The Vertical City | Page 6

You wouldn't be you if she wasn't. You think I would
want you to feel different?"
"I mean--Louis--no matter where I go, more than with most children,
she's part of me, Loo. I--Why, that child won't so much as go to spend
the night with a girl friend away from me. Her quiet ways don't show it,
but Alma has character! You wouldn't believe it, Louis, how she takes
care of me."
"Why, Carrie, the first thing we pick out in our new home will be a
room for her."
"Loo!"
"Not that she will want it long, the way I see that young rascal
Friedlander sits up to her. A better young fellow and a better business
head you couldn't pick for her. Didn't that youngster go out to Dayton
the other day and land a contract for the surgical fittings for a big new
clinic out there before the local firms even rubbed the sleep out of their
eyes? I have it from good authority Friedlander Clinical Supply
Company doubled their excess-profit tax last year."
A white flash of something that was almost fear seemed to strike Mrs.

Samstag into a rigid pallor.
"No! No! I'm not like most mothers, Louis, for marrying their
daughters off. I want her with me. If marrying her off is your idea, it's
best you know it now in the beginning. I want my little girl with me--I
have to have my little girl with me!"
He was so deeply moved that his eyes were embarrassingly moist.
"Why, Carrie, every time you open your mouth you only prove to me
further what a grand little woman you are!"
"You'll like Alma, when you get to know her, Louis."
"Why, I do now! Always have said she's a sweet little thing."
"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is reserve.
She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the kind of a
child that would rather go upstairs evenings with a book or her sewing
than sit down here in the lobby. That's where she is now."
"Give me that kind every time in preference to all these gay young
chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they
start than my little mother did when she finished."
"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit of
it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More like
the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me,
Louis, it's got to be with her, too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my
baby."
"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content! She's got to be a
fine girl to have you for a mother, and now it will be my duty to please
her as a father. Carrie, will you have me?"
"Oh, Louis--Loo!"
"Carrie, my dear!"
And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their
betrothal.
* * * * *
None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high
on her cheek bones that Mrs. Samstag at just after ten that evening
turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting room.
The usual horrific hotel room of tight green-plush upholstery,
ornamental portières on brass rings that grated, and the equidistant
French engravings of lavish scrollwork and scroll frames.
But in this case a room redeemed by an upright piano with a

green-silk-and-gold-lace-shaded floor lamp glowing by. Two
gilt-framed photographs and a cluster of ivory knickknacks on the
white mantel. A heap of handmade cushions. Art editions of the gift
poets and some circulating-library novels. A fireside chair, privately
owned and drawn up, ironically enough, beside the gilded radiator, its
headrest worn from kindly service to Mrs. Samstag's neuralgic brow.
From the nest of cushions in the circle of lamp glow Alma sprang up at
her mother's entrance. Sure enough, she had been reading, and her
cheek was a little flushed and crumpled from where it had been resting
in the palm of her hand.
"Mamma," she said, coming out of the circle of light and switching on
the ceiling bulbs, "you stayed down so late."
There was a slow prettiness to Alma. It came upon you like a little
dawn, palely at first and then pinkening to a pleasant consciousness that
her small face was heart-shaped and clear as an almond, that the pupils
of her gray eyes were deep and dark, like cisterns, and to young Leo
Friedlander (rather apt the comparison, too) her mouth was exactly the
shape of a small bow that had shot its quiverful of arrows into his heart.
And instead of her eighteen she looked sixteen, there was