Just Around the Corner Part 21

"We better go now, Addie; honest we had! Eddie'll wait outside for me."

"You poor kid! You want to get it over with, don't you? Get her coat, Eddie, and bring her my sweater to wear underneath. It's getting colder every minute."

"I ain't scared a bit, Addie. I'll just go in and pack my things together and hustle out again."

"Here's a sweater, Goldie, and your coat and hat."

"Take care, children; and, Goldie, don't forget all the things you need.

Just take your time and get your things together--warm clothes and all."

"I'll be waiting right outside for you, Goldie."

"I'm ready, Eddie."

"Don't let her get excited and worked up, Eddie."

"I ain't scared a bit, Addie."

"Sure you ain't?"

"Not a bit!"

"Good-by, Addie. Gee, but you're swell to me!"

"Don't forget to bring your rubbers, Goldie; going to work on wet mornings you'll need them."

"I--I ain't got none."

"You can have mine. I--I don't need them any more."

"Good-by, Ad--leave the dishes till we come back. I can do 'em swell myself after you two girls have gone to bed."

"Yes. I'll be waiting, Goldie; and we'll talk in bed like old times."

"Yes, yes!" It was as if Addie's frail hands were gripping Goldie's heart and clogging her speech.

"Good-by, children!"

"Good-by."

"S'long!"

The night air met them with a whoop and tugged and pulled at Goldie's hat.

"Take my arm, Goldie. It's some howler, ain't it?"

Their feet clacked on the cold, dry pavement, and pa.s.sers-by leaned into the wind.

"He was a great one for hating the cold, Eddie. Gee, how he hated winter!"

"That's why he wears a fur-collared coat and you go freezing along in a cheese-cloth jacket, I guess."

"It always kind of got on his chest and gave him fever."

"What about you? You just shivered along and da.s.sent say anything!"

"And I used to fix him antiphlogistin plasters half the night. When he wasn't mad or drunk he was just like a kid with the measles! It used to make me laugh so--he'd--"

"Humph!"

"But one night--one night I got the antiphlogistin too hot while I was straightening up--'cause he never liked a messy-looking room when he was sick--and he was down and out from one of his bad nights; and it--and it got too hot, and--" She turned away and finished her sentence in the teeth of the wind; but Eddie's arm tightened on hers until she could feel each distinct finger.

"G.o.d!" he said.

"I ain't scared a bit, Eddie."

"For what, I'd like to know! Ain't I going to be waiting right here across the street?"

"See! That's the room over there--the dark one, with the shade half-way up. Gee, how I hate it!"

"I'll be waiting right here in front of Joe's place, Goldie. If you need me just shoot the shade all the way up."

"I won't need you."

"Well, then, light the gas, pull the shade all the way down, and that'll mean all's well."

"Swell!" she said. "Down comes the shade--and all's well!"

"Good!"

They smiled, and their breaths clouded between them; and down through the high-walled street the wind shot javelin-like and stung red into their cheeks, and in Eddie's ears and round his heart the blood buzzed.

Goldie crossed the street and went up the steps lightly, her feet grating the brown stone like fine-grained sandpaper. When she unlocked the front door the cave-like mustiness and the cold smell of unsunned hallways and the conglomerate of food smells from below met her at the threshold. Memories like needle-tongued insects stung her.

The first-floor front she opened slowly, pausing after every creak of the door; and the gas she fumbled because her hand trembled, and the match burned close to her fingers before she found the tip.

She turned up the flame until it sang, and glanced about her fearfully, with one hand on her bruised cheek and her underlip caught in by her teeth.

Mr. Trimp's room was as expressive as a lady's glove still warm from her hand. He might have slipped out of it and let it lie crumpled, but in his own image.

The fumes of bay-rum and stale beer struggled for supremacy. The center-table, with a sickening litter of empty bottles and dead ashes, was dreary as cold mutton in its grease, or a woman's painted face at crack o' dawn, or the moment when the flavor of love becomes as tansy.

A red-satin slipper, an unhygienic drinking-goblet, which has leaked and slopped over full many a non-waterproof romance, lay on the floor, with its red run into many pinks and its rosette limp as a wad of paper.

Goldie picked her careful way round it. Fear and nausea and sickness at the heart made her dizzy.

The dresser, with its wavy mirror, was strewn with her husband's neckties; an uncorked bottle of bay-rum gave out its last faint fumes.

She opened the first long drawer with a quivering intake of breath and pulled out a shirt-waist, another, and yet another, and a coa.r.s.e white petticoat with a large-holed embroidery flounce. Then she dragged a suit-case, which was wavy like the mirror, through the blur of her tears, out from under the bed; and while she fumbled with the lock the door behind her opened, and her heart rose in her throat with the sudden velocity of an express elevator shooting up a ten-story shaft.