In the dim-lit first-floor front Mrs. Trimp started from her light doze like a deer in a park, which vibrates to the fall of a lady's feather fan. The criss-cross from the cane chair-back was imprinted on one sleep-flushed cheek, and her eyes, dim with the weariness of the night-watch, flew to the white-china door-k.n.o.b.

Reader, rest undismayed. Mr. Trimp entered on the banking-hour legs of a scholar and a gentleman. With a white carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole, his hat unbattered in the curve of his arm, and his blue eyes behind their curtain of black lashes, but slightly watery, like a thawing ice-pond with a film atop.

"h.e.l.lo, my little Goldie-eyes!"

Mr. Trimp flashed his double deck of girlish-pearlish teeth. When Mr.

Trimp smiled Greuze might have wanted to paint his lips for a child-study. Women tightened up about the throat and dared to wonder whether he wore a chest-protector and asafetida bag. Old ladies in street-cars regarded him through the mist of memories, and as if their motherly fingers itched to run through the heavy yellow hemp of his hair. There was that in his smile which seemed to provoke hand-painted sofa-pillows and baby-ribboned coat-hangers, knitted neckties, and cross-st.i.tch slippers. Once he had posed for an Adonis underwear advertis.e.m.e.nt.

"h.e.l.lo, baby! Did you wait up for your old man?"

Goldie regarded her husband with eyes that ten months of marriage had dimmed slightly. Her lips were thinner and tighter and silent.

"I think we landed a sucker to-night for fifty shares, kiddo. Ain't so bad, is it? And so you waited up for your tired old man, baby?"

"No!" she said, the words sparking from her lips like the hiss of a hot iron when you test it with a moist forefinger. "No; I didn't wait up. I been out with you--painting the town."

"I couldn't get home for supper, hon. Me and Cutty--"

"You and Cutty! I wasn't born yesterday!"

"Me and Cutty had a sucker out, baby. He'll bite for fifty shares sure!"

"Gee!" she flamed at him, backing round the rocker from his amorous advances. "Gee! If I was low enough to be a crook--if I was low enough to try and make a livin' sellin' dead dirt for pay dirt--I'd be a successful crook, anyway; I'd--"

"Now, Goldie, hon! Don't--"

"I wouldn't leave my wife havin' heart failure every time McCasky pa.s.ses the door--I wouldn't!"

"Now, don't fuss at me, Goldie. I'm tired--dog-tired. I got some money comin' in to-morrow that'll--"

"That don't go with me any more!"

"Sure I have."

"I been set out on the street too many times before on promises like that; and it was always after a week of one of these here slow jags. I know them and how they begin. I know them!"

"'Tain't so this time, honey. I been--"

"I know them and how they begin, with your sweet, silky ways. I'd rather have you come staggering home than like this--with your claws hid.

I--I'm afraid of you, I tell you. I ain't forgot the night up at Hinkey's. You haven't been out with Cutty no more than I have. You been up to the Crescent, where the Red Slipper is dancing this week, you--"

Mr. Trimp swayed ever so slightly--slightly as a silver reed in the lightest breeze that blows--and regained his balance immediately. His breath, redolent as a garden of spice and cloves, was close to his wife's neck.

"Baby," he said, "you better believe your old man. I been out with Cutty, Goldie. We had a sucker out!"

She sprang back from his touch, hot tears in her eyes.

"Believe you! I did till I learnt better. I believed you for four months, sittin' round waiting for you and your goings-on. You ain't been out with Cutty--you ain't been out with him one night this week. You been--you--"

Mrs. Trimp's voice rose to a hysterical crescendo. Her hair, yellow as corn-silk, and caught in a low chignon at her back, escaped its restraint of pins and fell in a whorl down her shirt-waist. She was like a young immortal eaten by the corroding acids of earlier experiences--raw with the vitriol of her deathless destiny.

"You ain't been out with Cutty. You been--"

The piano-salesman in the first-floor back knocked against the closed folding-door for the stilly night that should have been his by right. A distant night-stick struck the asphalt, and across Harry Trimp's features, like filmy clouds across the moon, floated a composite death-mask of Henry the Eighth and Oth.e.l.lo, and all their alimony-paying kith. His mouth curved into an expression that did not coincide with pale hair and light eyes.

He slid from his greatcoat, a black one with an astrakan collar and bought in three payments, and inclined closer to his wife, a contumelious quirk on his lips.

"Well, whatta you going to do about it, kiddo--huh?"

"I--I'm going to--quit!"

He laughed and let her squirm from his hold, strolled over to the dresser mirror, pulled his red four-in-hand upward from its knot and tugged his collar open.

"You're not going to quit, kiddo! You ain't got the nerve!"

He leaned to the mirror and examined the even rows of teeth, and grinned at himself like a Hallowe'en pumpkin to flash whiter their whiteness.

"Ain't I! Which takes the most nerve, I'd like to know, stickin' to you and your devilishness or strikin' out for myself like I been raised to do? I was born a worm, and I ain't never found the coc.o.o.n that would change me into a b.u.t.terfly. I--I had as swell a job up at Gregory's as a girl ever had. I'm an expert stenographer, I am! I got a diploma from--"

"Why don't you get your job back, baby? You been up there twice to my knowin'; maybe the third time'll be a charm. Don't let me keep you, kiddo."

The sluice-gates of her fear and anger opened suddenly, and tears rained down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her bare palm.

"It's because you took the life and soul out of me! They don't want me back because I ain't nothin' but a rag any more. I guess they're ashamed to take me back cause I'm in--in your cla.s.s. Ten months of standing for your funny business and dodging landladies, and waitin' up nights, and watchin' you and your crooked starvation game would take the life out of any girl. It would! It would!"

"Don't fuss at me any more, Goldie-eyes. It's gettin' hard for me to keep down; and I don't want--want to begin gettin' ugly."

Mr. Trimp advanced toward his wife gently--gently.

"Don't come near me! I know what's coming; but you ain't going to get me this time with your oily ways. You're the kind that, walks on a girl with spiked heels and tries to kiss the sores away. I'm going to quit!"

Mr. Trimp plucked at the faint hirsute adornment of his upper lip and folded his black-and-white waistcoat over the back of a chair. He fumbled it a bit.

"Stay where you're put, you--you bloomin' vest, you!"

"I--I got friends that'll help me, I have--even if I ain't ever laid eyes on 'em since the day I married you. I got friends--_real_ friends!

Addie'll take me in any minute, day or night. Eddie Bopp could get me a job in his firm to-morrow if--if I ask him. I got friends! You've kept me from 'em; but I ain't afraid to look 'em up. I'm not!"

He advanced to where she stood beneath the waving gas-flame, a pet phrase clung to his lips, and he stumbled over it.

"My--my little--p.u.s.s.y-cat!"

"You're drunk!"

"No, I ain't, baby--only dog-tired. Dog-tired! Don't fuss at me! You just don't know how much I love you, baby!"

"Who wouldn't fuss, I'd like to know?"

Her voice was like ice crackling with thaw. He took her lax waist in his embrace and kissed her on the brow.