The Trimming of Goosie Part 3

"Dolly! Dolly! Dolly!" Again came the call, unmistakable, music to Dolly's ear. She tip-toed to the door. From within sounded a thres.h.i.+ng noise, as of a whale caught in shallows. "Yes. What is it?" she called back melodiously, mastering her desire to rush in.

"Come here, Dolly," said the male voice. "Come here."

"I'm coming," said Dolly, and went in with a slightly bored expression.

"Help me, Dolly," said the perspiring and be-ruffled gentleman within. "I can't--can't--get my coat on."

"Why, Goosie; of course I'll help you."

But the help, although almost sincere, was powerless. The coat would not go on. The sleeves rose to the elbows smoothly, half way to the shoulders with more effort--but here they stuck, refusing to slide over the top of the shoulders. On each side of the spine, almost cracking the s.h.i.+rt, a protuberance bulged which the coat could not leap.

He stood there puffing, his hair mussed up, his eyes wrathful. "Well," he growled at length; "why don't you go get your scissors."

"Shall I?" she said doubtfully--and at the same time bounced out like a little rabbit. "Take off your s.h.i.+rt, Goosie," she said, returning with the gleaming instruments, now symbolical of her superior common-sense.

She aided him. She took off his collar and tie, unfastened the b.u.t.tons, and then she was tugging at the s.h.i.+rt. It slid down, uncovering the shoulders. There was a dry, crackling sound, as of a fan stretched open--and Dolly sat down on the floor. "Oh-oh-oh," she cried, "Go-oo-oo-ssie-ie!"

He stood there, looking out of the corner of his eye at his reflection in the mirror, red-faced and very much abashed. For with the slipping of the s.h.i.+rt, on his shoulders there had sprung, with the movement of a released jack-in-the-box, two vibrant white things.

Two gleaming, l.u.s.trous, white things that were----

"They're wings," said Dolly, still on the floor. "_They are wings_," she repeated, in the tone of one saying, _He is dead_. "Now, Goosie, you _have_ done it!"

But a change had come in Charles-Norton. The blush had left his brow, the foolish expression his face; he was pivoting before the mirror like a woman with a new bonnet.

"I _like_ them," he said.

And then, "Just look at them, Dolly. Just look at the curve of them.

Isn't it a beautiful curve! And the whiteness of them, Dolly--like a baby's soul. And how downy--soft like you, Dolly. Look at them gleam.

And they move, Dolly, they move! Dolly, oh, look!"

The wings were gently breathing; their slender tips struck his waist at each oscillation. The movement quickened, became a beat, a rapid palpitation. A soft whirring sound filled the room; the newspaper on the bed, dislodged, eddied to the floor; the wings were a mere white blur.

Suddenly Charles-Norton's feet left the floor, and he rose slowly into the air. "Look, look, Dolly," he cried, as he went up, hovering above her up-tilted nose and her wide eyes, as she sat there, paralyzed, upon the ground; "Dolly, look!"

The humming sound took a higher note; a picture crashed down; the room was a small cyclone. "Dolly, watch me; look!"

And with a sudden leap, Charles-Norton slanted up toward the ceiling and lit, seated, on the edge of the shelf that went along the four walls.

"Look," he said with triumph, balancing smilingly on his perch.

But immediately his expression changed to one of concern, and he sprang down quickly and quietly. Dolly was now stretched full-length along the carpet; her face was in her arms. He turned it to the light. Her eyes were closed.

Dolly had fainted.

CHAPTER VI

A husband who has a wife that faints is in the grasp of the great It.

Full of fear, pity, remorse, and self-hatred, Charles-Norton danced about helplessly for several minutes, sprinkling water upon Dolly's brow (much of it went down her neck); trying to pour bad whiskey between her pearly teeth; calling himself names; chafing her hands, promising to be good, to do always what she wanted; loosening her garments; proclaiming the fact that he was a brute, she an angel--while the wings, loose down his back, flapped after him in long, mournful gestures. And when finally, from the couch upon which he had drawn her, Dolly opened upon him her blue eyes, humid as twin stars at dawn, he placed her little scissors in her hand, and with head bowed low, in an ecstatic agony of self-renunciation bade her do her duty. The little scissors could not do it this time, though.

It took the shears.

After which there were a mingling of tears, murmurings, embraces, and Dolly said that the bad, bad times were all over now, and he agreed that they could never come again; and she said they would be happy ever afterward, and he agreed they should be happy always. Then Dolly, still a bit languid, in a voice still a bit doleful, drove him off to the office.

Where he arrived very late, and had to pa.s.s the gauntlet of his chiefs frigid ignoring of the dereliction.

When Charles-Norton had gone, Dolly suddenly sat up with a click of small heels upon the floor. She remained thus some time, a frown between her eyes. She was not triumphant, she was worried. She seemed to recognize danger; her transparent nostrils dilated to the smell of powder; and plainly, you could see her steel her being. After a while she nodded to herself, curtly and very decidedly, and went on about her work.

She met Charles-Norton at the door when he returned in the evening. He was somewhat limp after a day of _mea culpas_! and she, a quarter of an hour before the time for his reappearance, had powdered her nose--which, she knew, gave her an expression half amusing, half piteous, just like that of the clown who is playing his tricks at the circus while his little daughter is dying at home. "h.e.l.lo, Goosie," she said breathlessly (also she had rubbed a trace of rouge under her eyes); "h.e.l.lo, just in time for dinner! Made a fine chocolate cake. Poor dear, you look so tired!"

And after supper, which in spite of Dolly's very ostensible effort at exuberance, was rather silent, for Charles-Norton, with a man's detestation of "scenes," still felt somewhat embarra.s.sed at the happenings of the morning, she drew up the Morris chair to the lamp, sat Charles-Norton in it, and filled his pipe for him. When thus "fixed up comfy," he felt a soft breath upon his neck, and two little hands at his neck-tie. Off came tie and collar, and then the coat, and then the s.h.i.+rt, and then--zip-zip.

"Say, Dolly," he remonstrated mildly; "couldn't you wait till morning?"

"There," she said; "it's almost all done. Just a wee bit more here.

There! Now here is a kiss! It didn't hurt, Goosie, did it?"

And Charles-Norton had to concede that it did not hurt. How could he have explained the subtle feeling within him, that sort of swooping descent of his inwards that came with, and the dullness of all things which followed always his shearings?

"No, it didn't hurt," he repeated. But a vague dissatisfaction like a yeast stirred within him, and a flicker,--beaten down immediately, it is true, trampled, smothered,--of revolt.

Calmly, coolly, efficiently, though, Dolly had taken the upper hand. The next morning she sent him sheared to the office; she sent him sheared the same night to bed.

And thus day after day for many days. Every morning Charles-Norton went out to his work full of emptiness (if that phrase is permissible), empty of heart, empty of mind, without a desire, without an anger. The warm June days had come; he had changed his underwear. He felt the season only as a discomfort. The emerald explosions visible at the end of each street as the L train pa.s.sed along Central Park did not stir him; the tepid airs drifting lazily from the sea, the fragrant whiffs from the depths of the germinating land, pa.s.sed over him as though he were made of asbestos. An insulation was about him, removing him from all things that thrill, all things that distend; there was no color, no vibration in the world; iridescences had ceased; the chamber of his soul had been painted a dull drab.

He had regained, though, the esteem of his fellows. The subtle and unerring instinct which had made them suspicious in the days of his--misfortune, now in the same inexplicable way told them that he was normal again. They looked at him no longer askance. In fact, they did not look at him at all. They accepted him without question in crush of street and L; gave him his rightful s.p.a.ce (nine and a half inches in diameter); trod on his feet only when forced to (by the impulse to obtain a more comfortable position); poked their elbows into his stomach only when necessary (that is, when they had to get out or in ahead of him); and on the whole surrounded him with that indifference which at the bottom is a sort of regard, which means that one conforms, that one's derby, sack-suits, socks and shoes, habits, ideas, morals and religion are just exactly like the derbies, sack-suits, socks and shoes, habits, ideas, morals and religion of everyone else, and hence right. At the office he had regained the appreciation of his chiefs; his salary had been raised to twenty-two dollars and a half a week and his working hours from eight to nine hours. His home life was the standard ideal one. That is, he got up at the same time every morning, left punctually at the same hour, took the L, arrived at the office on the minute, worked with his nose close to the ruled pages, steadily, without a distraction, till 12.30, had his macaroon tart and cup of coffee at Konrad's Bakery, smoked his five-cent cigar in the nearby square till 1.30, worked again till 5.30, returned home on the L, pressed tight like a lamb on the way to the packing-house, had a cozy little dinner upon which Dolly had spent all her ingenuity, smoked his pipe in the Morris chair, and then read the paper till the sudden contact of his chin with his chest and Dolly's amused warning sent him off to bed. A very moral, regular, exemplary existence. Dolly was very happy.

And then, just as this couple could see the track clear ahead, stretching smooth and nickel-plated to infinity, an ugly complication began to worm itself into the serenity of their lives.

This complication arose from the fact that the suppressed wings of Charles-Norton began to grow faster. Each day, now, Charles-Norton, returning home, brought with him to Dolly a task more serious and considerable. She had long ago discarded the little scissors and used special shears made to cut heavy cardboard; and she finished off with a safety razor.

The result of this increase in the rate of winged growth was that, whereas Charles-Norton every morning left home placid and docile, his character gradually changed during the day. Starting at his work in the spirit of a blind horse at the mill, by ten o'clock he was apt to find himself, pen-holder in mouth, nose up in the air, following the evolutions of a buzzing flylet. By eleven o'clock, the cage had become very stuffy; spasmodic intakes swelled his chest, ghost longings stirred within him. When he got out at 12.30 the sun seemed to pour right through his skin, into the drab chamber of his soul, gilding it. He hurried over his macaroon tart and cup of coffee, and then had three-quarters of an hour left to idle in the square.

He prepared for this gravely, as for a ceremony; first by buying a Pippin. A slender, light-brown Pippin, scientifically sprinkled with golden freckles, for five cents. (A daily Pippin was a recognized item of the family budget; at one time Charles Norton had carried his pipe with him, but Dolly, noticing the doubtful fragrance given by said pipe to the clothes of Charles-Norton, had insisted upon the extravagance of the daily Pippin). Having bought the Pippin, Charles-Norton did not light it right away. Oh, no. He ambled first to the square. He selected his bench carefully--one upon which the sun shone, but shone with a light filtered by the leaves of a low-branching elm. He sat down; he stretched his legs straight before him. Then slowly, with deliberation of movement, he scratched a match. He brought the spluttering end near his nose. The Pippin began to send forth effluvia, an exquisite vapor, faintly-blue.

Charles-Norton half closed his eyes; his soul began to purr.

Before him a fountain plashed; about the fountain were red blossoms; the elms rustled gently against the blue sky; through the delicate lace of their leaves the sun eddied down like a very light pollen; and all this, through the Pippin's exquisite atmosphere, was enveloped and smoothed and glazed into a picture--a slightly hazy dream-picture. Charles-Norton stretched his legs still more; his shoulders rose along the sides of his head. He was as at the bottom of the sea--a warm and quiet summer sea.

Down through its golden-dusty waters, a streak of sun, polished like a rapier, diagonaled, striking him on the breast; and to its vivifying burn he felt within him his heart expand, as though it would bloom, like the red flowers about the fountain.

Upon the other benches sprawled some of the city's derelicts. The sun was upon them also; they stirred uneasily to its caress, with sighs and groans, their warped bodies, petrified with the winter's long cold, distending slowly in pain. Pale children in their buggies slept with mouths open, gasping like little fish; some played upon the asphalt.

Charles-Norton, by this time, was apt to be far away; far in another land. He lay upon his back and watched a hawk on high.

The sparrows usually brought him back. They played about his feet; they chirped, hopped, and tattled; they peered side-ways at him and gave him jerky nods of greeting. At times one of them, to a sudden inspiration, sprang into the air; with a whir he flashed up to the top of a tree. To the movement, something within Charles-Norton leaped to his throat.

Across the park, gaunt behind the trees, rose the tall steel frame of a new building; and away up at the top of it (which was higher every day) a workingman, on a girder, ate his lunch. Charles-Norton liked this man; a current of comrades.h.i.+p always ran from him to the little figure silhouetted up against the blue. He should have liked to eat his lunch up there, side by side with this man, his legs swinging next to his, with the void beneath. And then, he thought, after lunching, he would like to stand erect, away up there, at the tip edge of one of the projecting beams; to stand there a bit, and then spring off; spring off lightly, and whiz down; down, down, down with outspread arms.