"Oh, Gawd, I never done the right thing by him! He was my husband. Look how bare I kept everything from him. He used to come home from a forty-eight-hour shift and say this house reminded him of hell with the fire gone out. I never did the right thing by him."
"He didn't by you, neither."
"He was my husband."
"He knew if we'd 'a' had the money to light out and do like Lily he wouldn't 'a' stood a show of bein' your husband, though. He knew, from the day they put the bandages on maw's eyes, thet he was just the only way out for us. He knew one of us had to quit the factory and stay home with her--and where was the money comin' from? He knew."
"Yes, he knew, Cottie. Even on the New York accommodation, that time on the wedding-trip, trouble began right off. When that fellow on the train got talkin' to me and told me he could give me a job in the biggest show on Broadway, he nearly hauled off and raised a row right there on the train when he came back and seen me talkin' to him."
"If only you'd got the fellow's name, Della, and his street in New York!"
"How could I, when John came back and began snarlin' like--"
"Would you know him if you seen him again, Della? Think, darlin', would you?"
"Would I? In my sleep I'd know him. He was a short fellow with eyes so little they didn't show when he laughed, and a mouth full of gold teeth that stuck out like a buck's. And say, Cottie, for diamonds! A diamond horseshoe scarf-pin as big as a dollar!"
"There's money in it, Della. Look at Lily. Tessie says she's diamond rings to her knuckles."
"John knew what took the life out of me, from that day on. He used to say if he ever laid eyes on that little bullet-headed, rat-eyed sport, as he called him, he'd shake the life out of him. Just like that!"
"Faugh! he wouldn't 'a' had the nerve!"
"Don't you forget he knew what was eatin' us, Cottie."
"Well, wasn't it our right--a beauty like you in this dump?"
"And you?"
Their faces, startlingly alike, were upturned, and in their eyes was the golden fluid of dawn.
"He knew. You remember that letter Lily wrote when you asked her to get you in her show?"
"Do I?"
"He found it in my pocket one night and read it, and laughed and laughed. He used to know it by heart, and he'd cackle it to me whenever he caught me red-eyed from cryin'."
"That letter she wrote out of jealousy? He seen that?"
"Yeh! 'Stay home, dearie,' he used to sing to me, laughin' to split his sides; 'stay home, like Della did, and make happiness and a home for yourself.'"
"Gawd!"
"Then he'd go off in a real fit of laughin' again. 'You ain't got no ideas of the breakers ahead, Cottie dearie,' he'd holler, 'and in this business there ain't many of us got the strength to fight 'em.'"
"Wasn't that like him--stealin' a letter!"
"Then he'd laugh some more, wag his finger at me and make me cry, and keep yellin' 'Breakers ahead! Breakers ahead!'"
"There, there, dearie; it's all over, now. He was too dumb and too mean to know that Lily was as jealous as a snake of me and you--always, even, when we was kids. Sure she don't want us in her show--we'd walk away with it. John was too dumb to see the letter was only--"
"'Sh-h-h; it's a sin to run down the dead."
"Anyway, you never lied to John like he did to you. I can still hear him that dark night, down by the quarry, trying to scare you. Lyin' to you about what girls got to buck up against in the city, that night, when they first put the bandages on maw's eyes, and he was beggin' and beggin' you to marry him."
"Gawd! I was ashamed to listen to some of the things he tried to scare me with that night."
"He couldn't answer when I piped up about his cousin, Tessie Hobbs, that went to St. Louis to learn millinery and sends home four dollars a week. He couldn't answer that, could he?"
"No, he couldn't, Cottie."
A silence--the great stone silence of a coliseum--closed in about them. Della shivered and burrowed her head deeper into her sister's lap.
"Aw, Gawd, us talkin' like this, with him layin' in there!"
"If he wasn't layin' in there we wouldn't be talkin'."
A shutter swung in on its hinges.
"There, there! It ain't nothin' but the wind, Della."
"He was goin' to fix that shutter to-day when he was off shift. Gawd, he didn't have no more idea of dyin' than I did!"
"That's just like maw. Sometimes in the night I can almost hear her stop breathin'--she's so weak, but she's always talkin' about next year--next year."
"It'll be awful for you, little sister, with me gone and you alone with her."
"It--it ain't a sin to say it, Delia. She--she ain't here for long, and I'll be comin' to join you soon. You'll tell 'em I'm comin'."
"Gawd, how I wish we was going together, little sister! Leavin' you is just like leavin' my heart. There's nobody I love like you, Cottie."
"Della darlin', look at Lily--she went alone."
"I--I ain't afraid--you got the best voice of us two, but I'll make the way for you, dearie. I'll make it easier for you to come."
"It won't be long."
"If I could only have got his name that time on the train, Cottie!"
"You got Lily's boardin'-house, dearie. Ain't that something?"
"Oh, darlin'--him layin' in there!"
"Don't begin that again, dearie."
"Listen, Cottie--listen--that can't be the six-thirty accommodation already, is it? It ain't the funeral-day already, is it?"
"Yes, dearie; but it's a long way off. See, it's just gettin' light through the crack in the shade."
"Don't raise it, Cottie. It's a sin to let in the light, with him layin' there and dead."
"Darlin', it ain't goin' to hurt him, and the lamp's low. See; there ain't no harm in raisin' it--look how light it's gettin'!"
Off toward the east dawn trembled on the edge of eternity and sent up, as if the earth were lighting the horizon, a pearlish light shotted with pink. A smattering of stars lingered and trembled as though cold. They paled; dawn grew pinker, and the black village, with its naked trees standing darkly against the sky, sent up wispy spirals of smoke. A derrick in the jagged bowl of the quarry moved its giant arms slowly, and a steam-whistle shrieked.
The New York accommodation hallooed to the trembling dawn and tore through Slateville.
The sisters pressed their white faces close to the cold pane and watched it rush into the sunrise. A cock crowed to the dawn, and, from afar, another. A dirt-team rumbled up the road, and the steam-whistle from the quarry blew a second reveille.
"You--you take the accommodation, darlin'. It's cheaper, and you'll be feelin' scary about the flyer for a while. You can catch it down by Terre Haute at five-thirty-one, Monday morning--eh, darlin'?"
"So--so soon, Cottie--only three days after, and him hardly cold."
"Don't let's drag it out, darlin'."
"Oh, Cottie, I'll be waitin' for you! There won't be a day that I won't be waitin' for you. There's nothin' I love like you."
Their faces were close and wet with tears, and the first ray of sun burnished their heads and whitened their white bosoms.
"Kiss me, Cottie."
"Della--Della!"
"My little sister!"
"You're goin', Della--try to think, darlin', what it means--you're goin'."
"'Sh-h-h, dearie--'sh-h-h. Yes--I--I'm goin'."
And in the room adjoining John Blaney lay dead with a dent in his head.
* * * * *
The city has a thousand throats, its voice is like a storm running on the wind, and like ship-high waves plunging on ship-high rocks, and like unto the undertone of lost souls adrift in a sheol of fog and water.
The voice of the city knows none of the acoustic limitations of architects and prima donnas. Its dome is as high as fifty-story sky-scrapers, and its sounding-board the bases of a thousand thousand tired brains.
It penetrates the Persian-velvet hangings of the most rococo palace toward which the sight-seeing automobile points its megaphone, and beats against brains neurotic with the problems of solid-gold-edged bonds and solid-gold cotillion favors. It is the birth-song of the tenement child and the swan-song of the weak. It travels out over fields of new-mown hay and sings to the boy at the plow. It shouts to the victor and whispers to the stranger.
Through the morning bedlam of alarm-clocks, slamming doors, the rattle of ash-cans, and the internal disorders of a rooming-house, came the voice a-whispering to Della.
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 breasts 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.