Just Around the Corner Part 27

"Such talk!"

"You think I let on to anybody! All I say is to you; but a girl needs advice from her parents. Look at your sister Ray--she was a smart and sensible girl."

"Abe, with his stuttering and all!"

"Just the same he is a good husband to her and makes her a good living.

You think she would have got him if she hadn't fixed things for herself--kind of! Believe me, it was hard enough for us, then, before papa went into petticoats."

"She can have him!"

"I always say Ray was a smart girl. She wasn't no beauty, and the chances didn't come so thick; and now to walk in her house you wouldn't think she did the courting! A more devoted boy than Abe I don't know."

"Do you like that bow at the belt, mamma?"

"Yes.... Tillie," called Mrs. Katzenstein, raising her voice, "turn on the lights in the parlor, and then tell Mr. Katzenstein I said to put on his coat."

"I don't want the lights on, mamma--it looks better that way."

"You want it to look like we was stingy with light yet! How does that look--just the gas-logs going! You tell Mr. Katzenstein, Tillie, that I insist that he should put on his coat to meet Birdie's company--his newspaper will keep. There's the bell! Tillie, go to the door."

After a well-timed interval Birdie entered the soft-lighted parlor; the gas-logs gave out a mellow but uncertain light. It was as if the spirit of fire were doing an elf dance about the room--glinting on the polished surface of the floor, glancing on and off the gilt frame of a wall-picture, and gleaming at its own reflection in the mahogany table-legs and gla.s.s doors of the curio cabinet.

Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.

"Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap to sit in the light," said Birdie.

He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.

"What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?"

"Sure I'm not," he said. "I'm just catching up on sleep."

They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers abruptly.

"Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated how Mr. Latz sells cigars."

"To-night," he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair and exhaling loudly, "I feel as funny as a funeral."

"Marcus," she said, "honest, you don't look right; you're pale!"

He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate _vis-a-vis_.

The light played over them.

"You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you."

Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump.

He was a well-set-up young man--solidly knit and close packed--but five inches short of the stuff that matinee idols and policemen are made of.

Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.

This facetious mood, however, was further emphasized in the large, well-formed ears, which flared away from his head as if alarmed, and in a wide, heavy-set mouth, which seemed straining to meet those respective ears; yet when Mr. Gump smiled he showed a double deck of large white teeth, dazzling as snow, and his eyes illuminated, and small-rayed wrinkles spread out from the corners and gave them geniality.

"Your mamma was here at the whist this afternoon, Marcus. We think she's a grand woman!"

His face lighted.

"I was afraid she wouldn't come on account of the weather. I meant to telephone from the factory to take a cab, but I had a hard day of it.

What's the difference, I always say in a case like that, whether it costs a little more or a little less? Recreation is good for her."

"It's a terrible night, isn't it? Papa says even the horses can't walk--it's so slippery."

"I care a lot how slippery it is when I come to see you, Birdie." He sighed and regarded her nervously.

"Aw, Marcus! Jollier!" She colored the red of the deepest peony in the garden and giggled like water purling over stones.

"You can believe me, I wish I was jollying! Until I met you it was all right to say that about me; but now--but--Oh, well, what's the use of talking?"

He rose from the divan in some agitation, thrust his hands into his pockets, hitched his trousers upward, and walked away.

Birdie remained on the divan, observing the rules of the oldest game, clasped her hands on her knees, and held the silence. When she finally spoke her voice was filtered by the benign process of understanding.

"Look how easy he gets mad," she said, querulously; "just like I'm not glad he wasn't jollying!"

There was a pause; the large onyx clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly and impersonally, as if its concern were solely with time and not with man.

Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses--a sloe black and a virgin white--rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.

"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway.

It's like I said to you last night--if a fellow can't give you what you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."

"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like that!"

Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood fizzing through their veins.

"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell--"

At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate in low seas, hove in.

"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well--ain't it?"

"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."

"Just like Mr. Katzenstein--ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works!

Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less, I tell him."

"You got a swell apartment here, Mrs. Katzenstein. Some cousins of my poor father's--the Morris Jacobs--live in this same house."

"Are those Jacobs your cousins? Such grand people--the knit-underwear Jacobs, Birdie! I never meet the old lady in the elevator that she don't ask me to come up and see her. It's terrible the way I don't pay calls. Birdie, we must go up soon."