slop-jar on a zinc mat. A caneless-bottom chair. The chair she propped against the door, the top slat of it beneath the k.n.o.b. Through a night of musty blackness she lay in a rigid line along the bed-edge.

You who love the city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its orchestra the plaintive rune of the deserving poor?

It is like the note of a wind instrument--an oboe adding its slow note to the boom of the kettle-drum, the clang of gold-colored cymbals, and the singing ecstasy of violins.