Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 78

"Where you going, peaches?" He reached for her hand. "You mad, Marj? I didn't mean to get you sore."

"N-no, Blink."

"You beauty, you."

"'Sh-h-h!"

"Gad! but I like you. Sit down, Marj, I got a new proposition to put to you. I can talk big money, girl."

"Don't--Blink."

"Sit down, girl. Harry don't stand for no stage stuff in here no more."

"I--"

"I got a new proposition, girl. One that'll make Checkers look like thirty cents. A white proposition, too, Marj. A baby could listen to it."

"Yes, yes, Blink, but not now. When you get lit up you--you oughtn't begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink. Try and keep your wits."

"A baby could listen to this here proposition, Marj. And big money, too, Marj. It's diamonds for you."

Somehow with her lips she smiled down at him, and did not tug for the release of her hand. Dallied for the instant instead.

"You're lit up, Blink."

"Some big guns in Wall Street, Marj, are after me, Marj, with a million-dollar proposition. I--"

"Yes, yes, but wait a minute, Blink. I'll be back." She even lay a pat on his shoulder and slid past him lightly. "In a minute, Blink."

"Hurry," he said, his smile broken by a swift twitch of feature, and raising his fresh stein.

Once out of his vision, she veered sharply and in a bath of fear darted toward the small hallway, with its red bead of gaslight burning on and flickering against the two panels of colored gla.s.s in the dingy brown door.

Outside, the flakes had ceased and the sinister-looking side street lay in a white hush, a single line of scraggly footsteps crunched into the snow of the sidewalk. A clock from a sky-sc.r.a.ping tower rang out eight, its echoes singing like anvils in the sharp, thin air. On the cross-town street the shops were full of light and activity, crowds wedging in and out. Marjorie Clark pulled at her strength and ran.

At the Twenty-second Street corner she paused for the merest moment for breath and for a quick glance into the dark lane of the diverging street. The double row of stone houses, blank-faced and shouldering one another like paper dolls cut from a folded newspaper, stood back indistinctly against the night, most of the high stoops cushioned in untrod snow, the fourth of them from the right, lean-looking and undistinguished, except that the ash-can at its curb was a glorified urn of snow.

As she stood there the ache in Marjorie Clark's throat threatened to become articulate. She took up her swift pace again, but onward.

Ten minutes later, within the great heated mausoleum of the Pennsylvania Terminal, she bought a ticket for Glendale. On track ten the eight-eighteen had already made its first jerk outward as she made her dash for it.

In the spick swaddling clothes of new-laid snow, its roadways and garden beds, macadamized streets and runty lanes all of one ident.i.ty, Glendale lay in a miniature valley beneath the railroad elevation; meandered down a slight hillside and out toward the open country.

Immediately removed from the steep flight of stairs leading down from the gabled station, small houses with roofs that wore the snow like coolies' hoods appeared in uncertain ranks forming uncertain streets.

Lights gleamed in frequent windows, throwing squares of gold-colored light in the snow.

Here and there where shades were drawn the grotesque shadow of a fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the very stoops of adjoining houses.

Two blocks from the left of the station Marjorie Clark paused in the white shower of one of these arc-lights. The wind had hauled around to the north and its raw breath galloped across the open country, stinging her.

Across the street, diagonal, a low house of too many angles, the snow banked in a high drift across its north flank, stood well back in shadow, except that on the peak of its small veranda, and clearly defined by the arc-light, a weather-vane spun to the gale.

Marjorie Clark ducked her head to the onslaught of wind and crossed the street, kicking up a fine flurry of snow before her. A convoy of trees stood in military precision down the quiet avenue, their bare branches embracing her in immediate shadows. The gate creaked when she drew it backward, sc.r.a.ping outward and upon the sidewalk a hill of loose snow.

Before that small house a garden lay tucked beneath its blanket, a scrawny line of hedge fluted with snow inclosing it and a few stalks that would presently flower. The hood of the dark veranda, surmounted with its high ruche of snow, seemed to incline, invitational.

Yet when Marjorie Clark pulled out the old-fashioned bell-handle her face sickened as she stood and she was down the steps again, the tightness squeezing her throat, her gloved hands fumbling the gate latch, and her knee flung against it, pressing it outward.

In the moment of her most frenzied att.i.tude a golden patch of light from an opened door streamed out and over her. In its radiance a woman's wide-bosomed, wide-hipped silhouette, hand bent in a vizor over her eyes, leaned forward, and, rushing past her and down the plushy steps, the bareheaded figure of Mr. Charley Scully, a red and antiquated red wool indoor jacket flying to the wind, and a forelock of his shiny hair lifted.

"Marjie!"

She backed against the gate.

"Marj! Marjie?"

"I--No, no--I--I--"

"Why, little one! Marjie! Marjie!"

"I--No--no--"

But her inertia was of no moment, and very presently, Charles Scully's strong right arm propelling her, she was in the warm, bright-lighted hallway, its door closing her in and the wide-bosomed, wide-hipped figure in spotted silk fumbling the throat fastenings of her jacket, and the stooped form of Charley Scully dragging off her thin rubber shoes.

"Whew! they're soaking wet, ma. Get her a pair of Till's slippers or something."

"Don't jerk the child like that, son. Pull 'em off easy."

Through glazed eyes Marjorie Clark, balancing herself first on one foot, then the other, the spotted silk arm half sustaining her, could glimpse the scene of an adjoining room: a fir-tree standing against a drawn window-blind half hung in tinsel fringe, and abandoned in the very act of being draped; a woman and a child stooping at its base. Above a carved black-walnut table and from a mother-of-pearl frame, a small amateur photograph of Marjorie Clark smiled out at herself.

The figure in spotted silk dragged off the wet jacket and hurried with it toward the rear of the hallway, her left foot dragging slightly.

"Just a second, dearie-child, until I find dry things for you. Son, stop fussing around the lamb until she gets rested."

But on the first instant of the two of them standing alone there in the little hallway, Charley Scully turned swiftly to Marjorie Clark, catching up her small hand. His eyes carried the iridescence of bronze.

"Marjie," he said, "to--why, to think you'd come! Why--why, little Marjie!"

"I--oh, Charley-boy, I--"

"What, little one? What?"

"I--I dun'no'."

"What is it, hon? Ain't you as glad as I am?"

"I dun'no', only I--I--I'm scared, Charley--scared, I guess."

"Why, you just never was so safe, Marjie, as now--you just never was!"