Part 35 (1/2)
Out from the mouths of babes and truck-drivers, out from the mouths of debutantes and coal-stokers, out from the mouths of those who toil and those who spin not. Drifting over the sea of housetops, up from the steep-walled streets. The laugh of the glad, the taut laugh of the mad; the lover's sigh, and the convict's sigh--and, beneath, like arpeggio scales under a melody, the swiftly running gabble-gabble of life.
Della stirred on her cot, raised her arms, and yawned to the faun-colored oblong of October sky; breathed in the stale air and salty pungency of bad ventilation and the city's breakfast-bacon, and swung herself out of bed.
So awoke Adriana, too, with her hair falling in a torrent over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her languid limbs unfolding.
She shook her hair backward with the changeless gesture of women, held her hands at arm's-length, and regarded them. They were whiter, and the broken nails were shaping themselves into ovals. A callous ridge along her forefinger, souvenir of a cistern which pumped reluctantly, was disappearing.
She smiled to herself in the mirror, like the legendary people who have eyes to see the gra.s.s grow must smile at the secret of each blade.
Then she slid into a high-necked, long-sleeved wrapper and bound the whorl of her hair in a loose bun at her neck.
Mrs. Fallows's minimum-priced, minimum-sized hall bedroom speaks for its nine-by-twelve ”neatly furnished” self. The hall bedrooms of Forty-fourth Street and Forty-fifth Street and Forty-_ad-infinitum_ Street are furnished in that same white-iron bed with the dented bra.s.s k.n.o.bs, light-oak, easy-payment dresser, wash-stand, and square table with a too short fourth leg and shelf beneath for dust--and above the dresser, slightly askew, a heart-rendering, art-rendering version of ”Narcissus at the Pool,” or any of the well-worn incidents favorite to mythology and lithographers.
But life, like love and the high cost of living and a good cigar, is comparative. To Della, stretching her limbs to the morning, Mrs.
Fallows's carpeted fourth-floor back, painted furniture, and a light that sprang into brilliancy at a tweak, was a sybarite's retreat, eighteen hours removed from wash-day, and rising in the dark, black mud-roads and a dirt-colored shanty that met the wind broadside and trembled to its innards.
Two flights below her a mezzo-soprano struggled for high C; adjoining, an early-morning-throated barytone leaned out of a doorway and called for a fresh towel. Came three staccato raps at Della's portal, and enter on the wings of the morning and a pair of white-topped, French-heeled shoes Miss Ysobel Du Prez, late of the third road company of the Broadway success, ”Oh, Oh, Marietta!” and with a history in pony ballets that ent.i.tled her to a pedigree and honorable mention.
”Girl, ain't you dressed yet? What you doin'? Waitin' for your French maid to get your French lawngerie from the French laundry?”
Miss Du Prez swung herself atop the trunk and crossed her slim limbs.
Chatelaine jewelry jangled; Herculean perfume dominated the air, and that expressive sobriquet for soubrette, a fourteen-inch willow-plume, and long as the tail of a male pheasant, brushed her left shoulder.
Miss Ysobel Du Prez--one of the ornamental line of tottering caryatids who uphold on their narrow, whitewashed shoulders the gold-paper thrones of musical-comedy princ.i.p.alities, and on those same shoulders carry every tradition of that section of Broadway which Thespis occupies on a ninety-nine-year, privilege-of-renewal lease--the fumes of grease-paint the incense of her temple, the footlights the white flame of her sacrifice!
”You gotta do a quick change if you're going to the offices with me to-day, girl. I gotta be up at the Empire in the Putney Building by eleven and stop in at the Bijou first.”
Delia shed her comfortable shroud of repose like Thais dropping her mantle in an Alexandrian theater.
”I must 'a' overslept, Ysobel. Trying on them duds we bought yesterday up to so late last night done me up. Three days in New York ain't got me used to the pace.”
”You should worry! If I had your face and figure I'd sleep till the call-boy rapped twice.”
”Ah, Ysobel, you with your cute little face and cute little ways!”
”Soft pedal on the ingenoo stuff, girl. You know you don't hate yourself. I didn't notice that you exactly despised anything about you when they called the floor-walker to have a look at you in that black dress yesterday.”
”Honest, Ysobel, I dreamt about it all night.”
”Sure you did! But who was it steered you into a 'slightly used,' cla.s.sy place where you could buy a gown that Mrs. Asterbilt wore once to a reception at the Sultan of Sulu's or the Prince of Pilsen's or any of that crowd; who steered you in a place where you could buy a real gown for one-tenth the cost of production?”
”You did, Ysobel. I don't know what I'd 'a' done if Mrs. Fallows hadn't brought you up.”
”That little black dream that only let you back twenty-nine-fifty cost three hundred if it cost a cent, and nothing but a snag in the hem and the lace in front as good as new. Gee, I could show this cheap bunch around here how to dress if I had a month's advance in hand!”
”Get off the trunk, Ysobel, and sit here, will you? I want to get it out. Say, if Cottie could see me with the black hat to match! My little sister I was telling you about could--”
”Who you got to thank? Who gave you the right steer? Take it from me, if I hadn't gone along with you, every store on Sixth Avenue would have X-rayed the corner of your handkerchief for the thirty-eight dollars tied up in it and body-s.n.a.t.c.hed you for your own funeral. Even with me along you had a lean like a bent pin for that made-on-Ca.n.a.l-Street, thirty-two-fifty, red silk they hauled out of the morgue to show you. I seen you edgin' for that Kokome model.”