The Vertical City | Page 8

now!"
"I would. He's my cure. A good home with a good man and money enough to travel and forget myself. Alma, mamma knows she's not an angel. Sometimes when she thinks what she's put her little girl through this last year she just wants to go out on the hilltop where she caught the neuralgia and lie down beside that grave out there and--"
"Mamma, don't talk like that!"
"But now's my chance, Alma, to get well. I've too much worry in this big hotel trying to keep up big expenses on little money and--"
"I know it, mamma. That's why I'm so in favor of finding ourselves a sweet, tiny little apartment with kitch--"
"No! Your father died with the world thinking him a rich man and they will never find out from me that he wasn't. I won't be the one to humiliate his memory--a man who enjoyed keeping up appearances the way he did. Oh, Alma, Alma, I'm going to get well now! I promise. So help me God if I ever give in to--it again."
"Mamma, please! For God's sake, you've said the same thing so often, only to break your promise."
"I've been weak, Alma; I don't deny it. But nobody who hasn't been tortured as I have can realize what it means to get relief just by--"
"Mamma, you're not playing fair this minute. That's the frightening part. It isn't only the neuralgia any more. It's just desire. That's what's so terrible to me, mamma. The way you have been taking it these last months. Just from--desire."
Mrs. Samstag buried her face, shuddering, down into her hands.
"O God! My own child against me!"
"No, mamma. Why, sweetheart, nobody knows better than I do how sweet and good you are when you are away from--it. We'll fight it together and win! I'm not afraid. It's been worse this last month because you've been nervous, dear. I understand now. You see, I--didn't dream of you and--Louis Latz. We'll forget--we'll take a little two-room apartment of our own, darling, and get your mind on housekeeping, and I'll take up stenography or social ser--"
"What good am I, anyway? No good. In my own way. In my child's way. A young man like Leo Friedlander crazy to propose and my child can't let him come to the point because she is afraid to leave her mother. Oh, I know--I know more than you think I do. Ruining your life! That's what I am, and mine, too!"
Tears now ran in hot cascades down Alma's cheeks.
"Why, mamma, as if I cared about anything--just so you--get well."
"I know. I know the way you tremble when he telephones, and color up when he--"
"Mamma, how can you?"
"I know what I've done. Ruined my baby's life, and now--"
"No!"
"Then help me, Alma. Louis wants me for his happiness. I want him for mine. Nothing will cure me like having a good man to live up to. The minute I find myself getting the craving for--it--don't you see, baby, fear that a good husband like Louis could find out such a thing about me would hold me back? See, Alma?"
"That's a wrong basis to start married life on--"
"I'm a woman who needs a man to baby her, Alma. That's the cure for me. Not to let me would be the same as to kill me. I've been a bad, weak woman, Alma, to be so afraid that maybe Leo Friedlander would steal you away from me. We'll make it a double wedding, baby!"
"Mamma! Mamma! I'll never leave you."
"All right, then, so you won't think your new father and me want to get rid of you, the first thing we'll pick out in our new home, he said it himself to-night, 'is Alma's room.'"
"I tell you it's wrong. It's wrong!"
"The rest with Leo can come later, after I've proved to you for a little while that I'm cured. Alma, don't cry! It's my cure. Just think, a good man! A beautiful home to take my mind off--worry. He said to-night he wants to spend a fortune, if necessary, to cure--my neuralgia."
"Oh, mamma! Mamma! if it were only--that!"
"Alma, if I promise on my--my life! I never felt the craving so little as I do--now."
"You've said that before--and before."
"But never with such a wonderful reason. It's the beginning of a new life. I know it. I'm cured!"
"Mamma, if I thought you meant it."
"I do. Alma, look at me. This very minute I've a real jumping case of neuralgia. But I wouldn't have anything for it except the electric pad. I feel fine. Strong. Alma, the bad times with me are over."
"Oh, mamma! Mamma, how I pray you're right."
"You'll thank God for the day that Louis Latz proposed to me. Why, I'd rather cut off my right hand than marry a man who could ever live to learn such a--thing