Part 20 (1/2)
Youth has rebound like a rubber ball. Batted up against the back fence, she bounces back into the heart of a rose-bush or into the carefully weeded, radishless radish-bed of the kitchen garden.
Mrs. Trimp rose from the couch-bed davenport of the Bopp sitting-dining-sleeping-room, with something of the old lamps burning in her eyes and a full-lipped mouth to which clung the memory of smiles.
Even Psyche, abandoned by love, smiled a specious smile when she posed for the scalpel.
Eddie Bopp reached out a protective arm and drew Goldie by the sleeve of her s.h.i.+rt-waist down to the couch-bed davenport again.
”Take it easy there, Goldie. Don't get yourself all excited again.”
”But it's just like you say, Eddie--I got the law on my side. I got him on the grounds of cruelty if--if I show nothin' but--but this cheek.”
”Sure, you have, Goldie; but you just sit quiet. Addie, come in here and make Goldie behave her little self.”
”I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!”
Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk.
”You poor little kid!”
Addie hobbled in from the kitchen.
”I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too.”
G.o.d alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fas.h.i.+oned her in clay and water, even as you and me--from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes.
He fas.h.i.+oned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender--broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit s.h.i.+ning through--Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was suns.h.i.+ne on dew.
”You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie.
You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?”
”Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!”
”Eat, Goldie--gwan.”
”I ain't hungry--honest!”
”Quit standing over her, Eddie; you make her nervous. Let me feed you, Goldie.”
”Gee! Ain't you swell to me!” Ready tears sprang to her eyes.
”Like you ain't my old chum, Goldie! It don't seem so long since we were working in the same office and going to Recreation Pier dances together, does it?”
”Addie! Addie!”
”Do you remember how you and me and Ed and Charley Snuggs used to walk up and down Ninth Avenue summer evenings eating ice-cream cones?”
”Do I? Oh, Addie, do I?”
”I'm glad we had them ice-cream days, Goldie. They're melted, but the flavor ain't all gone.” Addie's face was large and white and calm-featured, like a Botticelli head.