The Vertical City | Page 7

sash of her pretty chiffon frock.
"Alma, be good to mamma to-night! Sweetheart--be good to her."
The quick suspecting fear that had motivated Miss Samstag's groping along the beaded hand bag shot out again in her manner.
"Mamma--you haven't--?"
"No, no! Don't nag me. It's something else, Alma. Something mamma is very happy about."
"Mamma, you've broken your promise again."
"No! No! No! Alma, I've been a good mother to you, haven't I?"
"Yes, mamma, yes, but what--"
"Whatever else I've been hasn't been my fault--you've always blamed Heyman."
"Mamma, I don't understand."
"I've caused you worry, Alma--terrible worry. I know that. But everything is changed now. Mamma's going to turn over such a new leaf that everything is going to be happiness in this family."
"Dearest, if you knew how happy it makes me to hear you say that."
"Alma, look at me."
"Mamma, you--you frighten me."
"You like Louis Latz, don't you, Alma?"
"Why, yes, mamma. Very much."
"We can't all be young and handsome like Leo, can we?"
"You mean--?"
"I mean that finer and better men than Louis Latz aren't lying around loose. A man who treated his mother like a queen and who worked himself up from selling newspapers on the street to a millionaire."
"Mamma?"
"Yes, baby. He asked me to-night. Come to me, Alma; stay with me close. He asked me to-night."
"What?"
"You know. Haven't you seen it coming for weeks? I have."
"Seen what?"
"Don't make mamma come out and say it. For eight years I've been as grieving a widow to a man as a woman could be. But I'm human, Alma, and he--asked me to-night."
There was a curious pallor came over Miss Samstag's face, as if smeared there by a hand.
"Asked you what?"
"Alma, it don't mean I'm not true to your father as I was the day I buried him in that blizzard back there, but could you ask for a finer, steadier man than Louis Latz? It looks out of his face."
"Mamma, you--What--are you saying?"
"Alma?"
There lay a silence between them that took on the roar of a simoon and Miss Samstag jumped then from her mother's embrace, her little face stiff with the clench of her mouth.
"Mamma--you--No--no! Oh, mamma--oh--!"
A quick spout of hysteria seemed to half strangle Mrs. Samstag so that she slanted backward, holding her throat.
"I knew it. My own child against me. O God! Why was I born? My own child against me!"
"Mamma--you can't marry him. You can't marry--anybody."
"Why can't I marry anybody? Must I be afraid to tell my own child when a good man wants to marry me and give us both a good home? That's my thanks for making my child my first consideration--before I accepted him."
"Mamma, you didn't accept him. Darling, you wouldn't do a--thing like that!"
Miss Samstag's voice thickened up then quite frantically into a little scream that knotted in her throat, and she was suddenly so small and stricken that, with a gasp for fear she might crumple up where she stood, Mrs. Samstag leaned forward, catching her again by the sash.
"Alma!"
It was only for an instant, however. Suddenly Miss Samstag was her coolly firm little self, the bang of authority back in her voice.
"You can't marry Louis Latz."
"Can't I? Watch me."
"You can't do that to a nice, deserving fellow like him!"
"Do what?"
"That!"
Then Mrs. Samstag threw up both her hands to her face, rocking in an agony of self-abandon that was rather horrid to behold.
"O God! why don't you put me out of it all? My misery! I'm a leper to my own child!"
"Oh--mamma--!"
"Yes, a leper. Hold my misfortune against me. Let my neuralgia and Doctor Heyman's prescription to cure it ruin my life. Rob me of what happiness with a good man there is left in it for me. I don't want happiness. Don't expect it. I'm here just to suffer. My daughter will see to that. Oh, I know what is on your mind. You want to make me out something--terrible--because Doctor Heyman once taught me how to help myself a little when I'm nearly wild with neuralgia. Those were doctor's orders. I'll kill myself before I let you make me out something terrible. I never even knew what it was before the doctor gave his prescription. I'll kill--you hear?--kill myself."
She was hoarse. She was tear splotched so that her lips were slippery with them, and while the ague of her passion shook her, Alma, her own face swept white and her voice guttered with restraint, took her mother into the cradle of her arms and rocked and hushed her there.
"Mamma, mamma, what are you saying? I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. I blame him--Doctor Heyman--for prescribing it in the beginning. I know your fight. How brave it is. Even when I'm crossest with you, I realize. Alma's fighting with you dearest every inch of the way until--you're cured! And then--maybe--some day--anything you want! But not now. Mamma, you wouldn't marry Louis Latz