The Vertical City Part 4

He asked me to-night."

"What?"

"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have."

"Seen what?"

"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and he--asked me to-night."

There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared there by a hand.

"Asked you what?"

"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."

"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?"

"Alma?"

There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face stiff with the clench of her mouth.

"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!"

A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that she slanted backward, holding her throat.

"I knew it. My own child against me. O G.o.d! Why was I born? My own child against me!"

"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody."

"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted him."

"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like that!"

Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.

"Alma!"

It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice.

"You can't marry Louis Latz."

"Can't I? Watch me."

"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!"

"Do what?"

"That!"

Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold.

"O G.o.d! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my own child!"

"Oh--mamma--!"

"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter will see to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me out something--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help myself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor's orders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out something terrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his prescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself."

She was hoa.r.s.e. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery with them, and while the ague of her pa.s.sion shook her, Alma, her own face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there.

"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. I blame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I know your fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize.

Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you're cured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, you wouldn't marry Louis Latz now!"

"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enough to travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel.

Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through this last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--"

"Mamma, don't talk like that!"

"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this big hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--"

"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves a sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--"

"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they will never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one to humiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way he did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help me G.o.d if I ever give in to--it again."

"Mamma, please! For G.o.d's sake, you've said the same thing so often, only to break your promise."

"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But n.o.body who hasn't been tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--"

"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frightening part. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That's what's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it these last months. Just from--desire."

Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands.

"O G.o.d! My own child against me!"

"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, n.o.body knows better than I do how sweet and good you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together and win! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you've been nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of you and--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment of our own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take up stenography or social ser--"

"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. A young man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't let him come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, I know--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what I am, and mine, too!"

Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks.

"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well."

"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up when he--"

"Mamma, how can you?"

"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--"

"No!"