Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
On Sunday morning East Forty-third Street bears no more resemblance to
the week-day Forty-third than does a stiffly starched and subdued
Sabbath-school scholar to his Monday morning self. Strangely quiet it
is, and unfrequented. Josie Fifer, scurrying along in the unwonted
stillness, was prompted to throw a furtive glance over her shoulder now
and then, as though afraid of being caught at some criminal act. She ran
up the little flight of steps with a rush, unlocked the door with
trembling fingers, and let herself into the cool, dank gloom of the
storehouse hall. The metal door of the elevator stared inquiringly after
her. She fled past it to the stairway. Every step of that ancient
structure squeaked and groaned. First floor, second, third, fourth. The
everyday hum of the sewing machines was absent. The room seemed to be
holding its breath. Josie fancied that the very garments on the
worktables lifted themselves inquiringly from their supine position to
see what it was that disturbed their Sabbath rest. Josie, a tense,
wide-eyed, frightened little figure, stood in the centre of the vast
room, listening to she knew not what. Then, relaxing, she gave a nervous
little laugh and, reaching up, unpinned her hat. She threw it on a
near-by table and disappeared into the wardrobe room beyond.
Minutes passed--an hour. She did not come back. From the room beyond
came strange sounds--a woman's voice; the thrill of a song; cries; the
anguish of tears; laughter, harsh and high, as a desperate and deceived
woman laughs--all this following in such rapid succession that Sid Hahn,
puffing laboriously up the four flights of stairs leading to the
wardrobe floor, entered the main room unheard. Unknown to any one, he
was indulging in one of his unsuspected visits to the old wareroom that
housed the evidence of past and gone successes--successes that had
brought him fortune and fame, but little real happiness, perhaps. No one
knew that he loved to browse among these pathetic rags of a forgotten
triumph. No one would have dreamed that this chubby little man could
glow and weep over the cast-off garment of a famous Cyrano, or the faded
finery of a Zaza.
At the doorway he paused now, startled. He was listening with every
nerve of his taut body. What? Who? He tiptoed across the room with a
step incredibly light for one so stout, peered cautiously around the
side of the doorway, and leaned up against it weakly. Josie Fifer, in
the black velvet and mock pearls of "Splendour," with her grey-streaked
blonde hair hidden under the romantic scallops of a black wig, was
giving the big scene from the third act. And though it sounded like a
burlesque of that famous passage, and though she limped more than ever
as she reeled to an imaginary shrine in the corner, and though the black
wig was slightly askew by now, and the black velvet hung with bunchy
awkwardness about her skinny little body, there was nothing of mirth in
Sid Hahn's face as he gazed. He shrank back now.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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