The Vertical City Read online

  THE SMUDGE

  In the bleak little graveyard of Hattie Bertch's dead hopes, dead loves,and dead ecstasies, more than one headstone had long since begun to sagand the wreaths of bleeding heart to shrivel.

  That was good, because the grave that is kept bubbly with tears is atender, quivering thing, almost like an amputated bit of self that stillaches with threads of life.

  Even over the mound of her dead ambitions, which grave she had dug withthe fingers of her heart, Hattie could walk now with unsensitive feet.It had become dry clay with cracks in it like sardonic smiles.

  Smiles. That was the dreadful part, because the laugh where therehave been tears is not a nice laugh, and Hattie could sit among theheadstones of her dead dreams now and laugh. But not horridly. Justdrearily.

  There was one grave, Heart's Desire, that was still a little moist. Butit, too, of late years, had begun to sink in, like an old mouth withreceding gums, as if the very teeth of a smiling dream had rotted. Theyhad.

  Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maidsnow. Buxom negro ones, with pale palms, white eyes, and the beat ofkettledrums somewhere close to the cuticle of the balls of her feet.

  She was irrevocably down on managers' and agents' lists as "comedyblack." Countless the premiers she had opened to the fleck of a duster!Hattie came high, as maids go. One hundred and fifty dollars a week andno road engagements. She dressed alone. Her part in "Love Me Long" hadbeen especially written in for the sake of the peculiar kind of comedyrelief she could bring to it. A light roar of recognition swept theaudience at her entrance. Once in a while, a handclap. So Hattie, whoseheart's desire had once been to play Juliet, played maids now. Buxomly.

  And this same Hattie, whose heart's desire had once been to kiss Love,but whose lips were still a little twisted with the taste of clay, couldkiss only Love's offspring now. But not bitterly. Thanksgivingly.

  Love's offspring was Marcia. Sixteen and the color and odor of an ivoryfan that has lain in frangipani. And Hattie could sometimes poke hertongue into her cheek over this bit of whimsy:

  It was her well-paid effort in the burnt cork that made possible, forinstance, the frill of real lace that lay to the low little neck ofMarcia's first party dress, as if blown there in sea spume.

  Out of the profits of Hattie's justly famous Brown ColdCream--Guaranteed Color-fast--Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate, had comeMarcia's ermine muff and tippet; the enamel toilet set; the Steinwaygrand piano; the yearly and by no means light tuition toll at MissHarperly's Select Day School for Girls.

  You get the whimsy of it? For everything fair that was Marcia, Hattiehad brownly paid for. Liltingly, and with the rill of the song ofthanksgiving in her heart.

  That was how Hattie moved through her time. Hugging this melody ofMarcia. Through the knife-edged nervous evenings in the theater.Bawlings. Purple lips with loose muscles crawling under the rouge.Fetidness of scent on stale bodies. Round faces that could hook into thelook of vultures when the smell of success became as the smell of redmeat. All the petty soiled vanities, like the disordered boudoir of acocotte. The perpetual stink of perfume. Powder on the air and cakingthe breathing. Open dressing-room doors that should have been closed.The smelling geometry of the make-up box. Curls. Corsets. Cosmetics. Menin undershirts, grease-painting. "Gawdalmighty, Tottie, them's my teddybears you're puttin' on." Raw nerves. Raw emotions. Ego, the actor'sovertone, abroad everywhere and full of strut. "Overture!" The wait inthe wings. Dizziness at the pit of the stomach. Audiences with lean jawsetched into darkness. Jaws that can smile or crack your bones and eatyou. Faces swimming in the stage ozone and wolfish for cue. The purplelips--

  Almost like a frieze stuck on to the border of each day was Hattie'slife in the theater. Passementerie.

  That was how Hattie treated it. Especially during those placid years ofthe phenomenal New York run of "Love Me Long." The outer edge of herreality. The heart of her reality? Why, the heart of it was the longmorning hours in her own fragrant kitchen over doughnuts boiled in oiland snowed under in powdered sugar! Cookies that bit with a snap. Filetof sole boned with fingers deft at it and served with a merest fluff oftartar sauce. Marcia ate like that. Preciously. Pecksniffily. An egg atbreakfast a gag to the sensibilities! So Hattie ate hers in the kitchen,standing, and tucked the shell out of sight, wrapped in a lettuce leaf.Beefsteak, for instance, sickened Marcia, because there was blood in theooze of its juices. But Hattie had a sly way of camouflage. Filetmignon (so strengthening, you see) crushed under a little millinery ofmushrooms and served under glass. Then when Marcia's neat little row ofneat little teeth bit in and the munch began behind clean and carefullips, Hattie's heart, a regular old bandit for cunning, beat hoppity,skippity, jump!

  Those were her realities. Home. The new sandwich cutters. Heart shape.Diamond shape. Spade. The strip of hall carpet newly discovered to scourlike new with brush and soap and warm water. Epstein's meat marketthrows in free suet. The lamp with the opal-silk shade for Marcia'spiano. White oilcloth is cleaner than shelf paper. Dotted Swisscurtains, the ones in Marcia's room looped back with pink bows. Oldsashes, pressed out and fringed at the edges.

  And if you think that Hattie's six rooms and bath and sunny, full-sizedkitchen, on Morningside Heights, were trumped-up ones of the press agentfor the Sunday Supplement, look in.

  Any afternoon. Tuesday, say, and Marcia just home from school. OnTuesday afternoon of every other week Hattie made her cream, in a largecopper pot that hung under the sink. Six dozen half-pint jars waitingto be filled with Brown Cold Cream. One hundred and forty-four jarsa month. Guaranteed Color-fast. Mulatto, Medium, Chocolate. Labeled.Sealed. Sold. And demand exceeding the supply. An ingratiating, expertcream, known the black-faced world over. It slid into the skin, notsootily, but illuminating it to winking, African copper. For instance,Hattie's make-up cream for Linda in "Love Me Long" was labeled"Chocolate." But it worked in even a truer brown, as if it had come outof the pigment instead of gone into the pores.

  Four hours of stirring it took, adding with exact minutiae themysteriously proper proportions of spermacetti, oil of sweet almonds,white wax--But never mind. Hattie's dark secret was her own.

  Fourteen years of her black art as Broadway's maid _de luxe_ had beenher laboratory. It was almost her boast now--remember the sunkenheadstones--that she had handled spotlessly every fair young star of thetheaters' last ten years.

  It was as mysterious as pigment, her cream, and as true, and nettedher, with occasional extra batches, an average of two hundred dollars amonth. She enjoyed making it. Singing as she stirred or rather stirringas she sang, the plenitude of her figure enveloped in a blue-and-whitebungalow apron with rickrack trimming.

  Often Marcia, home from day school, watched. Propped up in the windowframe with her pet cat, a Persian, with eyes like swimming pools withpainted green bottoms, seated in a perfect circle in her quiet lap,for all the world in the attitude of a sardel except for the toothpickthrough.

  Sometimes it almost seemed as if Marcia did the purring. She could sitlike that, motionless, her very stare seeming to sleep. To Hattie thatstare was beautiful, and in a way it was. As if two blue little sunswere having their high noon.

  Sometimes Marcia offered to help, because toward the end, Hattie's backcould ache at this process, terribly, the pain knotting itself into herface when the rotary movement of her stirring arm began to yank at hernerves.

  "Momie, I'll stir for a while."

  Marcia's voice was day-schooled. As clipped, as boxed, and as preciseas a hedge. Neat, too, as neat as the way her clear lips met, and herteeth, which had a little mannerism of coming down after each word,biting them off like threads. They were appealing teeth that had nevergrown big or square. Very young corn. To Hattie there was somethingabout them that reminded her of a tiny set of Marcia's doll dishes thatshe had saved. Little innocences.

  "I don't mind stirring, dear. I'm not tired."

  "But your face is all twisted."

  Hattie's twist
ed face could induce in Marcia the same gagged pallor thatthe egg in the morning or the red in the beefsteak juices brought there.

  "Go in and play the piano awhile, Marcy, I'll be finished soon."

  "Sh-h-h! No. Pussy-kitty's asleep."

  As the cream grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie couldkeep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and alittle arch of sweat came out in a mustache.

  The brown mud of the cream began to fluff. Hattie rubbed a fleck of itinto her freckled forearm. Yes, Hattie's arm was freckled, and so wasthe bridge of her nose, in a little saddle. Once there had been aprettiness to the freckles because they whitened the skin they sprinkledand were little stars to the moon reddiness of Hattie's hair. But thered of the moon had set coldly in Hattie's hair now, and the stars werejust freckles, and there was the dreaded ridge of flesh showing abovethe ridge of her corsets, and when she leaned forward to stir her cheekshung forward like a spaniel's, not of fat, but heaviness. Hattie's armsand thighs were granite to the touch and to the scales. Kindly freckledgranite. She weighed almost twice what she looked. Marcia, whose hipswere like lyres, hated the ridge above the corset line and massaged it.Mab smacking the Himalayas.

  After a while, there in the window frame, Marcia closed her eyes. Therewas still the illusion of a purr about her. Probably because, as herkitten warmed in its circle, its coziness began to whir mountingly.The September afternoon was full of drone. The roofs of the city fromHattie's kitchen window, which overlooked Morningside Heights, lay flatas slaps. Tranced, indoor quiet. Presently Hattie began to tiptoe. Theseventy-two jars were untopped now, in a row on a board over the built-inwashtub. Seventy-two yawning for content. Squnch! Her enormous spooninto the copper kettle and flop, gurgle, gooze, softly into the jars.One--two--three--At the sixty-eighth, Marcia, without stirring orlifting her lids, spoke into the sucky silence.

  "Momie?"

  "Yes, Marcy."

  "You'll be glad."

  Hattie, pausing at the sixty-eighth, "Why, dear?"

  "I came home in Nonie Grosbeck's automobile. I'm invited to a dinnerdance October the seventeenth. At their house in Gramercy Park."

  The words must have gone to Hattie's knees, because, dropping a spat ofmulatto cold cream on the linoleum, she sat down weakly on the kitchenchair that she had painted blue and white to match the china cereal seton the shelf above it.

  "Marcy!"

  "And she likes me better than any girl in school, momie, and I'm tobe her chum from to-day on, and not another girl in school is invitedexcept Edwina Nelson, because her father's on nearly all the same boardsof directors with Mr. Grosbeck, and--"

  "Marcia! Marcia! and you came home from school just as if nothing hadhappened! Child, sometimes I think you're made of ice."

  "Why, I'm glad, momie."

  But that's what there were, little ice glints of congealed satisfactionin Marcia's eyes.

  "Glad," said Hattie, the word full of tears. "Why, honey, you don'trealize it, but this is the beginning! This is the meaning of mystruggle to get you into Miss Harperly's school. It wasn't easy. I'venever told you the--strings I had to pull. Conservative people, you see.That's what the Grosbecks are, too. Home people. The kind who can affordto wear dowdy hats and who have lived in the same house for thirtyyears."

  "Nome's mother was born in the house they live in."

  "Substantial people, who half-sole their shoes and endow colleges.Taxpayers. Policyholders. Church members. Oh, Marcia, those are the safepeople!"

  "There's a Grosbeck memorial window in the Rock Church."

  "I used to be so afraid for you, Marcy. Afraid you would take to themake-believe folks. The play people. The theater. I used to fear foryou! The Pullman car. The furnished room. That going to the hotelroom, alone, nights after the show. You laugh at me sometimes for justthrowing a veil over my face and coming home black-face. It's becauseI'm too tired, Marcy. Too lonesome for home. On the road I always usedto think of all the families in the audience. The husbands and wives.Brides and grooms. Sweethearts. After the performance they all went tohomes. To brownstone fronts like the Grosbecks'. To cottages. To flats.With a snack to eat in the refrigerator or laid out on the dining-roomtable. Lamps burning and waiting. Nighties laid out and bedcovers turnedback. And then--me. Second-rate hotels. That walk through the darkdowntown streets. Passing men who address you through closed lips. Thedingy lobby. There's no applause lasts long enough, Marcia, to reachover that moment when you unlock your hotel room and the smell ofdisinfectant and unturned mattress comes out to you."

  "Ugh!"

  "Oh, keep to the safe people, Marcia! The unexciting people, maybe, butthe safe home-building ones with old ideals and old hearthstones."

  "Nonie says they have one in their library that comes from Italy."

  "Hitch your ideal to a hearthstone like that, Marcia."

  "Nonie goes to riding academy."

  "So shall you."

  "It's six dollars an hour."

  "I don't care."

  "Her father's retired except for being director in banks. And,momie--they don't mind, dear--about us. Nonie knows that my--fatheris--is separated and never lived at home with us. She's broad-minded.She says just so there's no scandal, a divorce, or anything like that.She said it's vulgar to cultivate only rich friends. She says she'd gowith me even if she's forbidden to."

  "Why, Marcy darling, why should she be forbidden?"

  "Oh, Nonie's broadminded. She says if two people are unsuited theyshould separate, quietly, like you and my father. She knows we're one ofthe first old Southern families on my father's side. I--I'm not tryingto make you talk about it, dear, but--but we are--aren't we?"

  "Yes, Marcy."

  "He--he was just--irresponsible. That's not being--not nice people, isit?"

  "No, Marcy."

  "Nonie's not forbidden. She just meant in case, momie. You see, withsome old families like hers--the stage--but Nonie says her fathercouldn't even say anything to that if he wanted to. His own sister wenton the stage once, and they had to hush it up in the papers."

  "Did you explain to her, Marcy, that stage life at its best can be fullof fine ideals and truth? Did you make her see how regular your ownlittle life has been? How little you know about--my work? How away I'vekept you? How I won't even play out-of-town engagements so we can alwaysbe together in our little home? You must explain all those things toyour friends at Miss Harperly's. It helps--with steady people."

  "I have, momie, and she's going to bring me home every afternoon intheir automobile after we've called for her brother Archie at ColumbiaLaw School."

  "Marcy! the Grosbeck automobile bringing you home every day!"

  "And it's going to call for me the night of the party. Nonie's getting alemon taffeta."

  "I'll get you ivory, with a bit of real lace!"

  "Oh, momie, momie, I can scarcely wait!"

  "What did she say, Marcy, when she asked--invited you?"

  "She?"

  "Nonie."

  "Why--she--didn't invite me, momie."

  "But you just said--"

  "It was her brother Archie invited me. We called for him at Columbia LawSchool, you see. It was he invited me. Of course Nonie wants me and said'Yes' right after him--but it's he--who wants Nonie and me to be chums.I--He--I thought--I--told--you--momie."

  Suddenly Marcia's eyes, almost with the perpendicular slits of herkitten's in them, seemed to swish together like portieres, shuttingHattie behind them with her.

  "Oh--my Marcy!" said Hattie, dimly, after a while, as if from theirdepths. "Marcy, dearest!"

  "At--at Harperly's, momie, almost all the popular upper-class girlswear--a--a boy's fraternity pin."

  "Fraternity pin?"

  "It's the--the beginning of being engaged."

  "But, Marcy--"

  "Archie's a Pi Phi!"

  "A--what?"

  "A Pi Phi."

  "Phi--pie--Marcy--dear--"

  * * *
* *

  On October 17th "Love Me Long" celebrated its two-hundredth performance.Souvenir programs. A few appropriate words by the management.A flashlight of the cast. A round of wine passed in theafter-the-performance gloom of the wings. Aqueous figures fading off inthe orderly back-stage fashion of a well-established success.

  Hattie kissed the star. They liked each other with the unenvy of theirdivergent roles. Miss Robinson even humored some of Hattie's laughs. Sheliked to feel the flame of her own fairness as she stood there waitingfor the audience to guffaw its fill of Hattie's drolleries; a narcissusswaying reedily beside a black crocodile.

  She was a new star and her beauty the color of cloth of gold, and Hattiein her lowly comedian way not an undistinguished veteran. So they couldkiss in the key of a cat cannot unseat a king.

  But, just the same, Miss Robinson's hand flew up automatically againstthe dark of Hattie's lips.

  "I don't fade off, dearie. Your own natural skin is no more color-fast.I handled Elaine Doremus in 'The Snowdrop' for three seasons. Never somuch as a speck or a spot on her. My cream don't fade."

  "Of course not, dear! How silly of me! Kiss me again."

  That was kind enough of her. Oh yes, they got on. But sometimes Hattie,seated among her sagging headstones, would ache with the dry sob of theblack crocodile who yearned toward the narcissus....

  Quite without precedent, there was a man waiting for her in the wings.

  The gloom of back-stage was as high as trees and Hattie had not seenhim in sixteen years. But she knew. With the stunned consciousness of astabbed person that glinting instant before the blood begins to flow.

  It was Morton Sebree--Marcia's father.

  "Morton!"

  "Hattie."

  "Come up to my dressing room," she said, as matter-of-factly as if herbrain were a clock ticking off the words.

  They walked up an iron staircase of unreality. Fantastic stairs. Wispsof gloom. Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit veryhard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to herpain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant littleideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now.Terribly. Morton was back.

  His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister.It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of ahand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again.Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesqueshow.

  Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in awire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks ofgrease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end.Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with thegesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinksseeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around herlips. It made of her mouth a comedy blubber, her own rather firm lipssliding about somewhere in the lightish swamp. That was all of Hattiethat looked out. Except her eyes. They were good gray eyes with poppingwhites now, because of a trick of blackening the lids. But the iriseswere in their pools, inviolate.

  "Well, Hattie, I reckon I'd have known you even under black."

  "I thought you were in Rio."

  "Got to hankering after the States, Hattie."

  "I read of a Morris Sebree died in Brazil. Sometimes I used to thinkmaybe it might have been a misprint--and--that--you--were--the--one."

  "No, no. 'Live and kickin'. Been up around here a good while."

  "Where?"

  "Home. N'Orleans. M' mother died, Hattie, God rest her bones. Know it?"

  "No."

  "Cancer."

  It was a peculiar silence. A terrible word like that was almost slowlysoluble in it. Gurgling down.

  "O-oh!"

  "Sort of gives a fellow the shivers, Hattie, seeing you kinda hidin'behind yourself like this. But I saw you come in the theater to-night.You looked right natural. Little heavier."

  "What do you want?"

  "Why, I guess a good many things in general and nothing in particular,as the sayin' goes. You don't seem right glad to see me, honey."

  "Glad!" said Hattie, and laughed as if her mirth were a dice shaking ina box of echoes.

  "Your hair's right red yet. Looked mighty natural walkin' into thetheater to-night. Take off those kinks, honey."

  She reached for her cleansing cream, then stopped, her eyes full of thefoment of torture.

  "What's my looks to you?"

  "You've filled out."

  "You haven't," she said, putting down the cold-cream jar. "You haven'taged an hour. Your kind lies on life like it was a wall in the sun. Awall that somebody else has built for you stone by stone."

  "I reckon you're right in some ways, Hattie. There's been a meanderin'streak in me somewheres. You and m' mother, God rest her bones, had adifferent way of scoldin' me for the same thing. Lot o' Huck Finn inme."

  "Don't use bad-boy words for vicious, bad-man deeds!"

  "But you liked me. Both of you liked me, honey. Only two women I everreally cared for, too. You and m' mother."

  Her face might have been burning paper, curling her scorn for him.

  "Don't try that, Morton. It won't work any more. What used to infatuateme only disgusts me now. The things I thought I--loved--in you, I loathenow. The kind of cancer that killed your mother is the kind that eatsout the heart. I never knew her, never even saw her except from adistance, but I know, just as well as if I'd lived in that fine bighouse with her all those years in New Orleans, that you were thesickness that ailed her--lying, squandering, gambling, no-'count son! Ifshe and I are the only women you ever cared for, thank God that therearen't any more of us to suffer from you. Morton, when I read that aMorris Sebree had died in Brazil, I hoped it was you! You're no good!You're no good!"

  She was thumping now with the sobs she kept under her voice.

  "Why, Hattie," he said, his drawl not quickened, "you don't mean that!"

  "I do! You're a ruiner of lives! Her life! Mine! You're a rotten applethat can speck every one it touches."

  "That's hard, Hattie, but I reckon you're not all wrong."

  "Oh, that softy Southern talk won't get us anywhere, Morton. The verysound of it sickens me now. You're like a terrible sickness I once had.I'm cured now. I don't know what you want here, but whatever it is youmight as well go. I'm cured!"

  He sat forward in his chair, still twirling the soft brown hat. He wasdressed like that. Softly. Good-quality loosely woven stuffs. There wasstill a tan down of persistent youth on the back of his neck. But hishands were old, the veins twisted wiring, and his third finger yellowlystained, like meerschaum darkening.

  "Grantin' everything you say, Hattie--and I'm holdin' no brief formyself--_I've_ been the sick one, not you. Twenty years I've been downsick with hookworm."

  "With devilishness."

  "No, Hattie. It's the government's diagnosis. Hookworm. Been a sick manall my life with it. Funny thing, though, all those years in Rio knockedit out of me."

  "Faugh!"

  "I'm a new man since I'm well of it."

  "Hookworm! That's an easy word for ingrained no-'countness, deviltry,and deceit. It wasn't hookworm came into the New Orleans stock companywhere I was understudying leads and getting my chance to play bigthings. It wasn't hookworm put me in a position where I had to takeanything I could get! So that instead of finding me playing leadsyou find me here--black-face! It was a devil! A liar! A spendthrift,no-'count son out of a family that deserved better. I've cried moretears over you than I ever thought any woman ever had it in her to cry.Those months in that boarding house in Peach Tree Street down in NewOrleans! Peach Tree Street! I remember how beautiful even the name ofit was when you took me there--lying--and how horrible it became to me.Those months when I used to see your mother's carriage drive by thehouse twice a day and me crying my eyes out behind the curtains. That'swhat I've never forgiven myself for. She was a woman who stood forfi
ne things in New Orleans. A good woman whom the whole town pitied! Ano-'count son squandering her fortune and dragging down the family name.If only I had known all that then! She would have helped me if I hadappealed to her. She wouldn't have let things turn out secretly--the waythey did. She would have helped me. I--You--Why have you come hereto jerk knives out of my heart after it's got healed with the pointssticking in? You're nothing to me. You're skulking for a reason. You'vebeen hanging around, getting pointers about me. My life is my own! Youget out!"

  "The girl. She well?"

  It was a quiet question, spoken in the key of being casual, and Hattie,whose heart skipped a beat, tried to corral the fear in her eyes to takeit casually, except that her eyelids seemed to grow old even as theydrooped. Squeezed grape skins.

  "You get out, Morton," she said. "You've got to get out."

  He made a cigarette in an old, indolent way he had of wetting it withhis smile. He was handsome enough after his fashion, for those who likethe rather tropical combination of dark-ivory skin, and hair a lightershade of tan. It did a curious thing to his eyes. Behind their allotmentof tan lashes they became neutralized. Straw colored.

  "She's about sixteen now. Little over, I reckon."

  "What's that to you?"

  "Blood, Hattie. Thick."

  "What thickened it, Morton--after sixteen years?"

  "Used to be an artist chap down in Rio. On his uppers. One night,according to my description of what I imagined she looked like, he drewher. Yellow hair, I reckoned, and sure enough--"

  "You're not worthy of the resemblance. It wouldn't be there if I had thesaying."

  "You haven't," he said, suddenly, his teeth snapping together as ifbiting off a thread.

  "Nor you!" something that was the whiteness of fear lightening behindher mask. She rose then, lifting her chair out of the path toward thedoor and flinging her arm out toward it, very much after the manner ofMiss Robinson in Act II.

  "You get out, Morton," she said, "before I have you put out. They'reclosing the theater now. Get out!"

  "Hattie," his calm enormous, "don't be hasty. A man that has come to hissenses has come back to you humble and sincere. A man that's been sick.Take me back, Hattie, and see if--"

  "Back!" she said, lifting her lips scornfully away from touching theword. "You remember that night in that little room on Peach Tree Streetwhen I prayed on my knees and kissed--your--shoes and crawled for yourmercy to stay for Marcia to be born? Well, if you were to lie on thisfloor and kiss my shoes and crawl for my mercy I'd walk out on you theway you walked out on me. If you don't go, I'll call a stage hand andmake you go. There's one coming down the corridor now and locking thehouse. You go--or I'll call!"

  His eyes, with their peculiar trick of solubility in his color scheme,seemed all tan.

  "I'll go," he said, looking slim and Southern, his imperturbability everso slightly unfrocked--"I'll go, but you're making a mistake, Hattie."

  Fear kept clanging in her. Fire bells of it.

  "Oh, but that's like you, Morton! Threats! But, thank God, nothing youcan do can harm me any more."

  "I reckon she's considerable over sixteen now. Let's see--"

  Fire bells. Fire bells.

  "Come out with what you want, Morton, like a man! You're feelingfor something. Money? Now that your mother is dead and her fortunesquandered, you've come to harass me? That's it! I know you, like aperson who has been disfigured for life by burns knows fire. Well, Iwon't pay!"

  "Pay? Why, Hattie--I want you--back--"

  She could have cried because, as she sat there blackly, she was sickwith his lie.

  "I'd save a dog from you."

  "Then save--her--from me."

  The terrible had happened so quietly. Morton had not raised his voice;scarcely his lips.

  She closed the door then and sat down once more, but that which hadcrouched out of their talk was unleashed now.

  "That's just exactly what I intend to do."

  "How?"

  "By saving her sight or sound of you."

  "You can't, Hattie."

  "Why?"

  "I've come back." There was a curve to his words that hooked into herheart like forceps about a block of ice. But she outstared him, holdingher lips in the center of the comedy rim so that he could see how firmtheir bite.

  "Not to me."

  "To her, then."

  "Even you wouldn't be low enough to let her know--"

  "Know what?"

  "Facts."

  "You mean she doesn't know?"

  "Know! Know you for what you are and for what you made of me? I'vekept it something decent for her. Just the separation of husband andwife--who couldn't agree. Incompatibility. I have not told her--" Andsuddenly could have rammed her teeth into the tongue that had betrayedher. Simultaneously with the leap of light into his eyes came the leapof her error into her consciousness.

  "Oh," he said, and smiled, a slow smile that widened as leisurely assorghum in the pouring.

  "You made me tell you that! You came here for that. To find out!"

  "Nothin' the sort, Hattie. You only verified what I kinda suspected.Naturally, you've kept it from her. Admire you for it."

  "But I lied! See! I know your tricks. She does know you for what you areand what you made of me. She knows everything. Now what are you goingto do? She knows! I lied! I--" then stopped, at the curve his lips weretaking and at consciousness of the pitiableness of her device.

  "Morton," she said, her hands opening into her lap into pads of greatpink helplessness, "you wouldn't tell her--on me! You're not that low!"

  "Wouldn't tell what?"

  He was rattling her, and so she fought him with her gaze, trying tofasten and fathom under the flicker of his lids. But there were no eyesthere. Only the neutral, tricky tan.

  "You see, Morton, she's just sixteen. The age when it's more importantthan anything else in the world to a young girl that's been reared likeher to--to have her life _regular_! Like all her other little schoolfriends. She's like that, Morton. Sensitive! Don't touch her, Morton.For God's sake, don't! Some day when she's past having to care soterribly--when she's older--you can rake it up if you must torture. I'lltell her then. But for God's sake, Morton, let us live--now!"

  "Hattie, you meet me to-morrow morning and take a little journey to oneof these little towns around here in Jersey or Connecticut, and your lieto her won't be a lie any more."

  "Morton--I--I don't understand. Why?"

  "I'll marry you."

  "You fool!" she said, almost meditatively. "So you've heard we've gottenon a bit. You must even have heard of this"--placing her hand over thejar of the Brown Cold Cream. "You want to be in at the feast. You're soeasy to read that I can tell you what you're after before you can getthe coward words out. Marry you! You fool!"

  It was as if she could not flip the word off scornfully enough, suckingback her lower lip, then hurling.

  "Well, Hattie," he said, unbunching his soft hat, "I reckon that'spretty plain."

  "I reckon it is, Morton."

  "All right. Everybody to his own notion of carryin' a grudge to thegrave. But it's all right, honey. No hard feelin's. It's something toknow I was willin' to do the right thing. There's a fruit steamer out ofhere for N'Orleans in the mawnin'. Reckon I'll catch it."

  "I'd advise you to."

  "No objection to me droppin' around to see the girl first? Entitled to alittle natural curiosity. Come, I'll take you up home this evenin'. Thegirl. No harm."

  "You're not serious, Morton. You wouldn't upset things. You wouldn'ttell--that--child!"

  "Why, not in a thousand years, honey, unless you forced me to it. Well,you've forced me. Come, Hattie, I'm seein' you home this evenin'."

  "You can't put your foot--"

  "Come now. You're too clever a woman to try to prevent me. Coursethere's a way to keep me from goin' up home with you this evenin'. Iwouldn't use it, if I were you. You know I'll get to see her. I evenknow where she goes to school. Mighty nice
selection you made, Hattie,Miss Harperly's."

  "You can't frighten me," she said, trying to moisten her lips with hertongue. But it was dry as a parrot's. It was hard to close her lips.They were oval and suddenly immobile as a picture frame. What if shecould not swallow. There was nothing to swallow! Dry tongue. O God!Marcia!

  That was the fleeting form her panic took, but almost immediately shecould manage her lips again. Her lips, you see, they counted so! Shemust keep them firm in the slippery shine of the comedy black.

  "Come," he said, "get your make-up off. I'll take you up in a cab."

  "How do you know it's--up?"

  "Why, I don't know as I do know exactly. Just came kind of natural toput it that way. Morningside Heights is about right, I calculate."

  "So--you _have_--been watching."

  "Well, I don't know as I'd put it thataway. Naturally, when I got totown--first thing I did--most natural thing in the world. That's amighty fine car with a mighty fine-looking boy and a girl bringsyour--our girl home every afternoon about four. We used to have a familyof Grosbeaks down home. Another branch, I reckon."

  "O--God!" A malaprop of a tear, too heavy to wink in, came rollingsuddenly down Hattie's cheek. "Morton--let--us--live--for God's sake!Please!"

  He regarded the clean descent of the tear down Hattie's color-fast cheekand its clear drop into the bosom of her black-taffeta housemaid'sdress.

  "By Jove! The stuff _is_ color-fast! You've a fortune in that cream ifyou handle it right, honey."

  "My way is the right way for me."

  "But it's a woman's way. Incorporate. Manufacture it. Get a man on thejob. Promote it!"

  "Ah, that sounds familiar. The way you promoted away every cent of yourmother's fortune until the bed she died in was mortgaged. One of yourwildcat schemes again! Oh, I watched you before I lost track of you inSouth America--just the way you're watching--us--now! I know the way yousquandered your mother's fortune. The rice plantation in Georgia. Thealfalfa ranch. The solid-rubber-tire venture in Atlanta. You don't getyour hands on my affairs. My way suits me!"

  The tumult in her was so high and her panic so like a squirrel in thecircular frenzy of its cage that she scarcely noted the bang on the doorand the hairy voice that came through.

  "All out!"

  "Yes," she said, without knowing it.

  "You're losing a fortune, Hattie. Shame on a fine, strapping woman likeyou, black-facing herself up like this when you've hit on something witha fortune in it if you work it properly. You ought to have more regardfor the girl. Black-face!"

  "What has her--father's regard done for her? It's my black-face has kepther like a lily!"

  "Admitting all that you say about me is right. Well, I'm here eatinghumble pie now. If that little girl doesn't know, bless my heart,I'm willin' she shouldn't ever know. I'll take you out to Greenwichto-morrow and marry you. Then what you've told her all these years isthe truth. I've just come back, that's all. We've patched up. It's doneevery day. Right promoting and a few hundred dollars in that there creamwill--"

  She laughed. November rain running off a broken spout. Yellow leavesscuttling ahead of wind.

  "The picture puzzle is now complete, Morton. Your whole scheme, pieceby piece. You're about as subtle as corn bread. Well, my answer to youagain is, 'Get out!'"

  "All right. All right. But we'll both get out, Hattie. Come, I'm a-goin'to call on you-all up home a little while this evenin'!"

  "No. It's late. She's--"

  "Come, Hattie, you know I'm a-goin' to see that girl one way or another.If you want me to catch that fruit steamer to-morrow, if I were you I'dlet me see her my way. You know I'm not much on raisin' my voice, but ifI were you, Hattie, I wouldn't fight me."

  "Morton--Morton, listen! If you'll take that fruit steamer withouttrying to see her--would you? You're on your uppers. I understand. Woulda hundred--two hundred--"

  "I used to light my cigarette with that much down on my rice swamps--"

  "You see, Morton, she's such a little thing. A little thing with bigeyes. All her life those eyes have looked right down into me, believingeverything I ever told her. About you too, Morton. Good things. Not thatI'm ashamed of anything I ever told her. My only wrong was ignorance.And innocence. Innocence of the kind of lesson I was to learn from you."

  "Nothin' was ever righted by harping on it, Hattie."

  "But I want you to understand--O God, make him understand--she's such asensitive little thing. And as things stand now--glad I'm her mother.Yes, glad--black-face and all! Why, many's the time I've gone home fromthe theater, too tired to take off my make-up until I got into my ownrocker with my ankles soaking in warm water. They swell so terriblysometimes. Rheumatism, I guess. Well, many a time when I kissed her inher sleep she's opened her eyes on me--black-face and all. Her arms upand around me. I was there underneath the black! She knows that! Andthat's what she'll always know about me, no matter what you tell her.I'm there--her mother--underneath the black! You hear, Morton! That'swhy you must let us--live--"

  "My proposition is the mighty decent one of a gentleman."

  "She's only a little baby, Morton. And just at that age where beinglike all the other boys and girls is the whole of her little life. It'skilling--all her airiness and fads and fancies. Such a proper littleyoung lady. You know, the way they clip and trim them at finishingschool. Sweet-sixteen nonsense that she'll outgrow. To-night, Morton,she's at a party. A boy's. Her first. That fine-looking yellow-hairedyoung fellow and his sister that bring her home every afternoon. Attheir house. Gramercy Park. A fine young fellow--Phi Pi--"

  "Looka here, Hattie, are you talking against time?"

  "She's home asleep by now. I told her she had to be in bed by eleven.She minds me, Morton. I wouldn't--couldn't--wake her. Morton, Morton,she's yours as much as mine. That's God's law, no matter how much man'slaw may have let you shirk your responsibility. Don't hurt your ownflesh and blood by coming back to us--now. I remember once when you cutyour hand it made you ill. Blood! Blood is warm. Red. Sacred stuff.She's your blood, Morton. You let us alone when we needed you. Leave usalone, now that we don't!"

  "But you do, Hattie girl. That's just it. You're running things awoman's way. Why, a man with the right promoting ideas--"

  There was a fusillade of bangs on the door now, and a shout as if thehair on the voice were rising in anger.

  "All out or the doors 'll be locked on yuh! Fine doings!"

  She grasped her light wrap from its hook, and her hat with its whirl ofdark veil, fitting it down with difficulty over the fizz of wig.

  "Come, Morton," she said, suddenly. "I'm ready. You're right, now ornever."

  "Your face!"

  "No time now. Later--at home! She'll know that I'm there--under theblack!"

  "So do I, Hattie. That's why I--"

  "I'm not one of the ready-made heroines you read about. That's not myidea of sacrifice! I'd let my child hang her head of my shame soonerthan stand up and marry you to save her from it. Marcia wouldn't want meto! She's got your face--but my character! She'll fight! She'll glorythat I had the courage to let you tell her the--truth! Yes, she will,"she cried, her voice pleading for the truth of what her words exclaimed."She'll glory in having saved me--from you! You can come! Now, too,while I have the strength that loathing you can give me. I don't wantyou skulking about. I don't want you hanging over my head--or hers! Youcan tell her to-night--but in my presence! Come!"

  "Yes, sir," he repeated, doggedly and still more doggedly. "Yes, siree!"Following her, trying to be grim, but his lips too soft to click."Yes--sir!"

  They drove up silently through a lusterless midnight with a threat ofrain in it, hitting loosely against each other in a shiver-my-timberstaxicab. Her pallor showing through the brown of her face did somethinghorrid to her.

  It was as if the skull of her, set in torment, were looking through atransparent black mask, but, because there were not lips, forced togrin.

  And yet, do you know that while she rode with him Hattie's
heart washigh? So high that when she left him finally, seated in her littlelamplit living room, it was he whose unease began to develop.

  "I--If she's asleep, Hattie--"

  Her head looked so sure. Thrust back and sunk a little between theshoulders.

  "If she's asleep, I'll wake her. It's better this way. I'm glad, now. Iwant her to see me save myself. She would want me to. You banked on mockheroics from me, Morton. You lost."

  Marcia was asleep, in her narrow, pretty bed with little bowknotspainted on the pale wood. About the room all the tired and happy muss ofafter-the-party. A white-taffeta dress with a whisper of real lace atthe neck, almost stiffishly seated, as if with Marcia's trimness, ona chair. A steam of white tulle on the dressing table. A buttonholegardenia in a tumbler of water. One long white-kid glove on the tablebeside the night light. A naked cherub in a high hat, holding a pinkumbrella for the lamp shade.

  "Dear me! Dear me!" screamed Hattie to herself, fighting to keep hermind on the plane of casual things. "She's lost a glove again. Dear me!Dear me! I hope it's a left one to match up with the right one she savedfrom the last pair. Dear me!"

  She picked up a white film of stocking, turning and exploring withspread fingers in the foot part for holes. There was one! Marcia's bigtoe had danced right through. "Dear me!"

  Marcia sleeping. Very quietly and very deeply. She slept like that.Whitely and straightly and with the covers scarcely raised for the ridgeof her slim body.

  Sometimes Marcia asleep could frighten Hattie. There was something abouther white stilliness. Lilies are too fair and so must live briefly.That thought could clutch so that she would kiss Marcia awake. Kiss hersoundly because Marcia's sleep could be so terrifyingly deep.

  "Marcia," said Hattie, and stood over her bed. Then again, "Mar-cia!" Onmore voice than she thought her dry throat could yield her.

  There was the merest flip of black on the lacy bosom of Marcia'snightgown, and Hattie leaned down to fleck it. No. It was a pin--a smallblack-enameled pin edged in pearls. Automatically Hattie knew.

  "Pi Phi!"

  "Marcia," cried Hattie, and shook her a little. She hated so to wakenher. Always had. Especially for school on rainy days. Sometimes didn't.Couldn't. Marcia came up out of sleep so reluctantly. A little dazed. Alittle secretive. As if a white bull in a dream had galloped off withher like Persephone's.

  Only Hattie did not know of Persephone. She only knew that Marcia sleptbeautifully and almost breathlessly. Sweet and low. It seemed silly,sleeping beautifully. But just the same, Marcia did.

  Then Hattie, not faltering, mind you, waited. It was better that Marciashould know. Now, too, while her heart was so high.

  Sometimes it took as many as three kisses to awaken Marcia. Hattie bentfor the first one, a sound one on the tip of her lip.

  "Marcia!" she cried. "Marcy, wake up!" and drew back.

  Something had happened! Darkly. A smudge the size of a quarter andthe color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly onMarcia's whiteness.

  Hattie had smudged Marcia! _Hattie Had Smudged Marcia!_

  There it lay on her beautiful, helpless whiteness. Hattie's smudge.

  * * * * *

  It is doubtful, from the way he waited with his soft hat danglingfrom soft fingers, if Morton had ever really expected anything else.Momentary unease gone, he was quiet and Southern and even indolent aboutit.

  "We'll go to Greenwich first thing in the morning and be married," hesaid.

  "Sh-h-h!" she whispered to his quietness. "Don't wake Marcia."

  "Hattie--" he said, and started to touch her.

  "Don't!" she sort of cried under her whisper, but not without notingthat his hand was ready enough to withdraw. "Please--go--now--"

  "To-morrow at the station, then. Eleven. There's a train every hour forGreenwich."

  He was all tan to her now, standing there like a blur.

  "Yes, Morton, I'll be there. If--please--you'll go now."

  "Of course," he said. "Late. Only I--Well, paying the taxi--strappedme--temporarily. A ten spot--old Hat--would help."

  She gave him her purse, a tiny leather one with a patent clasp. Somehowher fingers were not flexible enough to open it.

  His were.

  There were a few hours of darkness left, and she sat them out, exactlyas he had left her, on the piano stool, looking at the silence.

  Toward morning quite an equinoctial storm swept the city, bangingshutters and signs, and a steeple on 122d Street was struck bylightning.

  And so it was that Hattie's wedding day came up like thunder.