Part 19 (1/2)
”Don't, honey--don't! Me and Cutty had a sucker out, I tell you.”
”You--you always get your way with me. You treat me like a dog; but you know you can wind me round--wind me round.”
”Baby! Baby!”
He smoothed her hair away from her salt-bitten eyes, laid his cheek pat against hers, and murmured to her through the scratch in his throat, like a parrakeet croons to its mate.
”p.u.s.s.y-cat! p.u.s.s.y!”
The river of difference between them dried in the warm sun of her forgiveness, and she sobbed on his shoulder with the exhaustion of a child after a tantrum.
”You won't leave me alone nights no more, Harry?”
”Thu--thu--thu--such a little Goldie-eyes!”
”I can't stand for the worry of the board no more, Harry. McCaskys are gettin' ugly. I ain't got a decent rag to my back, neither.”
”I'm going to take a s.h.i.+pping-room job next week, honey, and get back in harness. Bill's going to fix me up. There ain't nothin' in this rotten game, and I'm going to get out.”
”Sure?”
”Sure, Goldie.”
”You ain't been drinking, Harry?”
”Sure I ain't. Me and Cutty had a rube out, I tell you.”
”You'll keep straight, won't you, Harry? You're killin' me, boy, you are.”
”Come, dry your face, baby.”
He reached to his hip-pocket for his handkerchief, and with it a spa.r.s.e shower of red and green and pink and white and blue confetti showered to the floor like snow through a spectrum. Goldie slid from his embrace and laughed--a laugh frapped with the ice of scorn and chilled as her own chilled heart.
”Liar!” she said, and trembled as she stood.
His lips curled again into the expression that so ill-fitted his albinism.
”You little cat! You can bluff me!”
”I knew you was up at the Crescent Cotillon! I felt it in my bones. I knew you was up there when I read on the bill-boards that the Red Slipper was dancing there. I knew where you was every night while I been sittin' here waitin'! I knew--I knew--”
The piano-salesman rapped against the folding-doors thrice, with distemper and the head of a cane. At that instant the lower half of Mr.
Trimp's face protruded suddenly into a lantern-jawed facsimile of a blue-ribbon English bull; his hand shot out and hurled the chair that stood between them half-way across the room, where it fell on its side against the wash-stand and split a rung.
”You--you little devil, you!”
The second-floor front beat a tattoo of remonstrance; but there was a sudden howling as of boiling surf in Mr. Trimp's ears, and the hot ember of an oath dropped from his lips.
”You little devil! You been hounding me with the quit game for eight months. Now you gotta quit!”