Cheerful-By Request Part 15

"Grey? Oh, you mean--why, just here, and here. Interesting, but not a bit old. And he's got that money look that makes waiters and doormen and taxi drivers just hump. I don't want any supper. Just a cup of tea. I haven't got enough time to dress in, decently, as it is."

Al, draped in the doorway, removed his cigarette to give greater force to his speech. "Your story interests me strangely, little gell. But there's a couple of other people that would like to eat, even if you wouldn't. Come on with that supper, Ro. n.o.body staked me to a lunch to-day."

Rose turned to her stove again. Two carmine spots had leaped suddenly to her cheeks. She served the meal in silence, and ate nothing, but that was not remarkable. For the cook there is little appeal in the meat that she has tended from its moist and b.l.o.o.d.y entrance in the butcher's paper, through the basting or broiling stage to its formal appearance on the platter. She saw that Al and her father were served. Then she went back to the kitchen, and the thud of her iron was heard as she deftly fluted the ruffles of the crepe blouse. Floss appeared when the meal was half eaten, her hair shiningly coiffed, the pink ribbons of her corset cover showing under her thin kimono. She poured herself a cup of tea and drank it in little quick, nervous gulps. She looked deliriously young, and fragile and appealing, her delicate slenderness revealed by the flimsy garment she wore. Excitement and antic.i.p.ation lent a glow to her eyes, colour to her cheeks. Al, glancing expertly at the ingenuousness of her artfully simple coiffure, the slim limpness of her body, her wide-eyed gaze, laughed a wise little laugh.

"Every move a Pickford. And so girlish withal."

Floss ignored him. "Hurry up with that waist, Rose!"

"I'm on the collar now. In a second." There was a little silence. Then: "Floss, is--is Henry going to call for you--here?"

"Well, sure! Did you think I was going to meet him on the corner? He said he wanted to see you, or something polite like that."

She finished her tea and vanished again. Al, too, had disappeared to begin that process from which he had always emerged incredibly sleek, and dapper and perfumed. His progress with shaving brush, shirt, collar and tie was marked by disjointed bars of the newest syncopation whistled with an uncanny precision and fidelity to detail. He caught the broken time, and tossed it lightly up again, and dropped it, and caught it deftly like a juggler playing with frail crystal globes that seem forever on the point of crashing to the ground.

Pa stood up, yawning. "Well," he said, his manner very casual, "guess I'll just drop around to the movie."

From the kitchen, "Don't you want to sit with ma a minute, first?"

"I will when I come back. They're showing the third installment of 'The Adventures of Aline,' and I don't want to come in in the middle of it."

He knew the selfishness of it, this furtive and sprightly old man. And because he knew it he attempted to hide his guilt under a burst of temper.

"I've been slaving all day. I guess I've got the right to a little amus.e.m.e.nt. A man works his fingers to the bone for his family, and then his own daughter nags him."

He stamped down the hall, righteously, and slammed the front door.

Rose came from the kitchen, the pink blouse, warm from the iron, in one hand. She prinked out its ruffles and pleatings as she went. Floss, burnishing her nails somewhat frantically with a dilapidated and greasy buffer, s.n.a.t.c.hed the garment from her and slipped bare arms into it. The front door bell rang, three big, determined rings. Panic fell upon the household.

"It's him!" whispered Floss, as if she could be heard in the entrance three floors below. "You'll have to go."

"I can't!" Every inch of her seemed to shrink and cower away from the thought. "I can't!" Her eyes darted to and fro like a hunted thing seeking to escape. She ran to the hall. "Al! Al, go to the door, will you?"

"Can't," came back in a thick mumble. "Shaving."

The front door-bell rang again, three big, determined rings. "Rose!"

hissed Floss, her tone venomous. "I can't go with my waist open. For heaven's sake! Go to the door!"

"I can't," repeated Rose, in a kind of wail. "I--can't." And went. As she went she pa.s.sed one futile, work-worn hand over her hair, plucked off her ap.r.o.n and tossed it into; a corner, first wiping her flushed face with it.

Henry Selz came up the shabby stairs springily as a man of forty should.

Rose stood at the door and waited for him. He stood in the doorway a moment, uncertainly.

"How-do, Henry."

His uncertainty became incredulity. Then, "Why, how-do, Rose! Didn't know you--for a minute. Well, well! It's been a long time. Let's see--ten--fourteen--about fifteen years, isn't it?"

His tone was cheerfully conversational. He really was interested, mathematically. He was as sentimental in his reminiscence as if he had been calculating the lapse of time between the Chicago fire and the World's Fair.

"Fifteen," said Rose, "in May. Won't you come in? Floss'll be here in a minute."

Henry Selz came in and sat down on the davenport couch and dabbed at his forehead. The years had been very kind to him--those same years that had treated Rose so ruthlessly. He had the look of an outdoor man; a man who has met prosperity and walked with her, and followed her pleasant ways; a man who has learned late in life of golf and caviar and tailors, but who has adapted himself to these accessories of wealth with a minimum of friction.

"It certainly is warm, for this time of year." He leaned back and regarded Rose tolerantly. "Well, and how've you been? Did little sister tell you how flabbergasted I was when I saw her this morning? I'm darned if it didn't take fifteen years off my age, just like that! I got kind of balled up for one minute and thought it was you. She tell you?"

"Yes, she told me," said Rose.

"I hear your ma's still sick. That certainly is tough. And you've never married, eh?"

"Never married," echoed Rose.

And so they made conversation, a little uncomfortably, until there came quick, light young steps down the hallway, and Floss appeared in the door, a radiant, glowing, girlish vision. Youth was in her eyes, her cheeks, on her lips. She radiated it. She was miraculously well dressed, in her knowingly simple blue serge suit, and her tiny hat, and her neat shoes and gloves.

"Ah! And how's the little girl to-night?" said Henry Selz.

Floss dimpled, blushed, smiled, swayed. "Did I keep you waiting a terribly long time?"

"No, not a bit. Rose and I were chinning over old times, weren't we, Rose?" A kindly, clumsy thought struck him. "Say, look here, Rose. We're going to a show. Why don't you run and put on your hat and come along.

H'm? Come on!"

Rose smiled as a mother smiles at a child that has unknowingly hurt her.

"No, thanks, Henry. Not to-night. You and Floss run along. Yes, I'll remember you to Ma. I'm sorry you can't see her. But she don't see anybody, poor Ma."

Then they were off, in a little flurry of words and laughter. From force of habit Rose's near-sighted eyes peered critically at the hang of Floss's blue skirt and the angle of the pert new hat. She stood a moment, uncertainly, after they had left. On her face was the queerest look, as of one thinking, re-adjusting, struggling to arrive at a conclusion in the midst of sudden bewilderment. She turned mechanically and went into her mother's room. She picked up the tray on the table by the bed.

"Who was that?" asked the sick woman, in her ghostly, devitalised voice.

"That was Henry Selz," said Rose.

The sick woman grappled a moment with memory. "Henry Selz! Henry--oh, yes. Did he go out with Rose?"

"Yes," said Rose.

"It's cold in here," whined the sick woman.

"I'll get you a hot bag in a minute, Ma." Rose carried the tray down the hall to the kitchen. At that Al emerged from his bedroom, shrugging himself into his coat. He followed Rose down the hall and watched her as she filled the bag and screwed it and wiped it dry.

"I'll take that in to Ma," he volunteered. He was up the hall and back in a flash. Rose had slumped into a chair at the dining-room table, and was pouring herself a cup of cold and bitter tea. Al came over to her and laid one white hand on her shoulder.

"Ro, lend me a couple of dollars till Sat.u.r.day, will you?"

"I should say not."

Al doused his cigarette in the dregs of a convenient teacup. He bent down and laid his powdered and pale cheek against Rose's sallow one. One arm was about her, and his hand patted her shoulder.

"Oh, come on, kid," he coaxed. "Don't I always pay you back? Come on! Be a sweet ol' sis. I wouldn't ask you only I've got a date to go to the White City to-night, and dance, and I couldn't get out of it. I tried."

He kissed her, and his lips were moist, and he reeked of tobacco, and though Rose shrugged impatiently away from him he knew that he had won.

Rose was not an eloquent woman; she was not even an articulate one, at times. If she had been, she would have lifted up her voice to say now: