Gaslight Sonatas Part 42

"G.o.d! His stillness, Kittie--like--"

"John Burkhardt would give me the razzle-dazzle jimjams overnight, he would. That face reminds me of my favorite funeral."

"I told him to-night, Kittie, he's killin' me with his deadness. I ran out of the house from it. It's killin' me."

"Why, you poor simp, standing for it!"

"That's what I come over for, Kit. I can't stand no more. If I don't talk to some one, I'll bust. There's no one in this town I can open up to. Him so sober--and deacon. They don't know what it is to sit night after night dyin' from his stillness. Whole meals, Kit, when he don't open his mouth except, 'Hand me this; hand me that'--and his beard movin' up and down so when he chews. Because a man don't hit you and gives you spending-money enough for the little things don't mean he can't abuse you with--with just gettin' on your nerves so terrible. I'm feelin' myself slip--crazy--ever since I got back from Cincinnati and seen what's goin' on in the big towns and me buried here; I been feelin' myself slip--slip, Kittie."

"Cincinnati! Good Lord! if you call that life! Any Monday morning on Forty-second Street makes Cincinnati look like New-Year's Eve. If you call Cincinnati life!"

"He's small, Kittie. He's a small potato of a man in his way of livin'. He can live and die without doin' anything except the same things over and over again, year out and year in."

"I know. I know. Ed was off the same pattern. It's the Adalia brand. Lord!

Hanna Long, if you could see some of the fellows I got this minute paying attentions to me in New York, you'd lose your mind. Spenders! Them New York guys make big and spend big, and they're willing to part with the spondoolaks. That's the life!"

"I--You look it, Kit. I never seen a girl get back her looks and keep 'em like you. I says to him to-night, I says, 'When I look at myself in the gla.s.s, I wanna die.'"

"You're all there yet, Hanna. Your voice over here the other night was something immense. Big enough to cut into any restaurant crowd, and that's what counts in cabaret. I don't tell anybody how to run his life, but if I had your looks and your contralto, I'd turn 'em into money, I would.

There's forty dollars a week in you this minute."

Mrs. Burkhardt's head went up. Her mouth had fallen open, her eyes brightening as they widened.

"Kit--when you goin' back?"

"To-morrow a week, honey--if I live through it."

"Could--you help me--your little lawyer--your--"

"Remember, I ain't advising--"

"Could you, Kit, and to--to get a start?"

"They say it of me there ain't a string in the Bijou Cafe that I can't pull my way."

"Could you, Kit? Would you?"

"I don't tell n.o.body how to run his life, Hanna. It's mighty hard to advise the other fellow about his own business. I don't want it said in this town, that's down on me, anyways, that Kit Scogin put ideas in Hanna Long's head."

"You didn't, Kit. They been there. Once I answered an ad. to join a county fair. I even sent money to a vaudeville agent in Cincinnati. I--"

"Nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent. It's cabaret where the money and easy hours is these days. Just a plain little solo act--contralto is what you can put over. A couple of 'Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night'

sob-solos is all you need. I'll let you meet Billy Howe of the Bijou.

Billy's a great one for running in a chaser act or two."

"I--How much would it cost, Kittie, to--to--"

"Hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all."

"Kittie, I--Would you--"

"Sure I would! Only, remember, I ain't responsible. I don't tell anybody how to run his life. That's something everybody's got to decide for herself."

"I--have--decided, Kittie."

At something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an oceanic walnut bedstead.

"Yes, Hanna?"

"Wake up!"

"I been awake--"

She set the lamp down on the brown-marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing from a run through deserted night's streets.

"I gotta talk to you, Burkhardt--now--to-night."

"Now's no time, Hanna. Come to bed."

"Things can't go on like this, John."

He lay back slowly.

"Maybe you're right, Hanna. I been layin' up here and thinkin' the same myself. What's to be done?"

"I've got to the end of my rope."

"With so much that G.o.d has given us, Hanna--health and prosperity--it's a sin before Him that unhappiness should take root in this home."

"If you're smart, you won't try to feed me up on gospel to-night!"

"I'm willin' to meet you, Hanna, on any proposition you say. How'd it be to move down to Schaefer's boardin'-house for the winter, where it'll be a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to Cincinnati for a week. I--"

"Oh no," she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing. "Oh no, you don't! Them things might have meant something to me once, but you've come too late with 'em. For eight years I been eatin' out my heart with 'em. Now you couldn't pay me to live at Schaefer's. I had to beg too long for it. Cincinnati! Why, its New-Year's Eve is about as lively as a real town's Monday morning. Oh no, you don't! Oh no!"

"Come on to bed, Hanna. You'll catch cold. Your breath's freezin'."

"I'm goin'--away, for good--that's where--I'm goin'!"

Her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of her hand to her mouth.

Her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little hand-in-hand boy and girl.

"You--you're sayin' a good many hasty things to-night, Hanna."

"Maybe."

He plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet.