XXVII Judgment
At first he did not know her. He stood there, while their eyes were locked, in his own eyes no gleam of honest memory. He was unchanged—the serene, the secure, the smug Max Grossman of that first meeting in the street of her little Pennsylvania town; but she, as she so well knew without this silent testimony, was not now, and never again could be, the girl of that lost springtime. He looked at her, his thick lips drawn thin in a professional grimace, and not until she spoke a second time did he recognize her.
He started then, and his olive face went pale; but Mary put out her hand precisely as if she were meeting, after a brief absence, only an acquaintance of the everyday friendly sort, and Max, too glad for pardon to question motive, seized and squeezed her hand tenderly.
“Vhat?” he cried in mock pleasure at this contretemps. “No, it ain’d! I gan’t hardly belief mine eyes you’re lookin’ so fine. But it is Mary Denbigh!”
She smiled almost gayly. In little she had to lie, but in much, though for a reason that he must not suspect, she was indeed exultant.
“I am lookin’ good, ain’t I, Max?” she said.
He surveyed her cheap finery; saw her hair, disordered in her passage through the crowded court-room, and turned his gaze quickly from her hollow, painted cheeks, her hardening carmine mouth, and her heavily ringed eyes.
“You’re grand,” he said. “I always knew you’d make good, Mary.”
“You jollier!” she laughed, and with her free hand, patted his olive cheek.
“No, it’s honest, so help me.”
“Then don’t you want to buy me a drink, Max?”
Grossman dropped her hand. His face grew doubtful.
“I vish I had dime,” he said, “but I god to see a friend down the Avenue, an’——”
“A lady, Max?”
“Ach, no, Mary.”
“Then let him go. You ought to be glad to take a walk with as good-lookin’ a girl as you say I am.”
For another fleeting instant Max let his eyes rest on her face, then lowered them. He looked at the pavement and drew an awkward line upon it with the edge of his tan boot-sole. More significant than any physical change in her was the fact that she could now embarrass him.
“I know, Mary,” he stammered; “but, you see, this here feller vhat I tol’——”
She laughed again. She thrust her arm through his and turned his face uptown.
“Forget it!” she said. “Don’t you worry, Max; I ain’t goin’ to rake things up, if that’s what’s souring you. Life’s too short. All I want is a talk and a drink.”
Half reluctantly, he let her lead him; but she could lead him and that sufficed her.
He lit an American cigarette and puffed it nervously.
“I’ve just been in there,” she said, with a backward jerk of her head in the direction of the police-court.
“There?” Max was not surprised, but he added: “Vhat vas you doin’ in there?”
“What do you think?” responded Mary. She herself was thinking rapidly—about other things.
“You vasn’t in drouble?”
“I guess you would call it that.”
“Pinched?”
“Yes.”
He had asked her no questions about her past—but concerning her present he chanced a query.
“Mary,” he inquired, “do you mean they god you up fer your beesiness?”
“That’s about it,” she said.
“But vhy don’t you square you’self vith the goppers?”
“I don’t know. I—I was broke, Max.”
“I vish I gould help you, Mary,” he said, his curiosity cooling at the thought of an appeal for assistance.
She saw it, and it amused her.
“Can’t you do it?” she asked, dropping her voice into a whine.
He tried to draw away from her, but her linked arm held him affectionately fast.
“I been havin’ rotten luck,” he declared; “somethin’ awful. I ain’t got hardly only the money vhat’s in my glothes.”
“Well, then,” said Mary, looking at the clothes and knowing well that they somewhere concealed an ample yellow sum, “why don’t you take me on your staff?”
“Mary,” he cried, trying to spread his hands, and failing dismally with the one that her pinioning arm hampered, “vhat do you think I am? A millionaire? I ain’t got no staff.”
“Come off!” she bantered.
“I ain’t—honest.”
“Still in the other line?” she persisted. “I thought you might be trottin’ ’em on the street—they say there’s more in it. Why do you stick to supplyin’ the flats and the houses?”
Her voice was the perfection of good nature, but he writhed under it.
“Mary!” he pleaded.
“Well,” she said, disregarding his tone, and keeping his arm fast in her own, “you do supply ’em, don’t you? I know one fellow who makes his livin’ goin’ the rounds, findin’ what girls is sore on their madams an’ then gettin’ a commission by sneakin’ ’em out an’ changin’ ’em to new flats. He lets on he’s sellin’ kimonas, but one sample’s lasted him three years.”
“Mary!” repeated Max, more weakly.
“That’s the truth,” she said, and then: “But can’t you start street-work an’ take me on your staff?”
Again he looked at her,
“No,” he answered.
“Not young enough lookin’ now, eh?” She was still smiling.
“Ach,” he protested, “you oughtn’t nod to be so hard on a feller. If you chust knowed——”
But she had gone far enough, and she would not let him finish. They had reached a saloon near to her new lodging-place, and she paused. There was, and she knew it, no word in his excuse that she would have credited. Nor did she mean, just yet, to let him see her hatred. In order that he might the better see it at a later moment, she wanted now to quiet his naturally ready fears. She had found that she could harass him, and that, for the present, was all that she needed to know.
“Never mind,” she said, “I told you I wasn’t goin’ to rake up nothin’, an’ I mean to keep my word. Come on in here. This is a quiet place. You’re goin’ to buy me a drink, anyhow, just to show that we’re still friends.”
He brightened at this indicated avenue of escape.
“Sure we’re still friends,” he declared, “an’ you can haf all you vant to drink, too.”
She slipped her hand into his—she could do it, she had learned, without the dumb flesh seeming to shrink from that contact—and pressed it.
They went into the deserted “ladies’ room” of the saloon to which she had referred, and sat down there, facing each other under a light turned kindly low.
“Vhiskey?” asked Max.
“Yes,” said Mary.
“Two of ’em,” ordered Max of the waiter that had answered his ring, “an’ don’d make ’em so stingy like most you fellers ofer this vay.”
The man brought the liquor, placed it before them, and went away.
“Vell,” said Max, raising his glass, smiling his thin smile, and apparently forgetting that he had ever denied whiskey; “here ve are, ain’t it?”
If Mary was remembering another night and another drink she did not say so; instead, as Max tilted his sleek head far back between his shoulders and dropped the whiskey down his throat, her hand watched for the instant when his gray eyes were on the ceiling and that instant poured the liquor from her own glass to the floor. When her companion’s head came forward her fingers, wrapped about the glass, were just withdrawing it from her lips.
“I can drink that better’n I used to,” she said.
Max grinned again. So long as she did not upbraid him for his part in it, so long as she did not go into the details of its earlier stages, he had no objection to hearing of her past, was even languidly curious about it, and was certainly sorry that it had not brought her to more seeming prosperity.
“You sure didn’t take that like you vasn’t used vith it,” he said.
“I’ll take another just to show you how,” she answered, and pressed the nearest button.
This time his eyes were on her and she had to drink. But she did not scruple: so long as she retained her head and Max lost his, the effect of the alcohol on her system concerned her but little.
They had a third drink, for “old time’s sake,” as Mary suggested, and this she succeeded in pouring down her dress-front. At the fourth, Max began to show signs of fear that he would have a drunken woman on his hands, but Mary’s patent sobriety soon reassured him, and overcame his protests against a fifth by recalling his promise of liberality.
His cold eyes sparkled into a faint light. Little spots of red appeared in the olive of his cheeks. He felt the advance of the enemy in his veins and tried to go; but Mary began an imaginative narrative of her recent experiences and insisted on his listening. When he at last successfully interrupted that, she twitted him with being able to drink less than his pupils, and Max was once more forced to order. He was not drunk, or nearly drunk, but the fine edge of his discretion was dulled: he saw in the woman, who had now moved to his side, nothing that, whatever motives might be at work, could possibly harm him; he found something ludicrous in the situation. Her looks seemed better than they had appeared an hour earlier, and her tentative advances flattered him.
Mary, though she had drunk more than was good for her, had managed to spill enough liquor to retain all the sobriety she needed; but, when they at last rose, she swayed a little unsteadily.
“Now,” she said, “you’ll just buy me a half-pint for my head in the mornin’, an’ then you’ll walk as far as my door.”
Still enjoying the piquancy of the affair, he obeyed her. He even consented to come to her hall-bedroom with her—a room the exact reproduction of that which she had formerly rented farther uptown—and there, forgetful of the provision against the morning, they finished the half-pint.
At last he stood up from the bed on which he had been sitting while she, opposite, used the single chair.
“Vell,” he said, grinning; “it’s been good to see you again, und maybe I’ll gome back some efenin’.”
She rose before him. The light was at her back and her face resumed, as she stood there, some furtive traces of its earlier grace. The eyes seemed to soften, the cheeks were a natural pink beneath their coating of rouge, and her russet hair, curling about her face, relieved the harder outlines and cast a gentle shadow around the neck. She spread out her arms.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He smiled and leaned condescendingly toward her.
“What’s your hurry?” she murmured.
He looked at her, and the weak light and the strong liquor stood her in good stead.
“I ain’t in no hurry,” he smiled.
She met him smile for smile—and then, in a sudden sense of triumph, she flung back her head and laughed.
It was not until three hours later that he finally left her, but he left hurriedly, for the remorseless gray light of morning was coming in at the window, and it fell upon her as she wrapped a soiled pink kimona around her shivering figure and slipped her feet into a pair of rundown Turkish slippers.
“Good-by,” he said, looking away from her.
“Wait a minute,” said Mary. “I’ll go with you to the door.”
She did go. She followed him down the dark stairway, creaking noisily under their shamed feet, and she stood for a moment in the black hall, holding the brass knob of the door, as he passed to the step outside. Mary slipped the dead-latch, ready to bolt the door.
“Max,” she said.
He turned quickly, nearly knocking over, as he did so, the milk-bottles that were lined, in a white row, upon the step.
“Yes?” he returned, and grinned sheepishly.
She thrust out her towsled head and looked up and down the gray morning street. The block was empty. She drew her head clear of the door. She was still trembling, but from neither cold nor fear.
“You ain’t goin’ without kissin’ me?” she asked.
But a reaction of disgust had seized him.
“Yes, I am,” he said.
Mary’s one hand tightened on the knob; the other flattened itself against the nearest panel of the door, ready to push hard.
“All right,” she replied, with a sudden change in her voice that, still low, became tense and metallic. “You think I’m—I’m done for, Max. Well—you’re done for, too!”
The man’s jaw dropped. His olive face was ashen. His eyes stared.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Mary’s mouth was wreathed in a smile.
“You know,” she answered.
Max retreated so suddenly that he nearly fell down the stone steps.
“You’ve—you’ve——” he gasped.
“Yes,” said Mary.
“It’s a lie! You’re tryin’ to scare me!” His jaw worked spasmodically. “It’s a damned lie!” he repeated.
“You don’t believe me?” the girl inquired.
If she had looked for heroics, if she had feared melodrama, she was as yet disappointed. The knees of Max shook under him; he was in abject terror.
“It’s a lie,” he muttered over and over. “It’s a damn’ lie!”
“Think what you please,” said Mary. She was still smiling, still serene. “You believed I’d forgot, didn’t you? Well, I didn’t forget, Max Grossman, an’ now you’ll remember. If you don’t yet think I’m givin’ you a straight story, all you have to do is just one thing: wait.”
Max uttered an inarticulate cry and threw himself at her, but he only bashed his head against the closed door.
Mary had shut it, and in time. Behind it, in the dark hallway, she lay half fainting.
“It’s the last of you, Max,” she laughed.
And it was.