The Vertical City Part 5

"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The minute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me would hold me back? See, Alma?"

"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--"

"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me.

Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!"

"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you."

"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'"

"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a little while that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a good man! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night he wants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia."

"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!"

"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so little as I do--now."

"You've said that before--and before."

"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a new life. I know it. I'm cured!"

"Mamma, if I thought you meant it."

"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case of neuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad.

I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over."

"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right."

"You'll thank G.o.d for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'd rather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live to learn such a--thing about me."

"But it's not fair. We'll have to explain to him, dear, that we hope you're cured now, but--"

"If you do--if you do--I'll kill myself! I won't live to bear that! You don't want me cured. You want to get rid of me, to degrade me until I kill myself! If I was ever anything else than what I am now--to Louis Latz--anything but his ideal--Alma, you won't tell! Kill me, but don't tell--don't tell!"

"Why, you know I wouldn't, sweetheart, if it is so terrible to you.

Never."

"Say it again."

"Never."

"As if it hasn't been terrible enough that you should have to know. But it's over, Alma. Your bad times with me are finished. I'm cured."

There were no words that Miss Samstag could force through the choke of her tears, so she sat cheek to her mother's cheek, the trembling she could no longer control racing through her like a chill.

"Oh--how--I hope so!"

"I know so."

"But wait a little while, mamma--just a year."

"No! No!"

"A few months."

"No, he wants it soon. The sooner the better at our age. Alma, mamma's cured! What happiness! Kiss me, darling. So help me G.o.d to keep my promises to you! Cured, Alma, cured."

And so in the end, with a smile on her lips that belied almost to herself the little run of fear through her heart, Alma's last kiss to her mother that night was the long one of felicitation.

And because love, even the talk of it, is so gamy on the lips of woman to woman, they lay in bed, heartbeat to heartbeat, the electric pad under her pillow warm to the hurt of Mrs. Samstag's brow, and talked, these two, deep into the stilliness of the hotel night.

"I'm going to be the best wife to him, Alma. You see, the woman that marries Louis has to measure up to the grand ideas of her he got from his mother."

"You were a good wife once, mamma. You'll be it again."

"That's another reason, Alma; it means my--cure. Living up to the ideas of a good man."

"Mamma! Mamma! you can't backslide now--ever."

"My little baby, who's helped me through such bad times, it's your turn now, Alma, to be care free like other girls."

"I'll never leave you, mamma, even if--he--Latz--shouldn't want me."

"He will, darling, and does! Those were his words. 'A room for Alma.'"

"I'll never leave you!"

"You will! Much as Louis and I want you with us every minute, we won't stand in your way! That's another reason I'm so happy, Alma. I'm not alone any more now. Leo's so crazy over you, just waiting for the chance to--pop--"

"Shh--sh--h--h!"

"Don't tremble so, darling. Mamma knows. He told Mrs. Gronauer last night when she was joking him to buy a ten-dollar carnation for the Convalescent Home Bazaar, that he would only take one if it was white, because little white flowers reminded him of Alma Samstag."

"Oh, mamma!"

"Say, it is as plain as the nose on your face. He can't keep his eyes off you. He sells goods to Doctor Gronauer's clinic and he says the same thing about him. It makes me so happy, Alma, to think you won't have to hold him off any more."

"I'll never leave you. Never!"

Nevertheless, she was the first to drop off to sleep, pink there in the dark with the secret of her blushes.

Then for Mrs. Samstag the travail set in. Lying there with her raging head tossing this way and that on the heated pillow, she heard with cruel awareness the minutiae, all the faint but clarified noises that can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator depositing a nighthawk. A plong of the bedspring. Somebody's cough. A train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but was rumpled to the aching lay of he cheek.

Once Alma, as a rule supersensitive to her mother's slightest unrest, floated up for the moment out of her young sleep, but she was very drowsy and very tired, and dream tides were almost carrying her back as she said:

"Mamma, you all right?"

Simulating sleep, Mrs. Samstag lay tense until her daughter's breathing resumed its light cadence.