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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Humoresque, by Fannie Hurst
+
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+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Humoresque
+       A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It
+
+Author: Fannie Hurst
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9864]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMORESQUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner
+and the PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HE CAPERED THROUGH THE MELODY OF DVORAK'S, WHICH IS AS
+IRONIC AS A GRINNING MASK]
+
+
+
+                               HUMORESQUE
+
+                          A LAUGH ON LIFE WITH
+                            A TEAR BEHIND IT
+
+                             By FANNIE HURST
+
+                                  1920
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+HUMORESQUE
+OATS FOR THE WOMAN
+A PETAL ON THE CURRENT
+WHITE GOODS
+"HEADS"
+A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD
+EVEN AS YOU AND I
+THE WRONG PEW
+
+
+
+
+HUMORESQUE
+
+On either side of the Bowery, which cuts through like a drain to catch
+its sewage, Every Man's Land, a reeking march of humanity and humidity,
+steams with the excrement of seventeen languages, flung in _patois_ from
+tenement windows, fire escapes, curbs, stoops, and cellars whose walls
+are terrible and spongy with fungi.
+
+By that impregnable chemistry of race whereby the red blood of the
+Mongolian and the red blood of the Caucasian become as oil and water in
+the mingling, Mulberry Street, bounded by sixteen languages, runs its
+intact Latin length of pushcarts, clotheslines, naked babies, drying
+vermicelli; black-eyed women in rhinestone combs and perennially big
+with child; whole families of buttonhole-makers, who first saw the
+blue-and-gold light of Sorrento, bent at home work round a single gas
+flare; pomaded barbers of a thousand Neapolitan amours. And then, just
+as suddenly, almost without osmosis and by the mere stepping down from
+the curb, Mulberry becomes Mott Street, hung in grillwork balconies, the
+moldy smell of poverty touched up with incense. Orientals whose feet
+shuffle and whose faces are carved out of satinwood. Forbidden women,
+their white, drugged faces behind upper windows. Yellow children,
+incongruous enough in Western clothing. A draughty areaway with an
+oblique of gaslight and a black well of descending staircase.
+Show-windows of jade and tea and Chinese porcelains.
+
+More streets emanating out from Mott like a handful of crooked rheumatic
+fingers, then suddenly the Bowery again, cowering beneath Elevated
+trains, where men burned down to the butt end of soiled lives pass in
+and out and out and in of the knee-high swinging doors, a veiny-nosed,
+acid-eaten race in themselves.
+
+Allen Street, too, still more easterly, and half as wide, is straddled
+its entire width by the steely, long-legged skeleton of Elevated
+traffic, so that its third-floor windows no sooner shudder into silence
+from the rushing shock of one train than they are shaken into chatter by
+the passage of another. Indeed, third-floor dwellers of Allen Street,
+reaching out, can almost touch the serrated edges of the Elevated
+structure, and in summer the smell of its hot rails becomes an actual
+taste in the mouth. Passengers, in turn, look in upon this horizontal of
+life as they whiz by. Once, in fact, the blurry figure of what might
+have been a woman leaned out, as she passed, to toss into one Abrahm
+Kantor's apartment a short-stemmed pink carnation. It hit softly on
+little Leon Kantor's crib, brushing him fragrantly across the mouth and
+causing him to pucker up.
+
+Beneath, where even in August noonday, the sun cannot find its way by a
+chink, and babies lie stark naked in the cavernous shade, Allen Street
+presents a sort of submarine and greenish gloom, as if its humanity were
+actually moving through a sea of aqueous shadows, faces rather bleached
+and shrunk from sunlessness as water can bleach and shrink. And then,
+like a shimmering background of orange-finned and copper-flanked marine
+life, the brass-shops of Allen Street, whole rows of them, burn
+flamelessly and without benefit of fuel.
+
+To enter Abrahm Kantor's--Brasses, was three steps down, so that his
+casement show-window, at best filmed over with the constant rain of dust
+ground down from the rails above, was obscure enough, but crammed with
+copied loot of khedive and of czar. The seven-branch candlestick so
+biblical and supplicating of arms. An urn, shaped like Rebecca's, of
+brass, all beaten over with little pocks. Things--cups, trays, knockers,
+ikons, gargoyles, bowls, and teapots. A symphony of bells in graduated
+sizes. Jardinieres with fat sides. A pot-bellied samovar. A
+swinging-lamp for the dead, star-shaped. Against the door, an octave of
+tubular chimes, prisms of voiceless harmony and of heatless light.
+
+Opening this door, they rang gently, like melody heard through water and
+behind glass. Another bell rang, too, in tilted singsong from a pulley
+operating somewhere in the catacomb rear of this lambent vale of things
+and things and things. In turn, this pulley set in toll still another
+bell, two flights up in Abrahm Kantor's tenement, which overlooked the
+front of whizzing rails and a rear wilderness of gibbet-looking
+clothes-lines, dangling perpetual specters of flapping union suits in a
+mid-air flaky with soot.
+
+Often at lunch, or even the evening meal, this bell would ring in on
+Abrahm Kantor's digestive well-being, and while he hurried down, napkin
+often bib-fashion still about his neck, and into the smouldering lanes
+of copper, would leave an eloquent void at the head of his
+well-surrounded table.
+
+This bell was ringing now, jingling in upon the slumber of a still newer
+Kantor, snuggling peacefully enough within the ammoniac depths of a
+cradle recently evacuated by Leon, heretofore impinged upon you.
+
+On her knees before an oven that billowed forth hotly into her face,
+Mrs. Kantor, fairly fat and not yet forty, and at the immemorial task of
+plumbing a delicately swelling layer-cake with broom-straw, raised her
+face, reddened and faintly moist.
+
+"Isadore, run down and say your papa is out until six. If it's a
+customer, remember the first asking-price is the two middle figures on
+the tag, and the last asking-price is the two outside figures. See once,
+with your papa out to buy your little brother his birthday present, and
+your mother in a cake, if you can't make a sale for first price."
+
+Isadore Kantor, aged eleven and hunched with a younger Kantor over an
+oilcloth-covered table, hunched himself still deeper in a barter for a
+large crystal marble with a candy stripe down its center.
+
+"Izzie, did you hear me?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Go down this minute--do you hear? Rudolph, stop always letting your
+big brother get the best of you in marbles. Iz-zie!"
+
+"In a minute."
+
+"Don't let me have to ask you again, Isadore Kantor!"
+
+"Aw, ma, I got some 'rithmetic to do. Let Esther go!"
+
+"Always Esther! Your sister stays right in the front room with her
+spelling."
+
+"Aw, ma, I got spelling, too."
+
+"Every time I ask that boy he should do me one thing, right away he gets
+lessons! With me, that lessons-talk don't go no more. Every time you get
+put down in school, I'm surprised there's a place left lower where they
+can put you. Working-papers for such a boy like you!"
+
+"I'll woik--"
+
+"How I worried myself! Violin lessons yet--thirty cents a lesson out of
+your papa's pants while he slept! That's how I wanted to have in the
+family a profession--maybe a musician on the violin! Lessons for you out
+of money I had to lie to your papa about! Honest, when I think of it--my
+own husband--it's a wonder I don't potch you just for remembering it.
+Rudolph, will you stop licking that cake-pan? It's saved for your little
+brother Leon. Ain't you ashamed even on your little brother's birthday
+to steal from him?"
+
+"Ma, gimme the spoon?"
+
+"I'll give you the spoon, Isadore Kantor, where you don't want it. If
+you don't hurry down, the way that bell is ringing, not one bite do you
+get out of your little brother's birthday cake tonight!"
+
+"I'm goin', ain't I?"
+
+"Always on my children's birthdays a meanness sets into this house!
+Rudolph, will you put down that bowl! Izzie--for the last time I ask
+you--for the last time--"
+
+Erect now, Mrs. Kantor lifted an expressive hand, letting it hover.
+
+"I'm goin', ma; for golly sakes, I'm goin'!" said her recalcitrant one,
+shuffling off toward the staircase, shuffling, shuffling.
+
+Then Mrs. Kantor resumed her plumbing, and through the little apartment,
+its middle and only bedroom of three beds and a crib lighted vicariously
+by the front room and kitchen, began to wind the warm, the golden-brown
+fragrance of cake in the rising.
+
+By six o'clock the shades were drawn against the dirty dusk of Allen
+Street and the oilcloth-covered table dragged out center and spread by
+Esther Kantor, nine in years, in the sturdy little legs bulging over
+shoe-tops, in the pink cheeks that sagged slightly of plumpness, and in
+the utter roundness of face and gaze, but mysteriously older in the
+little-mother lore of crib and knee-dandling ditties and in the ropy
+length and thickness of the two brown plaits down her back.
+
+There was an eloquence to that waiting, laid-out table, the print of the
+family already gathered about it; the dynastic high chair, throne of
+each succeeding Kantor; an armchair drawn up before the paternal
+mustache-cup; the ordinary kitchen chair of Mannie Kantor, who spilled
+things, an oilcloth sort of bib dangling from its back; the little chair
+of Leon Kantor, cushioned in an old family album that raised his chin
+above the table. Even in cutlery the Kantor family was not lacking in
+variety. Surrounding a centerpiece of thick Russian lace were Russian
+spoons washed in washed-off gilt; forks of one, two, and three tines;
+steel knives with black handles; a hartshorn carving-knife. Thick-lipped
+china in stacks before the armchair. A round four-pound loaf of black
+bread waiting to be torn, and tonight, on the festive mat of cotton
+lace, a cake of pinkly gleaming icing, encircled with five pink
+little candles.
+
+At slightly after six Abrahm Kantor returned, leading by a resisting
+wrist Leon Kantor, his stemlike little legs, hit midship, as it were, by
+not sufficiently cut-down trousers and so narrow and birdlike of face
+that his eyes quite obliterated the remaining map of his features, like
+those of a still wet nestling. All except his ears. They poised at the
+sides of Leon's shaved head of black bristles, as if butterflies had
+just lighted there, whispering, with very spread wings, their message,
+and presently would fly off again. By some sort of muscular contraction
+he could wiggle these ears at will, and would do so for a penny or a
+whistle, and upon one occasion for his brother Rudolph's dead rat, so
+devised as to dangle from string and window before the unhappy
+passer-by. They were quivering now, these ears, but because the entire
+little face was twitching back tears and gulp of sobs.
+
+"Abrahm--Leon--what is it?" Her hands and her forearms instantly out
+from the business of kneading something meaty and floury, Mrs. Kantor
+rushed forward, her glance quick from one to the other of them. "Abrahm,
+what's wrong?"
+
+"I'll feedle him! I'll feedle him!"
+
+The little pulling wrist still in clutch, Mr. Kantor regarded his wife,
+the lower half of his face, well covered with reddish bristles,
+undershot, his free hand and even his eyes violently lifted. To those
+who see in a man a perpetual kinship to that animal kingdom of which he
+is supreme, there was something undeniably anthropoidal about Abrahm
+Kantor, a certain simian width between the eyes and long, rather agile
+hands with hairy backs.
+
+"Hush it!" cried Mr. Kantor, his free hand raised in threat of descent,
+and cowering his small son to still more undersized proportions. "Hush
+it or, by golly! I'll--"
+
+"Abrahm--Abrahm--what is it?"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor gave vent in acridity of word and feature.
+
+"_Schlemmil!_" he cried. "_Momser! Ganef! Nebich!_" by which, in smiting
+mother tongue, he branded his offspring with attributes of apostate and
+ne'er-do-well, of idiot and thief.
+
+"Abrahm!"
+
+"Schlemmil!" repeated Mr. Kantor, swinging Leon so that he described a
+large semicircle that landed him into the meaty and waiting embrace of
+his mother. "Take him! You should be proud of such a little _momser_ for
+a son! Take him, and here you got back his birthday dollar. A feedle!
+Honest--when I think on it--a feedle!"
+
+Such a rush of outrage seemed fairly to strangle Mr. Kantor that he
+stood, hand still upraised, choking and inarticulate above the now
+frankly howling huddle of his son.
+
+"Abrahm, you should just once touch this child! How he trembles!
+Leon--mamma's baby--what is it? Is this how you come back when papa
+takes you out to buy your birthday present? Ain't you ashamed?"
+
+Mouth distended to a large and blackly hollow O, Leon, between
+terrifying spells of breath-holding, continued to howl.
+
+"All the way to Naftel's toy-store I drag him. A birthday present for a
+dollar his mother wants he should have, all right, a birthday present! I
+give you my word till I'm ashamed for Naftel, every toy in his shelves
+is pulled down. Such a cow--that shakes with his head--"
+
+"No--no--no!" This from young Leon, beating at his mother's skirts.
+
+Again the upraised but never quite descending hand of his father.
+
+"By golly! I'll 'no--no' you!"
+
+"Abrahm--go 'way! Baby, what did papa do?"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor broke into an actual tarantella of rage, his hands palms
+up and dancing.
+
+"'What did papa do?' she asks. She's got easy asking. 'What did papa
+do?' The whole shop, I tell you. A sheep with a baa inside when you
+squeeze on him--games--a horn so he can holler my head off--such a knife
+like Izzie's with a scissors in it. 'Leon,' I said, ashamed for Naftel,
+'that's a fine knife like Izzie's so you can cut up with. All right,
+then'--when I see how he hollers--'such a box full of soldiers to have
+war with.' 'Dollar seventy-five,' says Naftel. 'All right, then,' I
+says, when I seen how he keeps hollering. 'Give you a dollar fifteen for
+'em.' I should make myself small for fifteen cents more. 'Dollar
+fifteen,' I says--anything so he should shut up with his hollering for
+what he seen in the window."
+
+"He seen something in the window he wanted, Abrahm?"
+
+"Didn't I tell you? A feedle! A four-dollar feedle! A moosicer, so we
+should have another feedler in the family for some thirty-cents
+lessons."
+
+"Abrahm--you mean--he--our Leon--wanted a violin?"
+
+"'Wanted,' she says. I could potch him again this minute for how he
+wanted it! _Du_--you little bum you--_chammer_--_momser_--I'll
+feedle you!"
+
+Across Mrs. Kantor's face, as she knelt there in the shapeless
+cotton-stuff uniform of poverty, through the very tenement of her body,
+a light had flashed up into her eyes. She drew her son closer, crushing
+his puny cheek up against hers, cupping his bristly little head in her
+by no means immaculate palms.
+
+"He wanted a violin! It's come, Abrahm! The dream of all my life--my
+prayers--it's come! I knew it must be one of my children if I waited
+long enough--and prayed enough. A musician! He wants a violin! He cried
+for a violin! My baby! Why, darlink, mamma'll sell her clothes off her
+back to get you a violin. He's a musician, Abrahm! I should have known
+it the way he's fooling always around the chimes and the bells in
+the store!"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor took to rocking his head between his palms.
+
+"Oi--oi! The mother is crazier as her son. A moosician! A _fresser_, you
+mean. Such an eater, it's a wonder he ain't twice too big instead of
+twice too little for his age."
+
+"That's a sign, Abrahm; geniuses, they all eat big. For all we know,
+he's a genius. I swear to you, Abrahm, all the months before he was born
+I prayed for it. Each one before they came, I prayed it should be the
+one. I thought that time the way our Isadore ran after the organ-grinder
+he would be the one. How could I know it was the monkey he wanted? When
+Isadore wouldn't take to it I prayed my next one, and then my next one,
+should have the talent. I've prayed for it, Abrahm. If he wants a
+violin, please, he should have it."
+
+"Not with my money."
+
+"With mine! I've got enough saved, Abrahm. Them three extra dollars
+right here inside my own waist. Just that much for that cape down on
+Grand Street. I wouldn't have it now, the way they say the wind blows
+up them--"
+
+"I tell you the woman's crazy--"
+
+"I feel it! I know he's got talent! I know my children so well. A--a
+father don't understand. I'm so next to them. It's like I can tell
+always everything that will happen to them--it's like a pain--somewheres
+here--like in back of my heart."
+
+"A pain in the heart she gets."
+
+"For my own children I'm always a prophet, I tell you! You think I
+didn't know that--that terrible night after the pogrom after we got out
+of Kief to across the border! You remember, Abrahm, how I predicted it
+to you then--how our Mannie would be born too soon and--and not right
+from my suffering! Did it happen on the ship to America just the way I
+said it would? Did it happen just exactly how I predicted our Izzie
+would break his leg that time playing on the fire-escape? I tell you,
+Abrahm, I get a real pain here under my heart that tells me what comes
+to my children. Didn't I tell you how Esther would be the first in her
+confirmation-class and our baby Boris would be redheaded? At only five
+years, our Leon all by himself cries for a fiddle--get it for him,
+Abrahm--get it for him!"
+
+"I tell you, Sarah, I got a crazy woman for a wife! It ain't enough we
+celebrate eight birthdays a year with one-dollar presents each time and
+copper goods every day higher. It ain't enough that right to-morrow I
+got a fifty-dollar note over me from Sol Ginsberg; a four-dollar present
+she wants for a child that don't even know the name of a feedle."
+
+"Leon, baby, stop hollering. Papa will go back and get the fiddle for
+you now before supper. See, mamma's got money here in her waist--"
+
+"Papa will go back for the feedle _not_--three dollars she's saved for
+herself he can holler out of her for a feedle!"
+
+"Abrahm, he's screaming so he--he'll have a fit."
+
+"He should have two fits."
+
+"Darlink--"
+
+"I tell you the way you spoil your children it will some day come back
+on us."
+
+"It's his birthday night, Abrahm--five years since his little head
+first lay on the pillow next to me."
+
+"All right--all right--drive me crazy because he's got a birthday."
+
+"Leon baby--if you don't stop hollering you'll make yourself sick.
+Abrahm, I never saw him like this--he's green--"
+
+"I'll green him. Where is that old feedle from Isadore--that
+seventy-five-cents one?"
+
+"I never thought of that! You broke it that time you got mad at
+Isadore's lessons. I'll run down. Maybe it's with the junk behind the
+store. I never thought of that fiddle. Leon darlink--wait! Mamma'll run
+down and look. Wait, Leon, till mamma finds you a fiddle."
+
+The raucous screams stopped then, suddenly, and on their very lustiest
+crest, leaving an echoing gash across silence. On willing feet of haste
+Mrs. Kantor wound down backward the high, ladder-like staircase that led
+to the brass-shop.
+
+Meanwhile to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour had assembled the
+house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement
+which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium,
+delirium tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley
+din of things. There were Isadore, already astride his chair, leaning
+well into center table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound
+loaf; Esther, old at chores, settling an infant into the high chair,
+careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib.
+
+"Papa, Izzie's eating first again."
+
+"Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up, or you'll get
+a potch you won't soon forget."
+
+"Say, pop--"
+
+"Don't 'say, pop' me! I don't want no street-bum freshness from you!"
+
+"I mean, papa, there was an up-town swell in, and she bought one of them
+seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price."
+
+"_Schlemmil! Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the sink.
+"Didn't I always tell you it's the first price, times two, when you see
+up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough a
+slummer must pay for her nosiness?"
+
+There entered then, on poor, shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor, so marred in
+the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul
+had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the down
+upon his face and in growth unretarded by any great nervosity of system,
+his vacuity of face was not that of childhood, but rather as if his
+light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so terribly
+and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells closed
+against himself.
+
+At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down
+his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough
+to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly.
+
+"Giddy-app!" he cried. "Giddy-app!"
+
+And then Mannie, true to habit, would scamper and scamper.
+
+Up out of the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor,
+disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm,
+triumphant, a violin of one string and a broken back.
+
+"See, Leon--what mamma got! A violin! A fiddle! Look! The bow, too, I
+found. It ain't much, baby, but it's a fiddle."
+
+"Aw, ma--that's my old violin. Gimme. I want it. Where'd you find--"
+
+"Hush up, Izzie! This ain't yours no more. See, Leon, what mamma brought
+you. A violin!"
+
+"Now, you little _chammer_, you got a feedle, and if you ever let me
+hear you holler again for a feedle, by golly! if I don't--"
+
+From his corner, Leon Kantor reached out, taking the instrument and
+fitting it beneath his chin, the bow immediately feeling, surely and
+lightly, for string.
+
+"Look, Abrahm, he knows how to hold it! What did I tell you? A child
+that never in his life seen a fiddle, except a beggar's on the street!"
+
+Little Esther suddenly cantered down-floor, clapping her chubby hands.
+
+"Lookie--lookie--Leon!"
+
+The baby ceased clattering his spoon against the wooden bib. A silence
+seemed to shape itself.
+
+So black and so bristly of head, his little clawlike hands hovering over
+the bow, Leon Kantor withdrew a note, strangely round and given up
+almost sobbingly from the single string. A note of warm twining quality,
+like a baby's finger.
+
+"Leon--darlink!"
+
+Fumbling for string and for notes the instrument could not yield up to
+him, the birdlike mouth began once more to open widely and terribly into
+the orificial O.
+
+It was then Abrahm Kantor came down with a large hollow resonance of
+palm against that aperture, lifting his small son and depositing him
+plop upon the family album.
+
+"Take that! By golly! one more whimper out of you and if I don't make
+you black-and-blue, birthday or no birthday! Dish up, Sarah, quick, or
+I'll give him something to cry about."
+
+The five pink candles had been lighted, burning pointedly and with
+slender little smoke wisps. Regarding them owlishly, the tears dried on
+Leon's face, his little tongue licking up at them.
+
+"Look how solemn he is, like he was thinking of something a million
+miles away except how lucky he is he should have a pink birthday-cake.
+Uh--uh--uh! Don't you begin to holler again. Here, I'm putting the
+feedle next to you. Uh--uh--uh!"
+
+To a meal plentifully ladled out directly from stove to table, the
+Kantor family drew up, dipping first into the rich black soup of the
+occasion. All except Mrs. Kantor.
+
+"Esther, you dish up. I'm going somewhere. I'll be back in a minute."
+
+"Where you going, Sarah? Won't it keep until--"
+
+But even in the face of query, Sarah Kantor was two flights down and
+well through the lambent aisles of the copper-shop. Outside, she broke
+into run, along two blocks of the indescribable bazaar atmosphere of
+Grand Street, then one block to the right.
+
+Before Mattel's show-window, a jet of bright gas burned into a
+jibberwock land of toys. There was that in Sarah Kantor's face that was
+actually lyrical as, fumbling at the bosom of her dress, she entered.
+
+To Leon Kantor, by who knows what symphonic scheme of things, life was a
+chromatic scale, yielding up to him, through throbbing, living nerves of
+sheep-gut, the sheerest semitones of man's emotions.
+
+When he tucked his Stradivarius beneath his chin the book of life seemed
+suddenly translated to him in melody. Even Sarah Kantor, who still
+brewed for him, on a small portable stove carried from city to city and
+surreptitiously unpacked in hotel suites, the blackest of soups, and,
+despite his protestation, would incase his ears of nights in an old
+home-made device against their flightiness, would oftentimes bleed
+inwardly at this sense of his isolation.
+
+There was a realm into which he went alone, leaving her as detached as
+the merest ticket purchaser at the box-office.
+
+At seventeen Leon Kantor had played before the crowned heads of Europe,
+the aching heads of American capital, and even the shaved head of a
+South Sea prince. There was a layout of anecdotal gifts, from the molar
+tooth of the South Sea prince set in a South Sea pearl to a
+blue-enameled snuff-box incrusted with the rearing-lion coat-of-arms of
+a very royal house.
+
+At eighteen came the purchase of a king's Stradivarius for a king's
+ransom, and acclaimed by Sunday supplements to repose of nights in an
+ivory cradle.
+
+At nineteen, under careful auspices of press agent, the ten singing
+digits of the son of Abrahm Kantor were insured at ten thousand dollars
+the finger.
+
+At twenty he had emerged surely and safely from the perilous quicksands
+which have sucked down whole Lilliputian worlds of infant prodigies.
+
+At twenty-one, when Leon Kantor played a Sunday-night concert, there was
+a human queue curling entirely around the square block of the
+operahouse, waiting its one, two, even three and four hours for the
+privilege of standing room only.
+
+Usually these were Leon Kantor's own people pouring up from the lowly
+lands of the East Side to the white lands of Broadway, parched for
+music, these burning brethren of his--old men in that line, frequently
+carrying their own little folding camp-chairs, not against weariness of
+the spirit, but of the flesh; youth with Slavic eyes and cheek-bones.
+These were the six-deep human phalanx which would presently slant down
+at him from tiers of steepest balconies and stand frankly emotional and
+jammed in the unreserved space behind the railing which shut them off
+from the three-dollar seats of the reserved.
+
+At a very special one of these concerts, dedicated to the meager purses
+of just these, and held in New York's super opera-house, the
+Amphitheater, a great bowl of humanity, the metaphor made perfect by
+tiers of seats placed upon the stage, rose from orchestra to dome. A
+gigantic cup of a Colosseum lined in stacks and stacks of faces. From
+the door of his dressing-room, leaning out, Leon Kantor could see a
+great segment of it, buzzing down into adjustment, orchestra twitting
+and tuning into it.
+
+In the bare little room, illuminated by a sheaf of roses, just arrived,
+Mrs. Kantor drew him back by the elbow.
+
+"Leon, you're in a draught."
+
+The amazing years had dealt kindly with Mrs. Kantor. Stouter, softer,
+apparently even taller, she was full of small new authorities that could
+shut out cranks, newspaper reporters, and autograph fiends. A
+fitted-over-corsets black taffeta and a high comb in the graying hair
+had done their best with her. Pride, too, had left its flush upon her
+cheeks, like two round spots of fever.
+
+"Leon, it's thirty minutes till your first number. Close that door. Do
+you want to let your papa and his excitement in on you?"
+
+The son of Sarah Kantor obeyed, leaning his short, rather narrow form in
+silhouette against the closed door. In spite of slimly dark evening
+clothes worked out by an astute manager to the last detail in boyish
+effects, there was that about him which defied long-haired precedent.
+Slimly and straightly he had shot up into an unmannered, a short, even a
+bristly-haired young manhood, disqualifying by a close shave for the
+older school of hirsute virtuosity.
+
+But his nerves did not spare him. On concert nights they seemed to
+emerge almost to the surface of him and shriek their exposure.
+
+"Just feel my hands, ma. Like ice."
+
+She dived down into her large silk what-not of a reticule.
+
+"I've got your fleece-lined gloves here, son."
+
+"No--no! For God's sake--not those things! No!"
+
+He was back at the door again, opening it to a slit, peering through.
+
+"They're bringing more seats on the stage. If they crowd me in I won't
+go on. I can't play if I hear them breathe. Hi--out there--no more
+chairs! Pa! Hancock--"
+
+"Leon, Leon, ain't you ashamed to get so worked up? Close that door.
+Have you got a manager who is paid just to see to your comfort? When
+papa comes, I'll have him go out and tell Hancock you don't want chairs
+so close to you. Leon, will you mind mamma and sit down?"
+
+"It's a bigger house than the royal concert in Madrid, ma. Why, I never
+saw anything like it! It's a stampede. God! this is real--this is what
+gets me, playing for my own! I should have given a concert like this
+three years ago. I'll do it every year now. I'd rather play before them
+than all the crowned heads on earth. It's the biggest night of my life.
+They're rioting out there, ma--rioting to get in."
+
+"Leon, Leon, won't you sit down, if mamma begs you to?"
+
+He sat then, strumming with all ten fingers upon his knees.
+
+"Try to get quiet, son. Count--like you always do. One--two--three--"
+
+"Please, ma--for God's sake--please--please!"
+
+"Look--such beautiful roses! From Sol Ginsberg, an old friend of papa's
+he used to buy brasses from eighteen years ago. Six years he's been away
+with his daughter in Munich. Such a beautiful mezzo they say, engaged
+already for Metropolitan next season."
+
+"I hate it, ma, if they breathe on my neck."
+
+"Leon darlink, did mamma promise to fix it? Have I ever let you play a
+concert when you wouldn't be comfortable?"
+
+His long, slim hands suddenly prehensile and cutting a streak of upward
+gesture, Leon Kantor rose to his feet, face whitening.
+
+"Do it now! Now, I tell you. I won't have them breathe on me. Do you
+hear me? Now! Now! Now!"
+
+Risen also, her face soft and tremulous for him, Mrs. Kantor put out a
+gentle, a sedative hand upon his sleeve.
+
+"Son," she said, with an edge of authority even behind her smile, "don't
+holler at me!"
+
+He grasped her hand with his two and, immediately quiet, lay a close
+string of kisses along it.
+
+"Mamma," he said, kissing again and again into the palm, "mamma--mamma."
+
+"I know, son; it's nerves!"
+
+"They eat me, ma. Feel--I'm like ice! I didn't mean it; you know I
+didn't mean it!"
+
+"My baby," she said, "my wonderful boy, it's like I can never get used
+to the wonder of having you. The greatest one of them all should be
+mine--a plain woman's like mine!"
+
+He teased her, eager to conciliate and to ride down his own state of
+quivering.
+
+"Now, ma--now--now--don't forget Rimsky!"
+
+"Rimsky! A man three times your age who was playing concerts before you
+was born! Is that a comparison? From your clippings-books I can show
+Rimsky who the world considers the greatest violinist. Rimsky he
+rubs into me!"
+
+"All right, then, the press-clippings, but did Elsass, the greatest
+manager of them all, bring me a contract for thirty concerts at two
+thousand a concert? Now I've got you! Now!"
+
+She would not meet his laughter. "Elsass! Believe me, he'll come to you
+yet! My boy should worry if he makes fifty thousand a year more or less.
+Rimsky should have that honor--for so long as he can hold it. But he
+won't hold it long. Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass
+comes after you. Not for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but
+bigger--not for thirty concerts, but for fifty!"
+
+"_Brava! Brava!_ There's a woman for you. More money than she knows
+what to do with, and then not satisfied!"
+
+She was still too tremulous for banter. "'Not satisfied'? Why, Leon, I
+never stop praying my thanks for you!"
+
+"All right, then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek;
+"to-morrow we'll call a _mignon_--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street
+prayer-party."
+
+"Leon, you mustn't make fun."
+
+"Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room!"
+
+"'Girl'! Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon. Always a
+boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I
+suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl. That's how selfish the mother
+of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be."
+
+"All right! Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!"
+
+"Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me
+a child. A boy that never in his life was out after midnight except to
+catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could
+have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it
+any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you? You don't
+believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps always teasing you that you
+should have a--what he calls--affair--a love-affair? Such talk is not
+nice, Leon--an affair!"
+
+"Love-affair poppycock!" said Leon Kantor, lifting his mother's face and
+kissing her on eyes about ready to tear. "Why, I've got something, ma,
+right here in my heart for you that--"
+
+"Leon, be careful your shirt-front!"
+
+"That's so--so what you call 'tender,' for my best sweetheart that
+I--Oh, love-affair--poppycock!"
+
+She would not let her tears come.
+
+"My boy--my wonder-boy!"
+
+"There goes the overture, ma."
+
+"Here, darlink--your glass of water."
+
+"I can't stand it in here; I'm suffocating!"
+
+"Got your mute in your pocket, son?"
+
+"Yes, ma; for God's sake, yes! Yes! Don't keep asking things!"
+
+"Ain't you ashamed, Leon, to be in such an excitement! For every concert
+you get worse."
+
+"The chairs--they'll breathe on nay neck."
+
+"Leon, did mamma promise you those chairs would be moved?"
+
+"Where's Hancock?"
+
+"Say--I'm grateful if he stays out. It took me enough work to get this
+room cleared. You know your papa how he likes to drag in the whole world
+to show you off--always just before you play. The minute he walks in the
+room right away he gets everybody to trembling just from his own
+excitements. I dare him this time he should bring people. No dignity has
+that man got, the way he brings every one."
+
+Even upon her words came a rattling of door, Of door-knob, and a voice
+through the clamor.
+
+"Open--quick--Sarah! Leon!"
+
+A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her
+chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon the shivering door.
+
+"Open--Sarah!"
+
+With a narrowing glance, Mrs. Kantor laid to her lips a forefinger of
+silence.
+
+"Sarah, it's me! Quick, I say!"
+
+Then Leon Kantor sprang up, the old prehensile gesture of curving
+fingers shooting up.
+
+"For God's sake, ma, let him in! I can't stand that infernal battering."
+
+"Abrahm, go away! Leon's got to have quiet before his concert."
+
+"Just a minute, Sarah. Open quick!"
+
+With a spring his son was at the door, unlocking and flinging it back.
+
+"Come in, pa."
+
+The years had weighed heavily upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only. He
+was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity
+that was absolutely oleaginous. It shone roundly in his face, doubling
+of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes
+that behind the gold-rimmed glasses gave sparklingly forth his estate of
+well-being.
+
+"Abrahm, didn't I tell you not to dare to--"
+
+On excited balls of feet that fairly bounced him, Abrahm Kantor burst
+in.
+
+"Leon--mamma--I got out here an old friend--Sol Ginsberg. You remember,
+mamma, from brasses--"
+
+"Abrahm--not now--"
+
+"Go 'way with your 'not now'! I want Leon should meet him. Sol, this is
+him--a little grown up from such a _nebich_ like you remember
+him--_nu_? Sarah, you remember Sol Ginsberg? Say--I should ask you if
+you remember your right hand! Ginsberg & Esel, the firm. This is his
+girl, a five years' contract signed yesterday--five hundred dollars an
+opera for a beginner--six roles--not bad--_nu_?"
+
+"Abrahm, you must ask Mr. Ginsberg please to excuse Leon until after his
+concert--"
+
+"Shake hands with him, Ginsberg. He's had his hand shook enough in his
+life, and by kings, to shake it once more with an old bouncer like you!"
+
+Mr. Ginsberg, not unlike his colleague in rotundities, held out a short,
+a dimpled hand.
+
+"It's a proud day," he said, "for me to shake the hands from mine old
+friend's son and the finest violinist livink to-day. My little
+daughter--"
+
+"Yes, yes, Gina. Here, shake hands with him. Leon, they say a voice like
+a fountain. Gina Berg--eh, Ginsberg--is how you stage-named her? You
+hear, mamma, how fancy--Gina Berg? We go hear her, eh?"
+
+There was about Miss Gina Berg, whose voice could soar to the
+tirra-lirra of a lark and then deepen to mezzo, something of the actual
+slimness of the poor, maligned Elsa so long buried beneath the buxomness
+of divas. She was like a little flower that in its crannied nook keeps
+dewy longest.
+
+"How do you do, Leon Kantor?"
+
+There was a whir through her English of three acquired languages.
+
+"How do _you_ do?"
+
+"We--father and I--traveled once all the way from Brussels to Dresden to
+hear you. It was worth it. I shall never forget how you played the
+'Humoresque.' It made me laugh and cry."
+
+"You like Brussels?"
+
+She laid her little hand to her heart, half closing her eyes.
+
+"I will never be so happy again as with the sweet little people of
+Brussels."
+
+"I, too, love Brussels. I studied there four years with Ahrenfest."
+
+"I know you did. My teacher, Lyndahl, in Berlin, was his
+brother-in-law."
+
+"You have studied with Lyndahl?"
+
+"He is my master."
+
+"I--Will I some time hear you sing?"
+
+"I am not yet great. When I am foremost like you, yes."
+
+"Gina--Gina Berg; that is a beautiful name to make famous."
+
+"You see how it is done? Gins--berg. Gina Berg."
+
+"Clev--er!"
+
+They stood then smiling across a chasm of the diffidence of youth, she
+fumbling at the great fur pelt out of which her face flowered so dewily.
+
+"I--Well--we--we--are in the fourth box--I guess we had better be
+going--Fourth box, left."
+
+He wanted to find words, but for consciousness of self, could not.
+
+"It's a wonderful house out there waiting for you, Leon Kantor, and
+you--you're wonderful, too!"
+
+"The--flowers--thanks!"
+
+"My father, he sent them. Come, father--quick!"
+
+Suddenly there was a tight tensity seemed to crowd up the little room.
+
+"Abrahm--quick--get Hancock. That first row of chairs--has got to be
+moved. There he is, in the wings. See that the piano ain't dragged down
+too far! Leon, got your mute in your pocket? Please, Mr. Ginsberg--you
+must excuse--Here, Leon, is your glass of water; drink it, I say. Shut
+that door out there, boy, so there ain't a draught in the wings. Here,
+Leon, your violin. Got your neckerchief? Listen how they're shouting!
+It's for you--Leon--darlink--Go!"
+
+The center of that vast human bowl which had shouted itself out, slim,
+boylike, and in his supreme isolation, Leon Kantor drew bow and a first
+thin, pellucid, and perfect note into a silence breathless to
+receive it.
+
+Throughout the arduous flexuosities of the Mendelssohn E minor concerto,
+singing, winding from tonal to tonal climax, and out of the slow
+movement which is like a tourniquet twisting the heart into the spirited
+_allegro molto vivace_, it was as if beneath Leon Kantor's fingers the
+strings were living vein-cords, youth, vitality, and the very foam of
+exuberance racing through them.
+
+That was the power of him. The vichy and the sparkle of youth, so that,
+playing, the melody poured round him like wine and went down seething
+and singing into the hearts of his hearers.
+
+Later, and because these were his people and because they were dark and
+Slavic with his Slavic darkness, he played, as if his very blood were
+weeping, the "Kol Nidre," which is the prayer of his race for
+atonement.
+
+And then the super-amphitheater, filled with those whose emotions lie
+next to the surface and whose pores have not been closed over with a
+water-tight veneer, burst into its cheers and its tears.
+
+There were fifteen recalls from the wings, Abrahm Kantor standing
+counting them off on his fingers and trembling to receive the
+Stradivarius. Then, finally, and against the frantic negative pantomime
+of his manager, a scherzo, played so lacily that it swept the house in
+lightest laughter.
+
+When Leon Kantor finally completed his program they were loath to let
+him go, crowding down the aisles upon him, applauding up, down, around
+him until the great disheveled house was like the roaring of a sea, and
+he would laugh and throw out his arm in widespread helplessness, and
+always his manager in the background gesticulating against too much of
+his precious product for the money, ushers already slamming up chairs,
+his father's arms out for the Stradivarius, and, deepest in the gloom of
+the wings, Sarah Kantor, in a rocker especially dragged out for her, and
+from the depths of the black-silk reticule, darning his socks.
+
+"Bravo--bravo! Give us the 'Humoresque'--Chopin Nocturne--Polonaise
+--'Humoresque.' Bravo--bravo!"
+
+And even as they stood, hatted and coated, importuning and pressing in
+upon him, and with a wisp of a smile to the fourth left box, Leon Kantor
+played them the "Humoresque" of Dvorak, skedaddling, plucking,
+quirking--that laugh on life with a tear behind it. Then suddenly,
+because he could escape no other way, rushed straight back for his
+dressing-room, bursting in upon a flood of family already there: Isadore
+Kantor, blue-shaved, aquiline, and already graying at the temples; his
+five-year-old son, Leon; a soft little pouter-pigeon of a wife, too,
+enormous of bust, in glittering ear-drops and a wrist watch of diamonds
+half buried in chubby wrist; Miss Esther Kantor, pink and pretty;
+Rudolph; Boris, not yet done with growing-pains.
+
+At the door Miss Kantor met her brother, her eyes as sweetly moist as
+her kiss.
+
+"Leon darling, you surpassed even yourself!"
+
+"Quit crowding, children. Let him sit down. Here, Leon, let mamma give
+you a fresh collar. Look how the child's perspired. Pull down that
+window, Boris. Rudolph, don't let no one in. I give you my word if
+to-night wasn't as near as I ever came to seeing a house go crazy. Not
+even that time in Milan, darlink, when they broke down the doors, was it
+like to-night--"
+
+"Ought to seen, ma, the row of police outside--"
+
+"Hush up, Roody! Don't you see your brother is trying to get his
+breath?"
+
+From Mrs. Isadore Kantor: "You should have seen the balconies, mother.
+Isadore and I went up just to see the jam."
+
+"Six thousand dollars in the house to-night, if there was a cent," said
+Isadore Kantor.
+
+"Hand me my violin, please, Esther. I must have scratched it, the way
+they pushed."
+
+"No, son, you didn't. I've already rubbed it up. Sit quiet, darlink!"
+
+He was limply white, as if the vitality had flowed out of him.
+
+"God! wasn't it--tremendous?"
+
+"Six thousand, if there was a cent," repeated Isadore Kantor. "More than
+Rimsky ever played to in his life!"
+
+"Oh, Izzie, you make me sick, always counting--counting!"
+
+"Your sister's right, Isadore. You got nothing to complain of if there
+was only six hundred in the house. A boy whose fiddle has made already
+enough to set you up in such a fine business, his brother Boris in such
+a fine college, automobiles--style--and now because Vladimir Rimsky,
+three times his age, gets signed up with Elsass for a few thousand more
+a year, right away the family gets a long face--"
+
+"Ma, please! Isadore didn't mean it that way!"
+
+"Pa's knocking, ma! Shall I let him in?"
+
+"Let him in, Roody. I'd like to know what good it will do to try to keep
+him out."
+
+In an actual rain of perspiration, his tie slid well under one ear,
+Abrahm Kantor burst in, mouthing the words before his acute state of
+strangulation would let them out.
+
+"Elsass--it's Elsass outside! He--wants--to sign--Leon--fifty
+concerts--coast to coast--two thousand--next season! He's got the
+papers--already drawn up--the pen outside waiting--"
+
+"Abrahm!"
+
+"Pa!"
+
+In the silence that followed, Isadore Kantor, a poppiness of stare and
+a violent redness set in, suddenly turned to his five-year-old son,
+sticky with lollipop, and came down soundly and with smack against the
+infantile, the slightly outstanding and unsuspecting ear.
+
+"_Momser!_" he cried. "_Chammer! Lump! Ganef_! You hear that? Two
+thousand! Two thousand! Didn't I tell you--didn't I tell you to
+practise?"
+
+Even as Leon Kantor put pen to this princely document, Franz Ferdinand
+of Serbia, the assassin's bullet cold, lay dead in state, and let slip
+were the dogs of war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the next years, men, forty deep, were to die in piles; hayricks of
+fields to become human hayricks of battle-fields; Belgium disemboweled,
+her very entrails dragging, to find all the civilized world her
+champion, and between the poppies of Flanders, crosses, thousand upon
+thousand of them, to mark the places where the youth of her allies fell,
+avenging outrage. Seas, even when calmest, were to become terrible, and
+men's heart-beats, a bit sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a
+sluggard peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the
+rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to
+arms in the history of the world.
+
+In June, 1917, Leon Kantor, answering that rat-a-tat-tat, enlisted.
+
+In November, honed by the interim of training to even a new leanness,
+and sailing-orders heavy and light in his heart, Lieutenant Kantor, on
+two days' home-leave, took leave of home, which can be crudest when it
+is tenderest.
+
+Standing there in the expensive, the formal, the enormous French parlor
+of his up-town apartment de luxe, from not one of whose chairs would his
+mother's feet touch floor, a wall of living flesh, mortared in blood,
+was throbbing and hedging him in.
+
+He would pace up and down the long room, heavy with the faces of those
+who mourn, with a laugh too ready, too facetious, in his fear for them.
+
+"Well, well, what is this, anyway, a wake? Where's the coffin? Who's
+dead?"
+
+His sister-in-law shot out her plump, watch-encrusted wrist. "Don't,
+Leon!" she cried. "Such talk is a sin! It might come true."
+
+"Rosie-posy-butter-ball," he said, pausing beside her chair to pinch her
+deeply soft cheek. "Cry-baby-roly-poly, you can't shove me off in a
+wooden kimono that way."
+
+From his place before the white-and-gold mantel, staring steadfastly at
+the floor tiling, Isadore Kantor turned suddenly, a bit whiter and older
+at the temples.
+
+"I don't get your comedy, Leon."
+
+"'Wooden kimono'--Leon?"
+
+"That's the way the fellows at camp joke about coffins, ma. I didn't
+mean anything but fun! Great Scott! Can't any one take a joke!"
+
+"O God! O God!" His mother fell to swaying softly, hugging herself
+against shivering.
+
+"Did you sign over power of attorney to pa, Leon?"
+
+"All fixed, Izzie."
+
+"I'm so afraid, son, you don't take with you enough money in your
+pockets. You know how you lose it. If only you would let mamma sew that
+little bag inside your uniform, with a little place for bills and a
+little place for the asafoetida!"
+
+"Now, please, ma--please! If I needed more, wouldn't I take it? Wouldn't
+I be a pretty joke among the fellows, tied up in that smelling stuff!
+Orders are orders, ma, I know what to take and what not to take."
+
+"Please, Leon, don't get mad at me, but if you will let me put in your
+suit-case just one little box of that salve, for your finger-tips, so
+they don't crack--"
+
+Pausing as he paced to lay cheek to her hair, he patted her. "Three
+boxes, if you want. Now, how's that?"
+
+"And you won't take it out so soon as my back is turned?"
+
+"Cross my heart."
+
+His touch seemed to set her trembling again, all her illy concealed
+emotions rushing up. "I can't stand it! Can't! Can't! Take my life--take
+my blood, but don't take my boy--don't take my boy--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, is that the way you're going to begin all over again,
+after your promise?"
+
+She clung to him, heaving against the rising storm of sobs. "I can't
+help it--can't! Cut out my heart from me, but let me keep my boy--my
+wonderboy--"
+
+"Oughtn't she be ashamed of herself? Just listen to her, Esther! What
+will we do with her? Talks like she had a guarantee I wasn't coming
+back. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if by spring I wasn't tuning up again
+for a coast-to-coast tour--"
+
+"Spring! That talk don't fool me. Without my boy, the springs in my life
+are over--"
+
+"Why, ma, you talk like every soldier who goes to war was killed!
+There's only the smallest percentage of them die in battle--"
+
+"'Spring,' he says; 'spring'! Crossing the seas from me! To live through
+months with that sea between us--my boy maybe shot--my--"
+
+"Mamma, please!"
+
+"I can't help it, Leon; I'm not one of those fine mothers that can be so
+brave. Cut out my heart, but leave my boy! My wonder-boy--my child I
+prayed for!"
+
+"There's other mothers, ma, with sons!"
+
+"Yes, but not wonder-sons! A genius like you could so easy get excused,
+Leon. Give it up. Genius it should be the last to be sent to--the
+slaughter-pen. Leon darlink--don't go!"
+
+"Ma, ma--you don't mean what you're saying. You wouldn't want me to
+reason that way! You wouldn't want me to hide behind my--violin."
+
+"I would! Would! You should wait for the draft. With my Roody and even
+my baby Boris enlisted, ain't it enough for one mother? Since they got
+to be in camp, all right, I say, let them be there, if my heart breaks
+for it, but not my wonder-child! You can get exemption, Leon, right away
+for the asking. Stay with me, Leon! Don't go away! The people at home
+got to be kept happy with music. That's being a soldier, too, playing
+their troubles away. Stay with me, Leon! Don't go leave
+me--don't--don't--"
+
+He suffered her to lie, tear-drenched, back into his arms, holding her
+close in his compassion for her, his own face twisting.
+
+"God! ma, this--this is awful! Please--you make us ashamed--all of us! I
+don't know what to say. Esther, come quiet her--for God's sake
+quiet her!"
+
+From her place in that sobbing circle Esther Kantor crossed to kneel
+beside her mother.
+
+"Mamma darling, you're killing yourself. What if every family went on
+this way? You want papa to come in and find us all crying? Is this the
+way you want Leon to spend his last hour with us--"
+
+"Oh, God--God!"
+
+"I mean his last hour until he comes back, darling. Didn't you just hear
+him say, darling, it may be by spring?"
+
+"'Spring'--'spring'--never no more springs for me--"
+
+"Just think, darling, how proud we should be! Our Leon, who could so
+easily have been excused, not even to wait for the draft."
+
+"It's not too late yet--please--Leon--"
+
+"Our Roody and Boris both in camp, too, training to serve their country.
+Why, mamma, we ought to be crying for happiness. As Leon says, surely
+the Kantor family, who fled out of Russia to escape massacre, should
+know how terrible slavery can be. That's why we must help our boys,
+mamma, in their fight to make the world free! Right, Leon?" trying to
+smile with her red-rimmed eyes.
+
+"We've got no fight with no one! Not a child of mine was ever raised to
+so much as lift a finger against no one. We've got no fight with
+no one!"
+
+"We have got a fight with some one! With autocracy! Only this time it
+happens to be Hunnish autocracy. You should know it, mamma--oh, you
+should know it deeper down in you than any of us, the fight our family
+right here has got with autocracy! We should be the first to want to
+avenge Belgium!"
+
+"Leon's right, mamma darling, the way you and papa were beaten out of
+your country--"
+
+"There's not a day in your life you don't curse it without knowing it!
+Every time we three boys look at your son and our brother Mannie, born
+an--an imbecile--because of autocracy, we know what we're fighting for.
+We know. You know, too. Look at him over there, even before he was born,
+ruined by autocracy! Know what I'm fighting for? Why, this whole family
+knows! What's music, what's art, what's life itself in a world without
+freedom? Every time, ma, you get to thinking we've got a fight with no
+one, all you have to do is look at our poor Mannie. He's the answer.
+He's the answer."
+
+In a foaming sort of silence, Mannie Kantor smiled softly from his chair
+beneath the pink-and-gold shade of the piano-lamp. The heterogeneous
+sounds of women weeping had ceased. Straight in her chair, her great
+shelf of bust heaving, sat Rosa Kantor, suddenly dry of eye; Isadore
+Kantor head up. Erect now, and out from the embrace of her daughter,
+Sarah looked up at her son.
+
+"What time do you leave, Leon?" she asked, actually firm of lip.
+
+"Any minute, ma. Getting late."
+
+This time she pulled her lips to a smile, waggling her forefinger.
+
+"Don't let them little devils of French girls fall in love with my dude
+in his uniform."
+
+Her pretense at pleasantry was almost more than he could bear.
+
+"Hear! Hear! Our mother thinks I'm a regular lady-killer! Hear that,
+Esther?" pinching her cheek.
+
+"You are, Leon--only--only, you don't know it!"
+
+"Don't you bring down too many beaux while I'm gone, either, Miss
+Kantor!"
+
+"I--won't, Leon."
+
+_Sotto voce_ to her: "Remember, Esther, while I'm gone, the royalties
+from the discaphone records are yours. I want you to have them for
+pin-money and--maybe a dowry?"
+
+She turned from him. "Don't, Leon--don't--"
+
+"I like him! Nice fellow, but too slow! Why, if I were in his shoes I'd
+have popped long ago."
+
+She smiled with her lashes dewy.
+
+There entered then, in a violet-scented little whirl, Miss Gina Berg,
+rosy with the sting of a winter's night, and, as usual, swathed in the
+high-napped furs.
+
+"Gina!"
+
+She was for greeting every one, a wafted kiss to Mrs. Kantor, and then,
+arms wide, a great bunch of violets in one outstretched hand, her glance
+straight, sure, and sparkling for Leon Kantor.
+
+"Surprise--everybody--surprise!"
+
+"Why, Gina--we read--we thought you were singing in Philadelphia
+to-night!"
+
+"So did I, Esther darling, until a little bird whispered to me that
+Lieutenant Kantor was home on farewell leave."
+
+He advanced to her down the great length of room, lowering his head over
+her hand, his puttee-clad legs clicking together. "You mean, Miss
+Gina--Gina--you didn't sing?"
+
+"Of course I didn't! Hasn't every prima donna a larynx to hide behind?"
+She lifted off her fur cap, spilling curls.
+
+"Well, I--I'll be hanged!" said Lieutenant Kantor, his eyes lakes of her
+reflected loveliness.
+
+She let her hand linger in his. "Leon--you--really going? How--terrible!
+How--how--wonderful!"
+
+"How wonderful'--your coming!"
+
+"I--You think it was not nice of me--to come?"
+
+"I think it was the nicest thing that ever happened in the world."
+
+"All the way here in the train I kept saying, 'Crazy--crazy--running to
+tell Leon--Lieutenant--Kantor good-by--when you haven't even seen him
+three times in three years--'"
+
+"But each--each of those three times we--we've remembered, Gina."
+
+"But that's how I feel toward all the boys, Leon--our fighting
+boys--just like flying to them to kiss them each one good-by."
+
+"Come over, Gina. You'll be a treat to our mother. I--Well, I'm hanged!
+All the way from Philadelphia!"
+
+There was even a sparkle to talk, then, and a letup of pressure. After a
+while Sarah Kantor looked up at her son, tremulous, but smiling.
+
+"Well, son, you going to play--for your old mother before--you go? It'll
+be many a month--spring--maybe longer, before I hear my boy again
+except on the discaphone."
+
+He shot a quick glance to his sister. "Why, I--I don't know. I--I'd love
+it, ma, if--if you think, Esther, I'd better."
+
+"You don't need to be afraid of me, darlink. There's nothing can give me
+the strength to bear--what's before me like--like my boy's music.
+That's my life, his music."
+
+"Why, yes; if mamma is sure she feels that way, play for us, Leon."
+
+He was already at the instrument, where it lay, swathed, atop the grand
+piano. "What'll it be, folks?"
+
+"Something to make ma laugh, Leon--something light, something funny."
+
+"'Humoresque,'" he said, with a quick glance for Miss Berg.
+
+"'Humoresque,'" she said, smiling back at him.
+
+He capered through, cutting and playful of bow, the melody of Dvorak's,
+which is as ironic as a grinning mask.
+
+Finished, he smiled at his parent, her face still untearful.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+She nodded. "It's like life, son, that piece. Crying to hide its
+laughing and laughing to hide its crying."
+
+"Play that new piece, Leon--the one you set to music. You know. The
+words by that young boy in the war who wrote such grand poetry before he
+was killed. The one that always makes poor Mannie laugh. Play it for
+him, Leon."
+
+Her plump little unlined face innocent of fault, Mrs. Isadore Kantor
+ventured her request, her smile tired with tears.
+
+"No, no--Rosa--not now! Ma wouldn't want that!"
+
+"I do, son; I do! Even Mannie should have his share of good-by."
+
+To Gina Berg: "They want me to play that little arrangement of mine from
+Allan Seegar's poem. 'I Have a Rendezvous....'"
+
+"It--it's beautiful, Leon. I was to have sung it on my program
+to-night--only, I'm afraid you had better not--here--now--"
+
+"Please, Leon! Nothing you play can ever make me as sad as it makes me
+glad. Mannie should have, too, his good-by."
+
+"All right, then, ma, if--if you're sure you want it. Will you sing it,
+Gina?"
+
+She had risen. "Why, yes, Leon."
+
+She sang it then, quite purely, her hands clasped simply together and
+her glance mistily off, the beautiful, the heroic, the lyrical prophecy
+of a soldier-poet and a poet-soldier:
+
+     "But I've a rendezvous with Death
+      On some scarred slope of battered hill,
+      When spring comes round again this year
+      And the first meadow-flowers appear."
+
+In the silence that followed, a sob burst out, stifled, from Esther
+Kantor, this time her mother holding her in arms that were strong.
+
+"That, Leon, is the most beautiful of all your compositions. What does
+it mean, son, that word, 'rondy-voo'?"
+
+"Why, I--I don't exactly know. A rendezvous--it's a sort of meeting, an
+engagement, isn't it, Miss Gina? Gina? You're up on languages. As if I
+had an appointment to meet you some place--at the opera-house, for
+instance."
+
+"That's it, Leon--an engagement."
+
+"Have I an engagement with you, Gina?"
+
+She let her lids droop. "Oh, how--how I hope you have, Leon."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In the spring?"
+
+"That's it--in the spring."
+
+Then they smiled, these two, who had never felt more than the merest
+butterfly wings of love brushing them, light as lashes. No word between
+them, only an unfinished sweetness, waiting to be linked up.
+
+Suddenly there burst in Abrahm Kantor, in a carefully rehearsed gale of
+bluster.
+
+"Quick, Leon! I got the car down-stairs. Just fifteen minutes to make
+the ferry. Quick! The sooner we get him over there the sooner we get him
+back! I'm right, mamma? Now, now! No waterworks! Get your brother's
+suit-case, Isadore. Now, now! No nonsense! Quick--quick--"
+
+With a deftly manoeuvered round of good-bys, a grip-laden dash for the
+door, a throbbing moment of turning back when it seemed as though Sarah
+Kantor's arms could not unlock their deadlock of him, Leon Kantor was
+out and gone, the group of faces point-etched into the silence
+behind him.
+
+The poor, mute face of Mannie, laughing softly. Rosa Kantor crying into
+her hands. Esther, grief-crumpled, but rich in the enormous hope of
+youth. The sweet Gina, to whom the waiting months had already begun
+their reality.
+
+Not so Sarah Kantor. In a bedroom adjoining, its high-ceilinged vastness
+as cold as a cathedral to her lowness of stature, sobs dry and terrible
+were rumbling up from her, only to dash against lips tightly
+restraining them.
+
+On her knees beside a chest of drawers, and unwrapping it from
+swaddling-clothes, she withdrew what at best had been a sorry sort
+of fiddle.
+
+Cracked of back and solitary of string, it was as if her trembling arms,
+raising it above her head, would make of themselves and her swaying body
+the tripod of an altar.
+
+The old twisting and prophetic pain was behind her heart. Like the
+painted billows of music that the old Italian masters loved to do,
+there wound and wreathed about her clouds of song:
+
+     But I've a rendezvous with Death
+     On some scarred slope of battered hill,
+     When spring comes round again this year
+     And the first meadow-flowers appear.
+
+
+
+
+OATS FOR THE WOMAN
+
+That women who toil not neither do they spin might know the feel of
+fabrics so cunningly devised that they lay to the flesh like the inner
+petals of buds, three hundred and fifty men, women, and children
+contrived, between strikes, to make the show-rooms of the Kessler
+Costume Company, Incorporated, a sort of mauve and mirrored Delphi where
+buyers from twenty states came to invoke forecast of the mood of skirts,
+the caprice of sleeves, and the rumored flip to the train. Before these
+flips and moods, a gigantic industry held semi-annual pause, destinies
+of lace-factories trembling before a threatened season of strictly
+tailor-mades, velvet-looms slowing at the shush of taffeta. When woman
+would be sleazy, petticoat manufacturers went overnight into an oblivion
+from which there might or might not be returning. The willow plume waved
+its day, making and unmaking merchants.
+
+Destiny loves thus to spring from acorn beginnings. Helen smiled, and
+Troy fell. Roast pork, and I doubt not then and there the apple sauce,
+became a national institution because a small boy burnt his fingers.
+
+That is why, out from the frail love of women for the flesh and its
+humors, and because for the webby cling of chiffon too often no price is
+too high, the Kessler Costume Company employed, on the factory side of
+the door, the three hundred and fifty sewers and cutters, not one of
+whose monthly wage could half buy the real-lace fichu or the
+painted-chiffon frock of his own handiwork.
+
+On the show-room side of the door, painted mauve within and not without,
+_mannequins_, so pink finger-tipped, so tilted of instep, and so bred in
+the thrust to the silhouette, trailed these sleazy products of thick
+ringers across mauve-colored carpet and before the appraising eyes of
+twenty states.
+
+Often as not, smoke rose in that room from the black cigar of the Omaha
+Store, Omaha, or Ladies' Wear, Cleveland. In season, and particularly
+during the frenzied dog-days of August, when the fate of the new
+waist-line or his daring treatment of cloth of silver hung yet in the
+balance, and the spirit of Detroit must be browbeaten by the dictum of
+the sleeveless thing in evening frocks, Leon Kessler himself smoked a
+day-long chain of cigarettes, lighting one off the other.
+
+In the model-room, a long, narrow slit, roaringly ventilated by a
+whirling machine, lined in frocks suspended from hangers, and just wide
+enough for two very perfect thirty-sixes to stand abreast, August fell
+heavily. So heavily that occasionally a cloak-model, her lot to show
+next December's conceit in theater wraps, fainted on the show-dais; or a
+cloth-of-gold evening gown, donned for the twentieth time that
+sweltering day, would suddenly, with its model, crumple, a glittering
+huddle, to the floor.
+
+Upon Miss Hattie Becker, who within the narrow slit had endured eight of
+these Augusts with only two casual faints and a swoon or two nipped in
+the bud, this ninth August came in so furiously that, sliding out of her
+sixth showing of a cloth-of-silver and blue-fox opera wrap, a shivering
+that amounted practically to chill took hold of her.
+
+"Br-r-r!" she said, full of all men's awe at the carbon-dioxide paradox.
+"I'm so hot I'm cold!"
+
+Miss Clarice Delehanty slid out of a shower of tulle-of-gold
+dancing-frock and into an Avenue gown of rough serge. The tail of a very
+arched eyebrow threatened, and then ran down in a black rill.
+
+     "If Niagara Falls was claret lemonade,
+      You'd see me beat it to a watery grave."
+
+"That'll be enough canary-talk out of you, Clare. Hand me my shirt-waist
+there off the hook."
+
+"Didn't Kess say we had to show Keokuk the line before lunch?"
+
+"If the King of England was buying ermine sport coats this morning, I
+wouldn't show 'em before I had a cold cut and a long drink in me. Hurry!
+Hand me my waist, Clare, before the girls come in from showing the
+bridesmaid line."
+
+Miss Delehanty flung the garment down the narrow length of the room.
+
+"Minneapolis don't know it, but after this showing he's going to blow me
+to the frappiest little lunch on the Waldorf roof."
+
+Miss Becker buttoned her flimsy blouse with three pearl beads down its
+front, wiping constantly at a constantly dampening brow.
+
+"You'd shove over the Goddess of Liberty if you thought she had her foot
+on a meal ticket."
+
+"Yes; and if I busted her, you could build a new one on the lunch money
+you've saved in your time."
+
+"Waldorf! You've got a fine chance with Minneapolis. You mean the
+Automat, and two spoons for the ice-cream."
+
+Miss Delehanty adjusted a highly eccentric hat, a small green velvet,
+outrageously tilted off the rear of its _bandeau_, and a wide black
+streamer flowing down over one shoulder. It was the match to the
+explosive effect of the _trotteur_ gown. She was Fashion's humoresque,
+except that Fashion has no sense of humor. Very presently Minneapolis
+would appraise her at two hundred and seventy-five as is. Miss Delehanty
+herself came cheaper.
+
+"Say, Hattie, don't let being an old man's darling go to your head. The
+grandchildren may issue an injunction."
+
+A flare of crimson rushed immediately over Miss Becker's face, spreading
+down into her neck.
+
+"You let him alone! He's a darn sight better than anything I've seen you
+girls picking for yourselves. You never met a man in your life whose
+name wasn't Johnnie. You couldn't land a John in a million years."
+
+Miss Delehanty raised her face from over a shoe-buckle. A stare began to
+set in, as obviously innocent as a small boy's between spitballs.
+
+"Well, who said anything about old St. Louis, I'd like to know?"
+
+"You did, and you leave him alone! What do you know about a real man?
+You'd pass up a Ford ride to sit still in a pasteboard limousine
+every time!"
+
+"Well, of all things! Did I say anything?"
+
+"Yes, you did!"
+
+"Why, for my part, he can show you a good time eight nights in the week
+and Sundays, too."
+
+"He 'ain't got grandchildren--if you want to know it."
+
+"Did I say he had?"
+
+"Yes, you did!"
+
+"Why, I don't blame any girl for showing grandpa a good time."
+
+"You could consider yourself darn lucky, Clarice Delehanty, if one half
+as good ever--"
+
+"Ask the girls if I don't always say old St. Louis is all to the good.
+Three or four years ago, right after his wife died, I said to Ada,
+I said--"
+
+A head showed suddenly through the lining side of the mauve portieres,
+blue-eyed, blue-shaved, and with a triple ripple of black hair
+trained backward.
+
+"Hurry along there with fifty-seven, Delehanty! Heyman's got to see the
+line and catch that six-two Chicago flier."
+
+Miss Delehanty fell into pose, her profile turned back over one
+shoulder.
+
+"Tell him to chew a clove; it's good for breathless haste," she said,
+disappearing through portieres into the show-room.
+
+Miss Becker thrust herself from a hastily-found-out aperture, patting,
+with final touch, her belt into place.
+
+"Have I been asking you for five years, Kess, to knock before you poke
+your head in on us girls?"
+
+Mr. Leon Kessler appeared then fully between the curtains, letting them
+drape heavily behind him. Gotham garbs her poets and her brokers, her
+employers and employees, in the national pin-stripes and sack coat.
+Except for a few pins stuck upright in his coat lapel, Mr. Kessler might
+have been his banker or his salesman. Typical New-Yorker is the pseudo,
+half enviously bestowed upon his kind by _hinter_ America. It signifies
+a bi-weekly manicure, femininely administered; a hotel lobbyist who can
+outstare a seatless guest; the sang-froid to add up a dinner check;
+spats. When Mr. Kessler tipped, it did not clink; it rustled. In
+theater, at each interval between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees
+and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous
+Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss
+Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a suspended frock of
+pink tulle.
+
+"What's the idea, Becker? Keokuk wants to see you in the wrap line."
+
+Miss Becker swallowed hard, jamming down and pinning into a small
+taffy-colored turban, her hair, the exact shade of it, escaping in
+scallops. Carefully powdered-out lines of her face seemed to emerge
+suddenly through the conserved creaminess of her skin. Thirty-four, in
+its unguarded moments, will out. Miss Becker had almost detained
+twenty's waistline and twenty-two's ardent thrust of face. It was only
+the indentures of time that had begun to tell slightly--indentures that
+powder could not putty out. There was a slight bagginess of throat where
+the years love to eat in first, and out from the eyes a spray of fine
+lines. It was these lines that came out now indubitably.
+
+"If you want me to lay down on you, Kess, for sure, just ask me to show
+the line again before lunch. I'm about ready to keel. And you can't put
+me off again. I'm ready, and you got to come now."
+
+He dug so deeply into his pockets that his sleeves crawled up.
+
+"Say, look here. I've got my business to attend to, and, when my trade's
+in town, my trade comes first. See? Take off and show Keokuk a few
+numbers. I want him to see that chinchilla drape."
+
+She reached out, closing her hand over his arm.
+
+"I'll show him the whole line, Kess, when we're back from lunch. I got
+to talk to you, I tell you. You put me off yesterday and the day before,
+and this--this is the last."
+
+"The last what?"
+
+"Please, Kess, if you only run over to Rinehardt's with me. I got to
+tell you something. Something about me and--and--"
+
+He regarded her in some perplexity. "Tell it to me here. Now!"
+
+"I can't. The girls'll be swarming in any minute. I can't get you
+anywheres but lunch. It's the first thirty minutes of your time I've
+asked in five years, Kess--is that little enough? Let Cissie show
+Keokuk the blouses till we get back. It's something, Kess, I can't put
+off. Kess, please!"
+
+Her face was so close to him and so eager that he turned to back out.
+
+"Wait for me at the Thirty-first Street entrance," he said, "and I'll
+shoot you across to Rinehardt's."
+
+She caught up her small silk hand-bag and ran out toward the elevators.
+Down in Thirty-first Street a wave of heat met, almost overpowering her.
+New York, enervated from sleepless nights on fire-escapes and in
+bedrooms opening on areaways, moved through it at half-speed, hugging
+the narrow shade of buildings. Infant mortality climbed with the
+thermometer. In Fifth Avenue, cool, high bedrooms were boarded and
+empty. In First Avenue, babies lay naked on the floor, snuffing out for
+want of oxygen.
+
+Across that man-made Grand Canon men leap sometimes, but seldom. Mothers
+whose babies lie naked on the floor look out across it, damning.
+
+Out into this flaying heat Miss Becker stepped gingerly, almost
+immediately rejoined by Mr. Leon Kessler, crowningly touched with the
+correct thing in straw sailors.
+
+"Get a move on," he said, guiding her across the soft asphalt.
+
+In Rinehardt's, one of a thousand such _Rathskeller_ retreats designed
+for a city that loves to dine in fifteen languages, the noonday cortege
+of summer widowers had not yet arrived. Waiters moved through the dim,
+pink-lit gloom, dressing their tables temptingly cool and white,
+dipping ice out from silver buckets into thin tumblers.
+
+They seated themselves beneath a ceiling fan, Miss Becker's
+taffy-colored scallops stirring in the scurry of air.
+
+"Lordy!" she said, closing her eyes and pressing her finger-tips against
+them, "I wish I could lease this spot for the summer!"
+
+He pushed a menu-card toward her. "What'll you have? There's plenty
+under the 'ready to serve.'"
+
+She peeled out of her white-silk gloves.
+
+"Some cold cuts and a long ice-tea."
+
+He ordered after her and more at length, then lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Well?" he said, waving out a match.
+
+She leaned forward, already designing with her fork on the table-cloth.
+
+"Kess, can you guess?"
+
+"Come on with it!"
+
+"Have you--noticed anything?"
+
+"Say, I'd have a sweet time keeping up with you girls!"
+
+She looked at him now evenly between the eyes.
+
+"You kept up with me pretty close for three years, didn't you?"
+
+"Say, you knew what you were doing!"
+
+"I--I'm not so sure of that by a long shot. I--I was fed up with the
+most devilish kind of promises there are. The kind you was too smart to
+put in words or--or in writing. You--you only looked 'em."
+
+"I suppose you was kidnapped one dark and stormy night while the
+villain pursued you, eh? Is that it?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use--rehashing! After that time at Atlantic City
+and--and then the--flat, it--it just seemed the way I felt about you
+then--that nothing you wanted could be wrong. I guess I knew what I was
+doing all right, or, if I didn't, I ought to have. I was rotten--or I
+couldn't have done it, I guess. Only, deep inside of me I was waiting
+and banking on you like--like poor little Cissie is now. And you knew
+it; you knew it all them three years."
+
+"Say, did you get me over here to--"
+
+"I only hope to God when you're done with Cissie you'll--"
+
+"You let me take care of my own affairs. If it comes right down to it,
+there's a few things I could tell you, girl, that ain't so easy to
+listen to. Let's get off the subject while the going's good."
+
+"Oh, anybody that plays as safe as you--"
+
+He raised his voice, shoving back his chair. "Well, if you want me to
+clear out of this place quicker than you can bat your eye, you just--"
+
+"No, no, Kess! 'Sh-h-h-h!"
+
+"If there ever was a girl in my place had a square deal, that girl's
+been you."
+
+"'Square deal!' Because after I held on and--ate out my heart for three
+years, you didn't--take away my job, too? Somebody ought to pin a
+Carnegie medal on you!"
+
+"You've held down a twenty-dollar-a-week job season in and season out,
+when there've been times it didn't even pay for the ink it took to
+write you on the pay-roll."
+
+"There's nothing I ever got out of you I didn't earn three times over."
+
+"A younger figure than yours is getting to be wouldn't hurt the line
+any, you know. It's because I make it a rule not to throw off the old
+girls when their waist-lines begin to spread that makes you so grateful,
+is it? There's not a firm in town keeps on a girl after she begins to
+heavy up. If you got to know why I took you off the dress line and put
+you in the wraps, it's because I seen you widening into a thirty-eight,
+and a darn poor one at that. I can sell two wraps off Cissie to one off
+you. You're getting hippy, girl, and, since you started the subject, you
+can be darn glad you know where your next week's salary's coming from."
+
+She was reddening so furiously that even her earlobes, their tips
+escaping beneath the turban, were tinged.
+
+"Maybe I--I'm getting hippy, Kess; but it'll take more than anything you
+can ever do for me to make up for--"
+
+"Gad!" he said, flipping an ash in some disgust, "I wish I had a
+ten-cent piece for every one since!"
+
+"Oh," she cried, her throat jerking, "you eat what you just said! You
+eat it, because you know it ain't so!"
+
+"Now look here," he said, straightening up suddenly, "I don't know what
+your game is, but if you're here to stir up the old dust that's been
+laid for five years--"
+
+"No, no, Kess! It's only that--what I got to tell you--I--it makes a
+difference, I--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"There's nothing in these years since, I swear to God, or in the years
+before, that I got to be ashamed of!"
+
+"All right! All right!"
+
+"If ever a girl came all of a sudden to her senses, it was me. If ever a
+girl has lived a quiet life, picking herself up and brushing the dust
+off, it's been me. Oh, I don't say I 'ain't been entertained by the
+trade--I didn't dodge my job--but it's been a straight kind of a
+time--straight!"
+
+"I'm not asking for an alibi, Becker. What's the idea?"
+
+"Kess," she said, leaning forward, with tears popping out in her eyes,
+"I.W. Goldstone has asked me to marry him."
+
+He laid down his roll in the act of buttering it, gazing across at her
+with his knife upright in his hand.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Night before last, Kess, in the poppy-room at Shalif's."
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"It's the God's truth, Kess. He's begging me for an answer by to-night,
+before he goes back home."
+
+"I.W. Goldstone, of Goldstone & Auer, ladies' wear?"
+
+She nodded, her hand to her throat.
+
+"Well, I'll be strung up!"
+
+"He--he says, Kess, it's been on his mind for a year and a half, ever
+since his spring trip a year ago. He wants to take me back with him,
+Kess, home."
+
+"Whew!" said Mr. Kessler, wiping his brow and the back of his collar.
+
+"You're no more surprised than me, Kess. I--I nearly fell off the
+Christmas tree."
+
+"Good Lord! Why, his wife--he had her in the store it seems yesterday!"
+
+"She's been dead four years and seven months, Kess."
+
+"Old I.W. and you!"
+
+"He's only fifty-two, Kess; I'm thirty-four."
+
+"I.W. Goldstone!"
+
+"I know it. I can't realize it, neither."
+
+"Why, he's worth two hundred thousand, if he's worth a cent!"
+
+"I know it, Kess."
+
+"The old man's stringing you, girl. His kind stop, look, and listen."
+
+"He's not stringing me! I tell you he's begging me to marry him and go
+back home with him. He's even told his--daughter about me."
+
+"Good Lord--little Effie! I was out there once when she was a kid.
+Stopped off on my way to Hot Springs. They live in a kind of
+park--Forest Park Street or something or other. Why, I've done business
+with Goldstone & Auer for fifteen years, and my father before me!
+Good Lord!"
+
+"What'll I do, Kess?"
+
+"So that's the size of the fish you went out and landed!"
+
+"I didn't! I didn't! He's been asking me out the last three trips, and
+post-cards in between, but I never thought nothing of it."
+
+"Why, he can't get away with this!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They won't stand for it out in that Middle West town. He's the head of
+a big business. He's got a grown daughter."
+
+"He's got her fixed, Kess--settled on her."
+
+"Hattie Becker, Mrs. I.W. Goldstone! Gad! can you beat it? Can't you
+just see me, when I come out to St. Louis pretty soon, having dinner out
+at Mrs. I.W. Goldstone's house? Say, am I seeing things?"
+
+"What'll I do, Kess? What'll I do?"
+
+"I tell you that you can't get away with it, girl. The old man's getting
+childish; they'll have to have him restrained. Why, the woman he was
+married to for twenty years, Lenie Goldstone, never even seen a
+skirt-dance. I remember once he brought her to New York and then
+wouldn't let her see a cabaret show. He won't even buy sleeveless models
+for his French room."
+
+"I tell you, Kess, he'll take me to Jersey to-morrow and marry me, if I
+give the word."
+
+"Not a chance!"
+
+"I tell you yes. That's why I got to see you. I got to tell him
+to-night, Kess. He--goes back to-morrow."
+
+He regarded her slowly, watching her throat where it throbbed.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"Where do you stand with him? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?"
+
+"He--he don't ask questions, Kess. I--I'm his ideal, he says, of
+the--kind of--woman can take up for him where his wife left off. He says
+we're alike in everything but looks, and that a man who was happy in
+marriage like him can't be happy outside of it. He--he's sized up pretty
+well the way I live, and--and--he knows I don't expect too much out of
+life no more. Just a quiet kind of team-work, he puts it--pulling
+together fifty-fifty, and somebody's hand to hold on to when old fellow
+Time hits you a whack in the knees from behind. But he ain't old when he
+talks that way, Kess; he--he's beautiful to me."
+
+"Does he wear a mask when he makes love?"
+
+"He's got a fine face."
+
+"So that's the way you're playing it, is it? Love-stuff?"
+
+"Oh, I've had all the love-stuff knocked out of me. Three years of
+eating out my heart is about all the love-stuff I can handle for a
+while. He don't want that in a woman. I don't want it in him. He's just
+a plain, good man I never in my life could dream of having. A good home
+in a good town where life ain't like a red-eyed devil ready to hit in
+deep between the shoulder-blades. I know why he says he can see his wife
+in me. He knows I'm the kind was cut out for that kind of life--home and
+kitchen and my own parsley in my own back yard. He knows, if he marries
+me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want
+to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die.
+He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a
+mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, Kess;
+that's what it is--fate!"
+
+She clapped her hands to her face, sobbing down into them.
+
+He glanced about him in quick and nervous concern.
+
+"Pull yourself together there, Becker; we're in a public place."
+
+"If only I could go to him and tell him."
+
+"Well, you can't."
+
+"It's not you that keeps me. Only, I know that with his kind of man and
+at his age, a woman is--is one thing or another and that ends it. With a
+grown daughter, he wouldn't--couldn't--he's too set in his ways to know
+how it was with me--and--what'll I do, Kess?"
+
+"Say, I'm not going to stand in your light, if that's what's eating you.
+If you can get away with it, I don't wish you nothing but well. Looks to
+me like all right, if you want to make the try. I'll even come and break
+bread with you when I go out to see my Middle West trade pretty soon.
+That's the kind of a hairpin I am."
+
+"It's like I keep saying to myself, Kess. If--if he'd ask me anything,
+it--it would be different. He--he says he never felt so satisfied that a
+woman had the right stuff in her. And I have! There's nothing in the
+world can take that away from me. I can give him what he wants. I know I
+can. Why, the way I'll make up to that little girl out there and love
+her to death! I ask so little, Kess--just a decent life and rest--peace.
+I'm tired. I want to let myself get fat. I'm built that way, to get fat.
+It was nothing but diet gave me the anaemia last summer. He says he
+wants me to plump out. Perfect thirty-six don't mean nothing in his life
+except for the trade. No more rooming-houses with the kitchenette in the
+bath-room. A kitchen, he says, Kess, half the size of the show-room,
+with a butler's pantry. He likes to play pinochle at night, he says,
+next to the sitting-room fire. He tried to learn me the rules of the
+game the other night in the poppy-room. It's easy. His first wife was
+death on flowers. She used to train roses over their back fence. He
+loved to see her there. He wants me to like to grow them. He wants to
+take me back to a home of my own and peace, where life can't look to a
+girl like a devil with horns. He wants to take me home. What'll I do,
+Kess? Please, please, what'll I do?"
+
+He was rather inarticulate, but reached out to pat her arm. "Go--to
+it--girl, and--God bless you!"
+
+        *       *      *       *       *
+
+Forest Park Boulevard comes in sootily, smokestacks, gas-tanks, and
+large areas of scarred vacant lots boding ill enough for its destiny.
+But after a while, where Taylor Avenue bisects, it begins to retrieve
+itself. Here it is parked down its center, a narrow strip set out in
+shrubs, and on either side, traffic, thus divided, flows evenly up and
+down a macadamized roadway. In summer the shrubs thicken, half
+concealing one side of Forest Park Boulevard from its other. Houses
+suddenly take on detached and architectural importance, often as not a
+gravel driveway dividing lawns, and out farther still, where the street
+eventually flows into Forest Park, the Italian Renaissance invades,
+somebody's rococo money's worth.
+
+I.W. Goldstone's home, so near the park that, in spring, the smell of
+lilacs and gasolene hovers over it, pretends not to period or dynasty.
+Well detached, and so far back from the sidewalk that interlocking trees
+conceal its second-story windows, an alcove was frankly a bulge on its
+red-brick exterior. Where the third-floor bath-room, an afterthought,
+led off the hallway, it jutted out, a shingled protuberance on the left
+end of the house. A tower swelled out of its front end, and all year
+round geraniums and boxed climbing vines bloomed in its three stories.
+
+Across a generous ledge of veranda, more vines grew quite furiously,
+reaching their height and then growing down upon themselves. Behind
+those vines, and so cunningly concealed by them that not even the white
+wrapper could flash through to the passerby, Mrs. I.W. Goldstone, in a
+chair that would rock rhythmically with her, loved to sit in the first
+dusk of evening, pleasantly idle. A hose twirling on the lawn spun up
+the smell of green, abetted by similar whirlings down the wide vista of
+adjoining lawns. Occasionally, a prideful and shirt-sleeved landed
+proprietor wielded his own hose, flushing the parched sidewalk or
+shooting spray against hot bricks that drank in thirstily.
+
+As Mrs. Goldstone rocked she smiled, tilting herself backward off the
+balls of her feet. The years had cropped out in her suddenly,
+surprisingly, and with a great deal of geniality. The taffy cast to her
+hair had backslid to ashes of roses. Uncorseted and in the white
+wrapper, she was quite frankly widespread, her hips fitting in tight
+between the chair-arms, and her knees wide.
+
+A screen door snapped sharply shut on its spring, Mr. I.W. Goldstone
+emerging. There was a great rotundity to his silhouette, the generous
+outward curve to his waist-line giving to his figure a swayback
+erectness, the legs receding rather short and thin from the bay of
+waistcoat.
+
+"Hattie?"
+
+"Here I am, I.W."
+
+"I looped up the sweet-peas."
+
+"Good!"
+
+He sat down beside her, wide-kneed, too, the smooth top of his head and
+his shirt sleeves spots in the darkness.
+
+"Get dressed a little, Hattie, and I'll get out the car and ride you out
+to Forest Park Highlands."
+
+She slowed, but did not cease to rock.
+
+"It's so grand at home this evening, I.W. I'm too comfortable to even
+dress myself."
+
+He felt for her hand in the gloom; she put it out to him.
+
+"You huck home too much, Hattie."
+
+"I guess I do, honey; but it's like I can never get enough of it. The
+first year I was a home body, and the second and third year I'm two
+of 'em."
+
+"That's something you'll never hear me complain of in a woman. There's
+a world of good in the woman who loves her home."
+
+"It's not that, I.W. It's because I--I never dreamed that there
+was anything like this coming to me. To live around in rooms, year
+in and year out, in the lonesomest town in the world, and then, all
+of a sudden, a home of your own and a hubby of your own and a daughter
+of your own, why--I dunno--sometimes when I think of them days it's
+like life was a big red devil with horns and a tail that I'd got away
+from. Why, if it was to get me again, I--I dunno, honey, I
+dunno--I--just--dunno."
+
+"You're a good woman, Hattie, and you deserve all that's coming to you.
+I wish it was more."
+
+"And you're a good man--they don't come no better."
+
+"I'm satisfied with my bargain."
+
+"And me with mine, honey, if--if you don't mind the talk."
+
+"S-ay, this town would talk if you cut its tongue out."
+
+"You're my nice old hubby!"
+
+"If I ever was a little uneasy it was in the beginning, Hattie--the
+girl--those things don't always turn out."
+
+"It's her as much as me, I.W. She's the sweetest little thing."
+
+"Never seen the like the way you took hold, though. I'll bet there's not
+one woman in a hundred could have worked it out easier."
+
+"That's right--kid me to death."
+
+"'Kid,' she says, the minute I tell her the truth."
+
+"Put on your cap, I.W.; it's getting damp."
+
+He felt under the chair-cushions, drawing out and adjusting a black
+skull-cap.
+
+"Want to go to the picture-show awhile, Hattie?"
+
+"No. When Lizzie's done the dishes, I want to set some dough."
+
+"Let's walk, then, a little. I ate too much supper."
+
+"Just in the side yard, I.W. It's a shame the way I don't dress
+evenings."
+
+"S-ay, in your own home, shouldn't you have your own comfort? You can
+take it from me, Hattie, no matter what Effie tells you, you're twice
+the looking woman with some skin on your bones. I want my wife when she
+sits down to table she should not look blue-faced when the gravy is
+passed. Maybe it's not the style, but if it suits your old man, we
+should worry who else it suits."
+
+"It's not right, I.W., but I love it--this feeling at home for--for
+good." She rose out of the low mound she had made in the chair, tucking
+up the white wrapper at both sides. "Come; let's walk in the side yard."
+
+A narrow strip of asphalt ran across the housefrontage, turning in a
+generous elbow and then back the depth of the lot. They paced it quietly
+in the gloom, arm in arm, and their voices under darkness.
+
+"Next month is my New York trip. All of a sudden Effie begs I should
+take her. We'll all go. What you say, Hattie? It'll do us good."
+
+"You take the kid, I.W. Lizzie needs watching. Yesterday I had to make
+her do the whole butler's pantry over. She just naturally ain't clean."
+
+"You got such luck with your roses, Hattie; it's wonderful!"
+
+They were beneath a climbing bush of them that ran along, glorifying a
+wooden fence.
+
+She pulled a fan of them to her face. "M-m-m-m!"
+
+"I must spray for worms to-morrow," he said.
+
+They resumed their soft walking in the gloom. "Where's Effie?"
+
+"Telephoning."
+
+"I ask you, is it a shame a child should hang on to the telephone an
+hour at a time? Fifty minutes since she was interrupted from supper
+she's been there."
+
+"What's the harm in a young girl telephoning, I.W.? All young folks
+like to gad over the wire."
+
+"What can a girl have to say over the telephone for fifty minutes?
+Altogether in my life I never talked that long into the telephone."
+
+"Let the child alone, I.W."
+
+"Who can she get to listen to her for fifty minutes?"
+
+"Birdie Harberger usually calls up at this time."
+
+"Always at supper-time! Never in my life has that child sat down at the
+table it don't ring in our faces. The next time what it happens you can
+take sides with her all you want, not one step does she move till she's
+finished with her supper."
+
+"As easy with her as you are, I.W., just as unreasonable you can get."
+
+"On the stairs-landing for an hour a child should giggle into the
+telephone! I'm ashamed for the operators. You take sides with her yet."
+
+"I don't, I.W.; only--"
+
+"You do!"
+
+A patch of light from an upper window sprang then across their path.
+
+"She's in her room now, I.W.!" cried Mrs. Goldstone. "She hasn't been
+telephoning all this time at all. Now, crosspatch!"
+
+"You know much! Can't you see she just lit up? Effie!"
+
+A voice came down to them, clear and with a quality to it like the ring
+of thin glass.
+
+"Coming, pop!"
+
+The light flashed out again, and in a length of time that could only
+have meant three steps at a bound she was around the elbow of the
+asphalt walk, a coat dangling off one arm, her summery skirts flying
+backward and her head ardently forward.
+
+"You'll never guess!"
+
+She flung herself between the two of them, linking into each of their
+elbows.
+
+"By my watch, Effie, fifty minutes! If it happens again that you get
+rung up supper-time, I--"
+
+"It was Leon Kessler, pop; he didn't leave on the six-two. Can you beat
+it? Down at the station he got to thinking of me and turned back. Oh, my
+golly! how the boys love me!"
+
+She was jumping now on the tips of her toes, her black curls bouncing.
+
+"You don't tell me!" said Mr. Goldstone. "To-day in the store he says
+he must be back in New York by Monday morning."
+
+She thrust her face outward, its pink-and-white vividness very close to
+his.
+
+"Is my daddy's daughter going out in a seventy horse-power to Delmar
+Garden? She is!"
+
+"Them New York boys spend too much money on the girls when they come.
+They spoil them for the home young men."
+
+"Can I help it if he couldn't tear himself away?"
+
+"S-ay, don't fool yourself! I said to him to-day he should stay over
+Sunday. After the bill of goods I bought from him this morning, and the
+way he only comes out to see his trade once in five or six years, he
+should stay and mix with them a little longer. That fellow knows good
+business."
+
+She turned her face with a fling of curls to the right of her, linking
+closer into the soft arm there.
+
+"Listen to him, Mamma Hat! Let's shove a brick house over on him."
+
+When Mrs. Goldstone finally spoke there was a depth to her voice that
+seemed to create sudden quiet.
+
+"Effie, Effie, why didn't you let him go?"
+
+"Let him? Did I tie any strings to him? I said good-by to him in the
+store this afternoon. Can I help it that the boys love me? Why didn't I
+let him go, she says!"
+
+Her father pinched her slyly at that. "_Echta_ fresh kid," he said.
+
+To her right, the hand at her arm clung closer.
+
+"Effie, you--you're so young, honey. Leon Kessler's an old-timer--"
+
+"I hate kids. Give me a _man_ every time. I like them when they've got
+enough sense to--"
+
+"Why didn't you let him go, Effie? Ain't I right, I.W.? Ain't I right?"
+
+"S-ay, what's the difference if he likes to show her a good time? If I
+was a young man, I wouldn't pass her up myself."
+
+"But, I.W., she's--so young!"
+
+"Who's young? I'm nineteen, going on--"
+
+"You've been running with him all the three days he's been here, honey.
+What's the use getting yourself talked about?"
+
+"Well, any girl in town would be glad to get herself talked about if
+Leon Kessler was rushing her."
+
+"Effie, I won't let you--I won't--"
+
+Miss Goldstone unhinged her arm, jerking it free in anger.
+
+"Well, I like that!"
+
+"Effie, I--"
+
+"You ain't my boss!"
+
+"Effie!"
+
+"But, papa, she--"
+
+There was a booming in Mr. Goldstone's voice and a suddenly projected
+vibrancy.
+
+"You apologize to your mother--this minute! You talk to your mother the
+way you know she's to be talked to!"
+
+"I.W., she didn't--"
+
+"You hear me!"
+
+"I.W.! Don't holler at her; she--"
+
+"She ain't your boss? Well, she just is your boss! You take back them
+words and say you're sorry! You apologize to your mother!" Immediate
+sobs were rumbling up through Miss Goldstone.
+
+"Well, she--I--I didn't do anything. She's down on him. She--"
+
+"Oh, Effie, would I say anything if it wasn't for your own good?"
+
+"You--you were down on him from the start!"
+
+"Effie darling, you must be mad! Would I say anything if it wasn't for
+our girl's good to--"
+
+"I--oh, Mamma Hat, I'm sorry, darling! I never meant a word. I didn't! I
+didn't, darling!"
+
+They embraced there in the shrouding darkness, the tears flowing.
+
+"Oh, Effie--Effie!"
+
+"I didn't mean one word I said, darling! I just get nasty like that
+before I know it. I didn't mean it!"
+
+"My own Effie!"
+
+"My darling Mamma Hat!"
+
+In the shadow of a flowering shrub Mr. Goldstone stood by, mopping. Mrs.
+Goldstone took the small face between her hands, peering down into it.
+
+"Effie, Effie, don't let--"
+
+Just beyond the enclosing hedge, a motor-car drew up, honking, at the
+curb, two far-flung paths of light whitening the street and a disused
+iron negro-boy hitching-post. Miss Goldstone reared back.
+
+"That's him!"
+
+"Effie!"
+
+"Let me go, dearie; let me go!"
+
+"But, Effie--"
+
+"Say, Hattie, I don't want to butt in, but it don't hurt the child
+should go riding a little while out by Delmar Garden--a man that can
+handle a car like Leon Kessler. Anyways, it don't pay to hurt the firm's
+feelings."
+
+There was a constant honking now at the curb, and violent throbbing of
+engine.
+
+"But, I.W.--"
+
+"Popsie darling, I'll be back early. Mamma Hat, please!"
+
+"Your mother says yes, baby. Tell Kess he should come for Sunday dinner
+to-morrow."
+
+She was a white streak across the grass, her nervous feet flying. Almost
+instantly the honk of a horn came streaming back, faint, fainter.
+
+Left standing there, Goldstone was instantly solicitous of his wife,
+feeling along her arm up under the loose sleeve.
+
+"It don't pay, Hattie, to hurt Kessler's feelings, and, anyhow, what's
+the difference just so we know who she's running with? It's like this
+house was a honey-pot and the boys flies."
+
+She turned to him now with her voice full of husk, and even in the dark
+her face bleached and shrunken from its plumpness.
+
+"You oughtn't to let her! You--hadn't the right! She's too young and
+too--sweet for a man like him. You oughtn't to let her!"
+
+He stepped out in front of her, taking her by the elbows and holding
+them close down against her sides.
+
+"Why, Hattie, that child's own mother that loved her like an angel
+couldn't worry no more foolishly about her than you do. Gad! I think you
+wimmin love it! It was the same kind of worrying shortened her mother's
+life. Always about nothing, too. 'Lenie,' I used to say to her, just to
+quiet her, 'it was worry killed a Maltese cat; don't let it kill you.'
+That child is all right, Hattie. What if he does like her pretty well?
+Worse could happen."
+
+"No, it couldn't! No!"
+
+"Why not? He 'ain't seen her since a child, and all of a sudden he comes
+West and finds in front of him an eye-opener."
+
+"He's twice her age--more!"
+
+"The way girls demand things nowadays, a man has got to be twice her age
+before he can provide for her. Leon Kessler is big rich."
+
+"He--he's fast."
+
+"Show me the one that 'ain't sowed his wild oats. Them's the kind that
+settle down quickest into good husbands."
+
+"He--"
+
+"S-ay, it 'ain't happened yet. I'm the last one to wish my girl off my
+hands. I only say not a boy in this town could give it to her so good.
+Fifteen years I've done business with that firm, and with his father
+before him. A-1 house! S-ay, I should worry that he ain't a
+Sunday-school boy. Show me the one that is. Your old man in his young
+days wasn't such a low flier, neither, if anybody should ask you." He
+made a whirring noise in his throat at that, pinching her cold cheek.
+She was walking rapidly now toward the house. "Well, since our daughter
+goes out riding in a six-thousand-dollar car, to show that we're sports,
+lets her father and mother take themselves out for a ride in their
+six-hundred-dollar car. I drive you out as far as Yiddle's farm for some
+sweet butter, eh?"
+
+"No, no; I'm cold. It's getting damp."
+
+"S-ay, you can't hurt my feelings. On a cool night like this, a
+brand-new sleeping-porch ain't the worst spot in the world."
+
+They were on the veranda, the hall light falling dimly out and over
+them.
+
+"She's so young--"
+
+"Now, now, Hattie; worry killed a Maltese cat. Come to bed."
+
+"You go. I want to wait up."
+
+"Hattie, you want to make of yourself the laughingstock of the
+neighborhood. A grown-up girl goes out riding with a man like Leon
+Kessler, and you wants to wait up and catch your death of cold. If we
+had more daughters, I wouldn't have no more wife; I'd have a shadow from
+worry. Come!"
+
+"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
+
+He regarded her in some concern.
+
+"Why, Hattie, if there's anything in the world to worry about, wouldn't
+I be the first? Ain't you well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then come. I'll get a pitcher of ice-water to take up-stairs."
+
+"I'll be up in a minute."
+
+"I don't want, Hattie, you should wait up for that child and take your
+death of cold. Because I sleep like a log when I once hit the bed,
+don't you play no tricks on me."
+
+"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
+
+He moved into the house and, after a while, to the clinking of ice
+against glass, up the stairs.
+
+"Come, Hattie; and be sure and leave the screen door unhooked for her."
+
+"Yes, I.W."
+
+An hour she sat in the shrouded darkness of the elbow of the veranda.
+Street noises died. The smell of damp came out. Occasionally a motor-car
+sped by, or a passer-by, each step clear on the asphalt. The song of
+crickets grated against the darkness. An infant in the right-side house
+raised a fretful voice once or twice, and then broke into a sustained
+and coughy fit of crying. Lights flashed up in the windows, silhouettes
+moving across drawn shades. Then silence again. The university clock, a
+mile out, chimed twelve, and finally a sonorous one. Mrs. Goldstone lay
+huddled in her chair, vibrant for sound. At two o'clock the long,
+high-power car drew up at the curb again, this time without honking. She
+sat forward, trembling.
+
+There followed a half-hour of voices at the curb, a low voice of
+undeniable tensity, high laughter that shot up in joyous geysers. It was
+a fifteen-minute process from the curb to the first of the porch steps,
+and then Mrs. Goldstone leaned forward, her voice straining to keep
+its pitch.
+
+"Effie!"
+
+The young figure sprang around the porch pillar.
+
+"Mamma Hat! Honey, you didn't wait up for me?"
+
+Mr. Kessler came forward, goggles pushed up above his cap-visor.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged! What did you think--that I was kidnapping the kid?"
+
+"How--how dared you! It's after two, and--"
+
+Miss Goldstone began then to jump again upon her toes, linking her arm
+in his.
+
+"Tell her, Leon! Tell her! Oh, Mamma Hat! Mamma Hat!"
+
+She was suddenly in Mrs. Goldstone's arms, her ardent face burning
+through the white wrapper.
+
+Mr. Kessler removed his cap, flinging it upward again and catching it.
+
+"Tell her, Leon!"
+
+"Well, what would you say, Becker, what would you say if I was to come
+out here and swipe that little darling there?"
+
+"Oh, Leon--kidder!"
+
+"If--what?"
+
+"I said it!"
+
+"Tell her, Kess; tell it out! Oh, mommie, mommie!"
+
+He leaned forward with his hand on the back of the turbulent head of
+curls.
+
+"You little darling, I'm going to put you on my back and carry you off
+to New York."
+
+"Oh, mommie," cried Miss Goldstone, flinging back her head so that her
+face shone up, "he asked me in Delmar Garden! We're going to live in New
+York, darling, and Rockaway in summer. He don't care a rap about the
+New York girls compared to me. We're going to Cuba on our honeymoon. I'm
+engaged, darling! I got engaged to-night!"
+
+"That's the idea, Twinkle-pinkle. I'd carry you off to-night if I
+could!"
+
+"Mommie Hat, ain't you glad?"
+
+"Effie--Effie--"
+
+"Mommie, what is it? What's the matter, darling? What?"
+
+"I--it's just that I got cold, honey, sitting here waiting--the surprise
+and all. Run, honey, and get me a drink. Crack some ice, dearie, and
+then run up-stairs in the third floor back and see if there's some
+brandy up there. Be sure to look for--the brandy. I--I'll be all right."
+
+"My poor, darling, cold mommie!"
+
+She was off on the slim, quick feet, the screen door slamming and
+vibrating.
+
+Then Mrs. Goldstone sprang up.
+
+"You wouldn't dare! Such a baby--you wouldn't dare!"
+
+"Dare what?"
+
+"You can't have the child! You can't!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What do I mean?"
+
+He advanced a step, his voice and expression lifted in incredulity.
+
+"Say, look here, Becker, are you stark, raving crazy? Is it possible you
+don't know that, in your place, nobody but a crazy woman would open
+her mouth?"
+
+"Maybe; but I don't care. Just leave her alone, Kess, please! That
+little baby can stand nothing but happiness."
+
+"Why, woman, you're crazy with the heat. If you want to know it, I'm
+nuts over that little kid. Gad! never ran across anything so full of zip
+in my life! I'm going to make life one joy ride after another for that
+joy baby. That kid's the showpiece of the world. She's got me so hipped
+I'm crazy, and the worst of it is I like it. You don't need to worry. As
+the boys say, when I settle down, I'm going to settle hard."
+
+"You ain't fit to have her!"
+
+"Say, the kind of life I've lived I ain't ashamed to tell her own
+father. He's a man, and I'm a man, and life's life."
+
+"You--"
+
+"Now look here, Becker. That'll be about all. If you're in your right
+senses, you're going to ring the joy bells louder than any one around
+here. What you got on your chest you can just as well cut your throat as
+tell; so we'll both live happy ever after. There's not one thing in my
+life that any jury wouldn't pass, and--"
+
+"I've seen you drunk."
+
+"Well, what of it? It took three of us to yank old I.W. out from under
+the table at my sister's wedding."
+
+"You--What about you and Cissie and--"
+
+The light run of feet, and almost instantly Miss Goldstone was
+pirouetting in between them.
+
+"Here, dearie! There wasn't anything like brandy up in the third floor.
+I found some cordial in the pantry. Drink it down, dearie; it'll
+warm you."
+
+They hovered together, Miss Goldstone trembling between solicitude and
+her state of intensity.
+
+"Kessie darling, you've got to go now. I want to get mommie up-stairs to
+bed. You got to go, darling, until to-morrow. Oh, why isn't it tomorrow?
+I want everybody to know. Don't let on, Mamma Hat. I'll pop it on popsie
+at breakfast while I'm opening his eggs for him. You come for breakfast,
+Leon. You're in the family now." He lifted her bodily from her feet,
+pressing a necklace of kisses round her throat.
+
+"Good night, Twinkle-pinkle, till to-morrow."
+
+"Good night, darling. I won't sleep a wink, waiting for you."
+
+"Me, neither."
+
+"One more, darling--a French one."
+
+"Two for good measure."
+
+"Sleep tight, beautiful! Good night!"
+
+"Good night, beautifulest!"
+
+She stood poised forward on the topmost step, watching him between
+backward waves of the hand crank, throw his clutch, and steer off. Then
+she turned inward, a sigh trembling between her lips.
+
+"Oh, Mamma Hat, I--"
+
+But Mrs. Goldstone's chair was empty. Into it with a second and more
+tremulous sigh sank Miss Goldstone, her lips lifted in the smile that
+had been kissed.
+
+When Mr. Goldstone slept, every alternate breath started with a rumble
+somewhere down in the depths of him and, drawn up like a chain from a
+well, petered out into a thin whistle before the next descent. Beside
+him, now, on her knees, Mrs. Goldstone shook at his shoulder.
+
+"I.W.! I.W.! Quick! Wake up!"
+
+He let out a shuddering, abysmal breath.
+
+"I.W.! Please!"
+
+He moaned, turning his face from her.
+
+She tugged him around again, now raising his face between her hands from
+the pillow.
+
+"I.W.! Try to wake up! For God's sake, I.W.!" He sprang up in a
+terrified daze, sitting upright in bed.
+
+"My God! Who? What's wrong? Effie! Hattie."
+
+"No, no; don't get excited, I.W. It's me--Hattie!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing, I.W. Nothing to get excited about. Only I got to tell you
+something."
+
+"Where's Effie?"
+
+"She's home."
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"Three."
+
+"Come back to bed, then; you got the nightmare."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"You ain't well, Hattie? Let me light up."
+
+"No, no; only, I got to tell you something! I 'ain't been to bed; I been
+waiting up, and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"She just came home--engaged!"
+
+"My God! Effie?"
+
+He blinked in the darkness, drawing up his knees to a hump under the
+sheet.
+
+"Engaged--how?"
+
+"I.W., don't you remember? Wake up, honey. To Kess, to Leon Kessler that
+she went automobiling with."
+
+"Our Effie engaged--to Leon Kessler?"
+
+"Yes, I.W.--our little Effie!"
+
+A smile spread over his face slowly, and he clasped his hands in an
+embrace about his knees.
+
+"You don't tell me!"
+
+"Oh, I.W., please--"
+
+"Our little girl. S-ay, how poor Lenie would have loved this happiness!
+Our little girl engaged to get married!"
+
+"I.W., she--"
+
+"We do the right thing by them--eh, Hattie? Furnish them up as many
+rooms as they want. But, s-ay, they don't need help from us. He's a
+lucky boy who gets her, I don't care who he is. Her papa's little Effie,
+a baby--old enough to get engaged!"
+
+"I.W., she's too--young. Don't give him our little Effie; she's too
+young!"
+
+"I married her mother, Hattie, when she wasn't yet eighteen."
+
+"I know, I.W., but not to Leon Kessler. She's such a baby, I.W.
+He--didn't I work for him nine years, I.W.--don't I know what he is!"
+
+"I'm surprised, Hattie, you should hold so against a man his wild oats."
+
+"Then why ain't oats for the man oats for the woman? It's the men that
+sow the wild oats and the women--us women that's got to reap them!"
+
+"S-ay, life is life. Do you want to put your head up against a brick
+wall?"
+
+"A wall that men built!"
+
+"It's always hard, Hattie, for good women like you and like poor Lenie
+was to understand. It's better you don't. You shouldn't even think
+about it."
+
+"But, I.W.--"
+
+"If I didn't know Leon Kessler was no worse than ninety-nine good
+husbands in a hundred, you think I would let him lay a finger on the
+apple of my eye? I don't understand, Hattie; all of a sudden this
+evening, you're so worked up. Instead of happiness, you come like with a
+funeral. Is that why you wake me up out of a sleep? To cry about it?
+Don't think, Hattie, that just as much as you I haven't got the good of
+my child at heart. Out of a sound sleep she wakes me to cry because a
+happiness has come to us. Leon Kessler can have any girl in this town he
+wants. Maybe he wasn't a Sunday-school boy in his day--but say, show me
+one that was."
+
+She drew herself up, grasping him at the shoulders.
+
+"I.W., don't let him have our little Effie!"
+
+"Nonsense!" he said, in some distaste for her voice choked with tears.
+"Cut out this woman foolishness now and come to bed. Is this something
+new you're springing on me? I got no patience with women who indulge
+themselves with nervous breakdowns. I never thought, Hattie, you had
+nothing like that in you."
+
+Her voice was rising now in hysteria, slipping up frequently beyond her
+control.
+
+"If you do, I can't stand it! I can't stand it, I.W.!"
+
+He peered at her in the starlight that came down through the screened-in
+top of the sleeping-porch.
+
+"Why?" he said, suddenly awake, and shortly.
+
+"I worked for him nine years, I.W. I--I know him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I know him, I.W. She's too good for him."
+
+"How do you know him?"
+
+"I--the girls, I.W. One little girl now, Cissie--I--I hear it all from
+my friend Delehanty--sometimes she--she writes to me. I--the models
+and--the girls and--and the lady buyers--they--they used to gossip in
+the factory and--I--I used to hear about it. I.W., don't! Let go! You
+hurt!" His teeth and his hands were very tight, and he hung now over the
+side of the bed and toward her.
+
+"He--I.W.--he--"
+
+"He what? He what?"
+
+"He--ain't good enough."
+
+"I say he is!"
+
+"But he--I.W.--she--she's such a baby and he--he--. You hurt!"
+
+"Then tell me, he what?"
+
+"I.W., you're hurting me!"
+
+"He what--do you hear?--he what?"
+
+"Don't make me say it! Don't! It--it just happened--with him meaning one
+thing all the time and--me another. I was thrown with that kind of a
+crowd, I.W., all my life. All the girls, they--It don't make me worse
+than it makes him. With me it was once; with him it's--it's--I didn't
+know, I.W. My mother she died that year before, and--I needed the job,
+and I swear to God, I.W., I--kept hoping even if he never put it in
+words he'd fix it. Kill me, if you want to, I.W., but don't throw our
+Effie to him! Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+She was pounding the floor with her bare palms, her face so distorted
+that the mouth drawn tight over the teeth was as wide and empty as a
+mask's, and sobs caught and hiccoughed in her throat.
+
+"I didn't know, I.W.! Don't kill me for what I didn't know!"
+
+She crouched back from his knotted face, and he sprang then out of bed,
+nightshirt flapping about his knees, and his fists and his bulging eyes
+raised to the quiet stars.
+
+"God," he cried, "help me to keep hold of myself! Help me! You--you--"
+
+His voice was so high and so tight in his throat that it stuck, leaving
+him in inarticulate invocation.
+
+"I.W.!"
+
+"My child engaged to--to her mother's--you--you--"
+
+"I.W.! Do you see now? You wouldn't let him have her! You wouldn't,
+I.W.! Tell me you wouldn't!"
+
+"I want him if he touches her to be struck dead! I want him to be struck
+dead!"
+
+"Thank God!" said Mrs. Goldstone, weeping now tears that eased her
+breathing.
+
+Suddenly he leaned toward her, his voice rather quieter, but his
+forefinger waggling out toward the open door.
+
+"You go!" he said, and then in a gathering hurricane of fury, "go!"
+
+"I.W., don't yell! Don't! Don't!"
+
+"Go--while I'm quiet. Go--you hear?"
+
+She edged around him where he stood, in fear of his white, crouched
+attitude.
+
+"I.W.!"
+
+He made a step toward her, and, at the sound in his throat, she ran out
+into the hallway and down the stairs to the porch. In the deep shade of
+the veranda's elbow a small figure lay deep in sleep in the wicker
+rocker, one bare arm up over her head and lips parted.
+
+In a straight chair beside her Mrs. Goldstone sat down. She was
+shuddering with chill and repeating to herself, quite aloud and over and
+over again:
+
+"What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?"
+
+She was suddenly silent then, staring out ahead, her hands clutching the
+chair-arms.
+
+To her inflamed fancy, it was as if, beyond the hedge, the old disused
+hitching-post had become incarnate and, in the form of her naive and
+horned conception, was coming toward her with the whites of his eyes
+bloodshot.
+
+
+
+
+A PETAL ON THE CURRENT
+
+Were I only swifter and more potent of pen, I could convey to you all in
+the stroke of a pestle the H2O, the pigment of the red-cheeked apple,
+the blue of long summer days, and the magnesia of the earth for which
+Stella Schump was the mortal and mortar receptacle.
+
+She was about as exotic as a flowering weed which can spring so strongly
+and so fibrously from slack. And yet such a weed can bleed milk. If
+Stella Schump was about fourteen pounds too plump, too red of cheek, and
+too blandly blue of eye, there was the very milk of human kindness in
+her morning punching up of her mother's pillows and her smoothing down
+of the gray and poorly hair. She could make a bed freshly, whitely, her
+strong young arms manoeuvering under but not even jarring the poor old
+form so often prone there.
+
+There was a fine kind of virile peasantry in the willing hands, white
+enough, but occasionally broken at the nails from eight hours of this
+box in and that box out in a children's shoe department.
+
+Differing by the fourteen pounds, Watteau would have scorned and Rubens
+have adored to paint her.
+
+She was not unconscious of the rather flaxen ripple of her hair, which
+she wore slickly parted and drawn back, scallop by scallop, to a round
+and shining mat of plaits against the back of her head. But neither was
+she unconscious that she thereby enhanced the too high pitch of her
+cheek-bones and the already too generous width between them. It was when
+Stella Schump opened wide her eyes that she transcended the milky
+fleshliness and the fact that, when she walked rapidly, her cheeks
+quivered in slight but gelatinous fashion. Her eyes--they were the color
+of perfect June at that high-noon moment when the spinning of the
+humming-bird can be distilled to sound. Laura and Marguerite and Stella
+Schump had eyes as blue as Cleopatra's, and Sappho's and Medea's must
+have been green.
+
+For reading and occasional headaches, she wore a pair of horn-rimmed
+spectacles prescribed but not specially ground by the optical
+department, cater-corner from the children's shoes. Upon the occasion of
+their first adjustment, Romance, for the first time, had leaned briefly
+into the smooth monotony of Miss Schump's day-by-day, to waft a scented,
+a lace-edged, an elusive kerchief.
+
+"You ought to heard, mamma, that fellow over in the specs, when he gimme
+the test for the glasses."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Tee-hee!--it sounds silly to repeat it."
+
+"You got the Schump eyes, Stella. I always used to say, with his big
+blue ones, your poor father ought to been a girl, too."
+
+"'Say,' he said to me, he said, just like that, 'I know a society who
+will pay you a big fat sum if you'll sign over them eyes for
+post-mortem laboratory work. Believe me, Bettina,' he said, just like
+that, 'those are some goo-goos!'"
+
+"'Goo-goos'?"
+
+"Yes, ma--the way I look out of them."
+
+"See, Stella, if you'd only mix with the young men and not be so
+stiff-like with them. See! Is he the sober, genteel kind who could sit
+out an evening in a self-respectin' girl's front parlor?"
+
+"I--I can't ask a fellow if he didn't ask me, can I? I can't make a
+pusher out of myself."
+
+"A girl don't have to make a pusher out of herself to have beaus; it's
+natural for her to have them in moderation. I don't want my girl shut
+out of her natural pleasures."
+
+"'Believe me, Bettina,' he said, 'those are some goo-goos'--just like
+that, he said it."
+
+"Before I'd let a girl like Cora Kinealy have all the beaus! I bet
+_she'd_ ask him."
+
+"It--it just ain't in me, ma. The other girls do, I know--you ought to
+heard the way Mabel Runyan was kiddin' a fellow in the silks to-day--it
+just ain't in me to."
+
+"Nowadays, young men got to be made to feel welcome."
+
+"I just don't seem to take."
+
+"'I'll be pleased to have you call of a Saturday night, Mr. So-and-so.'
+No one could say there's anything but the genteel in that. Those are
+just the words I used to say to your poor father when he was courtin'."
+
+"If only I--I wouldn't turn all red!"
+
+"I bet Cora Kinealy would have asked him." "I--I'll ask him, ma."
+
+When Stella Schump was adjusting her black sleevelets next morning,
+somewhat obviously oblivious of the optical department across the aisle,
+a blond, oiled head leaned out at her.
+
+"Mornin'. Goo-goo!"
+
+A flush that she could feel rush up and that would not be controlled
+threw her into a state of agitation that was almost abashing to behold.
+
+"Tee-hee!"
+
+"Believe me, Bettina, those are some goo-goos!"
+
+"I'd be pleased to have you--come--to--"
+
+"I told the little wifey last night, 'Angel Face, I've found a pair of
+goo-goos that are a close runner-up to yours.'"
+
+Miss Schump turned to her first customer of the day, the flush receding
+as suddenly as it had come to scorch.
+
+"Copper toes for the little boy? Just be seated, please."
+
+Thus did the odor of romance lay for the merest moment upon the stale
+air of Miss Schump's routine.
+
+Evenings, in the high-ceilinged, long-windowed, and inside-shuttered
+little flat in very West Thirteenth Street, tucked up in the top story
+of one of a row of made-over-into-apartments residences that boasted
+each a little frill of iron balcony and railed-in patch of front lawn,
+they would sit beside an oil-lamp with a flowered china shade, Mrs.
+Schump, gnarled of limb and knotted of joint, ever busy, except on the
+most excruciatingly rheumatic of her days, at a needlework so cruel, so
+fine that for fifteen years of her widowhood it had found instant market
+at a philanthropic Woman's Exchange.
+
+Very often Miss Cora Kinealy, also of the children's shoes, would rock
+away an evening in that halo of lamplight, her hair illuminated to
+copper and her hands shuttling in and out at the business of knitting.
+There were frank personal discussions, no wider in diameter than the
+little circle of light itself.
+
+MISS KINEALY (_slumped in her chair so that her knee rose higher than
+her waist-line_): I always say of Stella, she's one nut too hard for me
+to crack, and I've cracked a good many in my life. Why that girl 'ain't
+got beaus galore--well, I give up!
+
+MRS. SCHUMP (_stooped for an infinitesimal stab of needle_): She don't
+give 'em a chance, Cora. You can't tell me there is not many a nice,
+sober young man wouldn't be glad to sit out a Saturday evening with her.
+She's that bashful she don't give 'em a chance. I tell her it's almost
+as much ruination to a girl to be too retiring as to be too forward. She
+don't seem to have a way with the boys.
+
+MISS SCHUMP (_in a pink, warm-looking flannelette kimono and brushing
+out into fine fluff her flaxen-looking hair, and then, in the name of
+to-morrow's kink, plaiting it into a multitude of small, tight-looking
+braids_): You can talk, mamma. You, too, Cora, with a boy like Archie
+Sensenbrenner and your wedding-day in sight. But what's a girl goin' to
+do if she don't take; if she ain't got an Archie?
+
+Mrs. Schump (_riding her glasses down toward the end of her nose to
+look up sharply over them_): Get one.
+
+"There you go again! Honest, you two make me mad. I can't go out and
+lasso 'em, can I?"
+
+"She doesn't give 'em a chance, Cora; mark my word! The trouble is,
+she's too good for most she sees. They ain't up to her."
+
+"I can't understand it, Mrs. Schump. I always say there ain't a finer
+girl on the floor than Stella. When I see other girls, most of 'em fresh
+little rag-timers that ain't worth powder and shot, bringing down the
+finest kind of fellows, and Stella never asked out or nothing, I always
+say to myself, 'I can't understand it.' Take me--what Arch Sensenbrenner
+ever seen in me, with Stella and her complexion working in the same
+department--"
+
+"You got a way, Cora. There's just something about me don't take with
+the boys. Honest, if I could only see one of you girls alone with a
+fellow once, to see how you do it!"
+
+"Just listen to her, Mrs. Schump, with her eyes and complexion and all!"
+
+"There's not a reason my girl shouldn't have it as good and better than
+the best of them. She's a good girl, Cora. Stella's a good girl to me."
+
+"Aw, mamma--"
+
+"Don't I know it, Mrs. Schump! I always say if ever a girl would make
+some nice-earning, steady fellow a good wife, it's--"
+
+'"Good wife'! That ain't the name! Why, Cora, for ten years that child
+has lifted me on my bad days and carried me and babied me like I was a
+queen. It's nothing for her to rub me two hours straight. Not a day
+before she leaves for work that she don't come to me and--"
+
+"Fellows don't care about that kind of thing. A girl's got to have pep
+and something besides complexion and elbow-grease. I'm too fat."
+
+"She's always sayin' she's too fat. With one pound off, would she
+look as good, Cora? If I hadn't been as plump as a partridge in my
+girl-days--and if I do say it myself, I was as fine a lookin' girl
+as my Stella--do you think Dave Schump would have had eyes for me?
+Not if I was ten times the woman I was for him."
+
+"Sure she ain't too fat, Mrs. Schump. I always tell her it's her
+imagination. I know a girl bigger than she is that's keeping company
+with an expert piano-tuner. Why, I know girls twice her size. Stella's
+got a right good figure, she has."
+
+"Lots of good it does me! I--It's just like my brains to go right to my
+hands, once you put me with a fellow. That time your brother Ed called
+for me for that party at your house--honest, I couldn't open my mouth
+to him."
+
+"Can't understand it! 'Honest,' I says to Ed that time after the party,
+I says to him, 'Ed, why don't you go over and call on Stella Schump and
+take her to a movie or something? She's my idea of a girl, Stella is.'
+Think I could budge him? 'Naw,' was all I could get out of him. Just,
+'Naw.' Honest, I could have shook him. But did he run down to that
+little flirt of a Gert Cobb's the very same night? He did. Honest, like
+I said to Arch, it makes me sick. Is it any wonder the world is filled
+with little flips like Gert Cobb, the way the fellows fall for 'em?"
+
+"I never could be fresh with a boy. Take that time at your party. I bet
+your brother Ed would have liked me better if I'd have got out in the
+middle of the floor with him, like he wanted me to and like Gert did, to
+see who could blow the biggest bunch of suds off his stein. I never
+could be fresh with a fellow."
+
+"That's just the trouble, Mrs. Schump. Stella don't see the difference
+between what's fresh and what's just fun. Is there anything wrong about
+one stein of beer in a jolly crowd? A girl can be nice without being
+goody-good. If there's anything a fellow hates, it's a goody-good. Take
+a fellow like Arch--you think he'd have any time for me if I wasn't a
+good-enough sport to take a glass of beer with him maybe once a week
+when he gets to feeling thirsty? Nothing rough. Everything in
+moderation, I always say. But there's a difference, Mrs. Schump, between
+being rough and being a goody-good."
+
+"There's something in what you say, Cora. I've had her by me so much,
+maybe I've tried to raise her a little over-genteel. There ain't one
+single bad appetite she's got to be afraid of. It's not in her. I used
+to tell her poor father, one glass of beer could make him so crazy loony
+he never had to try how two tasted."
+
+"I'm bashful, and what you goin' to do about it?"
+
+"Say, you and Ed's foreman ought to meet together! Honest, you'd be a
+pair! Ed brought him to the house one night. Finest boy you ever seen.
+Thirty-five a week, steady as you make 'em; and when they put in girls
+to work down at the munitions-plant where him and Ed works, Ed said it
+was all they could do to keep him from throwing up his job from fright.
+Whatta you know? A dandy fellow like him, with a dagger-shaped scar
+clear down his arm from standing by his job that time when the whole
+south end of the plant exploded. A fellow that could save a whole plant
+and two hundred lives afraid to face a few skirts! Crazy to get married.
+Told Ed so. Always harping on his idea of blue eyes and yellow hair, and
+then, when he gets the chance, afraid of a few skirts!"
+
+"That's me every time with fellows. I get to feelin' down inside of me
+something terrible--scary--and all."
+
+"Say, I'll tell you what! I'll get Ed to bring him down to Gert Cobb's
+party next Saturday night, and you come, too."
+
+"I?"
+
+"There's two of a kind for you, Mrs. Schump. A fellow that's more afraid
+of girls than explosions, and a girl that's afraid to blow a little foam
+off a glass of beer! Them two ought to meet. Me and Arch and Ed'll fix
+it up. How's that for a scheme? Now say I ain't your friend! Are
+you game?"
+
+"I don't go out tryin' to meet fellows that way."
+
+"You see, Mrs. Schump, the way she puts a gold fence around herself?"
+
+"Cora's puttin' herself out for you, Stella. There's no harm in a
+Saturday night's party in the company of Cora and some genteel friends."
+
+"Gert Cobb don't know I'm on earth."
+
+"You hear, Mrs. Schump? Is it any wonder she don't get out? All I got to
+do is say the word, and any friend of mine is welcome in Gert
+Cobb's house."
+
+"I'll make you up them five yards of pink mull for it, Stella. It's a
+shame that pretty dress-pattern from your two birthdays ago has never
+had the occasion to be made up. It's nice of Cora to be puttin'
+herself out."
+
+"Look at 'er, like I was asking her to a funeral!"
+
+"There's such a pretty sash I been savin' to make up with that mull,
+Cora. A handsome black-moire length of ribbon off a beaded basque her
+father gimme our first Christmas married."
+
+"I'll lend her my pink pearls to wear. Honest, I never knew a girl could
+wear pink like Stella."
+
+Miss Schump leaned forward in the lamplight, the myriad of tight little
+braids at angles, but her eyes widening to their astounding blueness.
+
+"Not your--pink beads, Cora?"
+
+"You heard me the first time, didn't you? 'Pink' was what I said."
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Now ain't that nice of Cora?"
+
+"Quick--are you game?"
+
+"Why, yes--Cora."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a section of New York which rays out rather crazily from old
+Jefferson Market and Night Court in spokes of small streets that seem
+to run at haphazard angles each to the other--that less sooty part of
+Greenwich not yet invaded by the Middle West in search of bohemia. An
+indescribable smack of Soho here, tired old rows of tired old houses
+going down year by year before the wrecker's ax, the model tenement
+rising insolently before the scar is cold.
+
+It is that part of the Latin Quarter which is literally just that, lying
+slightly to the south and slightly to the west of that odd-fellow's land
+of short-haired women and long-haired men. Free love, free verse, free
+thought, free speech, and freed I.W.W.'s have no place here. For three
+blocks a little Italy runs riot in terms of pastry, spaghetti, and
+plaster-of-Paris shops, and quite as abruptly sobers and becomes Soho
+again. A Greek church squats rather broadly at the intersection of three
+of these streets.
+
+There intervened between Stella Schump's and the six-story model
+tenement adjoining the Greek church which Miss Gertrude Cobb called
+home, a rhomboid of park, municipally fitted with playground apparatus,
+the three-block riot of little Italy, the gloomy barracks of old
+Jefferson Market and Night Court, and a few more blocks of still intact,
+tired old rows of tired old houses.
+
+On a spring night that was as insinuatingly sweet as the crush of a rose
+to the cheek there walked through these lowly streets of lower Manhattan
+Mr. Archie Sensenbrenner, bounded on the north by a checked,
+deep-visored cap; on the south by a very bulldogged and very tan pair of
+number nines; on the east by Miss Cora Kinealy, very much of the
+occasion in a peaked hood faced in eider-down and a gay silk bag of
+slippers dangling; on the west by Miss Stella Schump, a pink scarf
+entwining her head like a Tanagra.
+
+"Honest, Cora, I feel just like I'm intruding."
+
+"'Intrudin'! Would I have invited her if we didn't want her, Arch?"
+
+"Naw."
+
+"'There's always room for one more,' is my motto. I believe it always
+comes home to the girl that don't share her good times. If me and Arch
+couldn't call by for a girl on our way to a party, I'd feel sorry for
+us. Give her your arm, Arch."
+
+"Here! I tried once to, and she wouldn't take it."
+
+Miss Schump hooked a highly diffident hand into Mr. Sensenbrenner's
+sharply jutted elbow.
+
+"You two go on and talk together. I've chewed Arch's right ear off
+already."
+
+"It's a grand evenin'--ain't it, Mr. Sensenbrenner?"
+
+At that from Miss Schump, Miss Kinealy executed a very soprano squeal
+that petered out in a titter of remonstrances.
+
+"Arch Sensenbrenner, if you don't stop pinching me! Honest, my arm's
+black and blue! Honest! What'll Stella think we are? Now cut it out!"
+
+They walked a block in silence, but, beside her, Miss Schump could feel
+them shaking to a duet of suppressed laughter, and the red in her face
+rose higher and a little mustache of the tiniest of perspiration beads
+came out over her lip. The desire to turn back, the sudden ache for the
+quietude of the little halo of lamplight and the swollen finger-joints
+of her mother in and out at work, were almost not to be withstood.
+
+"I--You--you and Mr. Sensenbrenner go on, Cora. I--me not knowin' Gertie
+Cobb and all--I--I--feel I'm intruding. You and him go on. Please!"
+
+Miss Kinealy crossed to her, kindly at once and sobered.
+
+"Now, Stella Schump, you're coming right to this party with me and Arch.
+We can't do more than tell her she's welcome, can we, Arch?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"I promised your mother I'm going to see to it that you get away from
+her apron-strings and out among young folks more, and you're coming
+right to this party with me and Arch. Ain't I right, Arch?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You mustn't feel bad, honey, that Ed couldn't get John Gilly to come
+around and call after you. Ed says he'd never get him to steam up his
+nerve enough to call at a girl's house after her; but ain't it enough
+he's coming to Gert's to-night just to meet you? You ought to heard him
+when Ed got to telling him what kind of a girl you was. 'Gee!' Ed says
+he says. 'Big blue eyes like saucers sounds good to me! Well,' he says,
+Ed says he says, 'if my nerve don't lay down on me, I'll show up there
+with you.' That's something, ain't it, for a fellow like John Gilly to
+do just to meet a girl? Ain't it, Arch, for that fine, big fellow, Ed's
+foreman, you seen up at our house that night? You know the one I mean,
+the one with his arm scalded up from the explosion."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Honest, if I wasn't already tagged and spoken for, I'd set my cap for
+him myself."
+
+"'Mother, mother, mother, pin a rose on me!'" cried Mr. Sensenbrenner,
+with no great pertinence.
+
+Miss Kinealy threw him a northwest glance. "Ain't he the cut-up,
+Stella?"
+
+"He sure is."
+
+"Br-a-a-y!" said Mr. Sensenbrenner, again none too relevantly.
+
+"Oh, show her the way the zebra in the Park goes on Sunday morning,
+Arch!"
+
+He inserted two fingers, splaying his mouth. "Heigh-ho!
+He-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+"Ain't that lifelike, Stella?"
+
+"It sure is."
+
+"Oh, look! Up there--the third story--see--those are the Cobbs'
+windows, all lit up! Oh, gee! I just can't make my feet behave. Waltz me
+around again, Archie! No; you got to take the first dance with Stella."
+
+"Oh no, Cora; he wants--"
+
+"You hear, Arch?"
+
+"Sure; only, I can't force her if she don't want to."
+
+"Sure she wants to! Hurry! I hear Skinnay Flint's ukulele. Gee! I just
+can't make my feet be-have!"
+
+They entered an institutional, sanitary, and legislation-smelling box of
+foyer and up three flights of fire-proof stairs. At each landing were
+four fire-proof doors, lettered. The Cobbs' door, "H," stood open, an
+epicene medley of voices and laughter floating down the long neck of
+hallway on the syncopated whine of a ukulele.
+
+There was an immediate parting of ways, Mr. Sensenbrenner hanging his
+cap on an already well-filled rack of pegs and making straight for the
+sound of revelry by night.
+
+The girls made foray into a little side pocket of bedroom for the
+changing of shoes, whitening of noses, and various curlicue preambles.
+
+"Stella, your hair looks swell!"
+
+"Ma plaited it up last night with sugar-water."
+
+"Here, just this speck on your lips, just a little to match your
+cheeks!--See--all the girls use it."
+
+"Ugh--no--"
+
+"There, just a stroke. Fine! Say, wasn't Arch killing to-night when he
+called my cheeks naturally curly?"
+
+"You look grand, Cora. Sure you don't want your pink beads?"
+
+"I'll throw 'em down and step on 'em if you take 'em off."
+
+"I just love that changeable silk on you."
+
+"Does the split under the arm show?"
+
+"Notta bit."
+
+"Come on, then!"
+
+"Oh, Cora--"
+
+"Come on!"
+
+In the Cobb front room a frightened exodus of furniture had taken place.
+A leather-and-oak "davenbed" had obviously and literally been dragged to
+the least conspicuous corner. An unpainted center of floor space showed
+that there had been a rug. Camp-chairs had been introduced against all
+available wall space. Only a fan-shaped, three-shelved cabinet of
+knickknacks had been allowed its corner. Diagonal from it, the horn of a
+talking-machine, in shape a large, a violent, a tin morning-glory, was
+directed full against the company.
+
+Not a brilliant scene, except by grace or gracelessness of state of
+mind. But to Stella Schump, neither elected nor electing to walk in
+greater glory, there was that about the Cobb front room thus lighted,
+thus animated, that gave her a sense of function--a crowding around the
+heart. The neck of hallway might have been a strip of purple, awninged.
+
+There were greetings that rose in crescendo and falsetto.
+
+"Cora Kinealy! Hello, Cora! How's every little thing?"
+"Baby-shoes--tra-la-la!" "Oh, you changeable-silk kiddo! Turn green for
+the ladies." "Come on over here, Cora, and make Arch tell fortunes!"
+
+"Gertie, this is my girl friend, Stella, from the shoes, I brought.
+Y'know? I told you about her. Ed's bringing down a gentleman friend
+for her."
+
+Miss Gertie Cobb, so blond, so small, so titillating that she resembled
+nothing so much as one of those Dresden table-candelabra under a pink
+glass-fringed shade with the fringe always atinkle, laughed upward in a
+voice eons too old.
+
+"Make yourself right at home. At our house, it's what you don't see ask
+for. Skin-nay Flint, if you don't stop! Make him quit, Cora; he's been
+ticklin' me something awful with that little old feather duster he
+brought along. Whatta you think this is--Coney Island? E-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+There ensued a scramble down the length of the room, Miss Cobb with her
+thin, bare little arms flung up over her head, Miss Kinealy tugging and
+then riding in high buffoonery over the bare floor, firmly secured to
+Mr. Flint's coattails.
+
+"Leggo!"
+
+"Quit--ouch--e-e-e-e-e! That's right; give it to him! Cora--go to
+it--e-e-e-e-e--"
+
+Lips lifted to belie a sinkage of heart, Miss Schump, left standing,
+backed finally, sinking down to one of the camp-chairs against the wall.
+The little glittering mustache had come out again, and, sitting there,
+her smile so insistently lifted, the pink pearls at her throat rose and
+fell. The ukulele was whanging again, and a couple or two, locked cheek
+to cheek, were undulating in a low-lidded kind of ecstasy. Finally, Cora
+Kinealy and Archie Sensenbrenner, rather uglily oblivious.
+
+A youth, frantic to outdistance a rival for the dancing-hand of Miss
+Gertie Cobb, stumbled across Miss Schump's carefully crossed ankles.
+
+"'Scuse," he said, without glancing back.
+
+"Certainly," said Miss Schump, through aching tonsils.
+
+There was an encore, the raucous-throated morning-glory taking up where
+the ukulele had left off. Miss Schump sat on, the smile drawn more and
+more resolutely across her face. Occasionally, to indicate a state of
+social ease, she caught an enforced yawn with her hand.
+
+After a while Mrs. Cobb entered, quietly, almost furtively, hands
+wrapped muff fashion in a checked apron, sitting down softly on the
+first of the camp-chairs near the door. She had the dough look of the
+comfortable and the uncorseted fat, her chin adding a scallop as,
+watching, her smile grew.
+
+"It's great to watch the young ones," she said, finally.
+
+Miss Schump moved gratefully, oh, so gratefully, two chairs over.
+
+"It sure is," she said, assuming an attitude of conversation.
+
+"Like I tell Gert, it makes me young again myself."
+
+"It sure does."
+
+"Give it to 'em in the house, I say, and it keeps 'em in off the
+street."
+
+"Your daughter is sure one pretty girl."
+
+"Gert's a good-enough girl, if I could keep her in. I tell 'er of all my
+young ones she's the prettiest and the sassiest. Law, how that girl
+can sass!"
+
+"Like my mother always says to me about sass, sass never gets a girl
+nowheres."
+
+"Indeed it don't! It's lost her more places than my other two, married
+now, ever lost put together. You work in the Criterion?"
+
+"Yes'm. Children's shoes."
+
+"I bet you're not the kind of a girl to change places every week."
+
+"No'm. Criterion is the only place I ever worked at. I started there as
+Cash."
+
+"I bet you give up at home out of your envelop."
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Father?"
+
+"No'm. He was a night watchman and got shot on duty."
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Brother?"
+
+"No'm."
+
+"Sister?"
+
+"No'm."
+
+"Only child, huh?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+Then Miss Cobb blew up in a state of breathless haste and bobbing of
+curls.
+
+"Eats, maw--eats! The crowd's thirsty--spittin' cotton. What's the idea?
+My tongue's out. Eats! Quick, for Gawsakes--eats!"
+
+Mrs. Cobb, wide and quivery of hip, retreated precipitately into the
+slit of hallway. Almost immediately there were refreshments, carried in
+on portentous black tin trays by a younger Cobb in pigtails and by Mrs.
+Cobb, swayback from a great outheld array of tumblers and bottles.
+
+A shout went up.
+
+The tray of sandwiches, piled to an apex, scarcely endured one round of
+passing. The fluted tin tops of bottles were pried off. Tumblers
+clicked. There were the sing of suds and foamy overflowings.
+
+Enter Mr. Ed Kinealy, very brown and tight of suit, very black and
+pomaded of hair.
+
+"Oh, Ed!" This from Miss Kinealy between large mouthfuls of sandwich
+and somewhat jerkily from being dandled on Mr. Sensenbrenner's knee,
+"Where's your friend--where's John Gilly?"
+
+"Oh, Ed!" "Naouw, Eh-ud!" "I'll give you a slap on the wrist." "Naouw,
+Ed!" Delivered by those present in a chorus of catcalls and falsetto
+impersonations of Miss Kinealy in plaintive vein.
+
+"Now tell me--where is he, Ed? Shut up every body! Where is he, Ed?"
+
+Mr. Kinealy shot a pair of very striped cuffs.
+
+"That guy had sense. One whiff of this roughhouse and he bolted down
+again, six steps at a jump. He slipped me so easy I was talking to
+myself all the way up-stairs. That guy had sense. Petticoat shush-shush
+can't put nothing over on him."
+
+"Aw, Ed!"
+
+CHORUS: Aw, Eh-ud! Aw, Eh-ud! Naouw--
+
+"And him dated for Stella! Honest, it's a rotten shame!" Suddenly Miss
+Kinealy flashed to her feet, her glance running quick. "Where is she?
+Well, Stella Schump, sitting over there playing chums with yourself!
+Honest, your name ought to be Chump! Whatta you think that is--the amen
+corner? You're a fine bunch of social entertainers, you fellows are!
+Bring her up a chair. Gee! you are! Honest, Gertie Cobb, I wouldn't want
+my cat to be company to you! Bring 'er up a chair, Ed. Here, next to me!
+Honest, it's a rotten shame! Give 'er a sandwich. Open 'er up a bottle.
+Gee! you're a fine crowd of fish, you are!"
+
+There was a general readjustment of circle and scraping of chairs. Miss
+Schump, scarlet, drew up and in, Mr. Kinealy prying off a fluted
+top for her.
+
+"Have this one on me, Stella!" he cried. "Your guy bolted of stage
+fright; but I'm here, and don't you forget it!"
+
+"Aw--tee-hee!" she said, wiping at her upper lip.
+
+"Here!"
+
+She regarded the foam sing down into amber quiet.
+
+"I'm on the water-wagon," she said, essaying to be light of vein,
+crossing her hands and feet and tilting her glance at him.
+
+"Say, here's a girl won't blow the foam off a fellow's glass for fear
+she'll get soapsuds in her eyes!"
+
+"Wash her face with 'em!"
+
+MISS KINEALY: Aw, now, Stella; can't you be a good fellow for once? Do
+it, if it hurts you. Honest, I hate to say it, but you're the limit, you
+are! My God! limber up a little--limber up!
+
+"Here, now--open your mouth and shut your eyes."
+
+"Open it for her, Ed."
+
+"Aw, no; don't force her if she don't want it."
+
+"Gowann, Stella; be human, if it hurts you."
+
+Redly and somewhat painfully, the observed of all observers, Miss Schump
+tilted her head and drank, manfully and shudderingly, to the bitter end
+of the glass.
+
+"Attaboy! Say, tell it to the poodles and the great Danes! That Jane's
+no amachure!"
+
+Eyes stung to tears, pink tip of her tongue quickly circling her lips,
+Miss Schump held out to Mr. Kinealy the empty tumbler.
+
+"Now, there!"
+
+"More?"
+
+"I'm game."
+
+"Don't give 'er a whole glass, Ed."
+
+She drank, again at one whiff.
+
+"That's more like it! Didn't kill you, did it? Now eat that Swiss-cheese
+sandwich and come over next to me and Arch while he tells fortunes."
+
+Miss Schump rose, rather high of head, the moment hers.
+
+Miss Kinealy stretched her hand out into the center of the closing-in
+circle of heads.
+
+"I said palm-reading, Arch, not hand-holding. Leave that part to Ed and
+Gert over there. Now quit squeezing--"
+
+Mr. Sensenbrenner bent low, almost nose to her palm.
+
+"I see," he began, his voice widening to a drawl--"I se-e a fellow about
+my size and complexion entering your life--"
+
+To Miss Schump, her hand on Miss Kinealy's shoulder and her head peering
+over, the voice seemed to trail off somewhere out into infinitudes of
+space, off into bogs of eternity, away and behind some beyond.
+
+"Gee! it's hot in here!" she muttered, no one heeding or hearing. "Sure
+hot. Whew!"
+
+"Going on a long journey, and a fellow about my size and complexion is
+going along with you, and there's money coming--"
+
+"Sure hot!" It was then Miss Schump, with fear of a rather growing and
+sickening sense of dizziness and of the wavy and unstable outline of
+things, slipped quietly and unobtrusively out into the hallway, her
+craving for air not to be gainsaid. The door to the little bedroom stood
+open, her pink scarf uppermost on the cot-edge. She stood for an instant
+in the doorway, regarding and wanting it, but quite as suddenly turned,
+and down the three flights gained the dewy quiet of out-of-doors,
+fighting muzziness.
+
+The street had long since fallen tranquil, the Greek church casting
+immense shadow. The air had immediate and sedative effect upon Miss
+Schump's rather distressing symptoms of unrest, but not quite allaying a
+certain state of mental upheaval. She had the distinct sensation of the
+top of her head lifted off from the eyebrows up. Her state of
+light-headedness took voice.
+
+"Gimme," she said, lifting the pink-mull, ankle-length skirt as if it
+trailed a train and marching off down-street; "now you gimme!"
+
+An entirely new lack of self-consciousness enhanced her state of
+giddiness. A titter seemed to run just a scratch beneath the surface
+of her.
+
+The passing figure of a woman in a black cape and a bulge of bundle
+elicited a burst of laughter which her hand clapped to her mouth
+promptly subdued. Awaiting the passing of a street-car, she was again
+prone to easy laughter.
+
+"Oh, you!" she said, quirking an eye to the motorman, who quirked back.
+
+Crossing the street, she came down rather splashily in a pool of water,
+wetting and staining the light slippers.
+
+"Aw!" she repeated, scolding and stamping down at them. "Aw! Aw! You!"
+
+Across from the gloomy pile of old Jefferson Market, she stood, reading
+up at an illuminated tower-clock, softly, her lips moving.
+
+"Nine--ten--e-lev-hun--"
+
+A dark figure slowed behind her elbow; she turned with a sense of that
+nearness and peered up under the lowering brim of a soft-felt hat.
+
+"Hoddado?"
+
+"Hello!" she answered, slyly.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+She peered closer.
+
+"Got a girl?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Blow suds?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Cora's."
+
+He flung back his coat, revealing a star.
+
+"You're under arrest," he said, laconically. "Solicitin'. Come on; no
+fuss."
+
+Her comprehension was unplumbed.
+
+"O Lord!" she said, pressing inward at her waistline to abet laughter,
+following him voluntarily enough, and her voice rising. "You make me
+laugh. You make me laugh."
+
+"That'll do," he said.
+
+"Whoop la-la!"
+
+"Now, you get noisy and watch me."
+
+He turned in rather abruptly at a side door of the dark-red pile of
+building which boasted the illuminated tower-clock and a jutting ell
+with barred windows.
+
+She drew back.
+
+"No, you don't! Aw, no, you don't! Whatta you think I yam? Cora's! Tell
+it to the poodles and the great Danes!"
+
+He shoved her with scant ceremony beyond the heavy door. She entered in
+one of the uncontrollable gales of laughter, the indoor heat immediately
+inducing the dizziness.
+
+"Whatta you think I yam? Tell it to the poodles and the great Danes!"
+
+Thirty minutes later, in a court-room as smeared of atmosphere as a
+dirty window, a bridge officer, reading from a slip of paper, singsonged
+to the sergeant-at-arms:
+
+"Stella Schump. Officer Charles Costello."
+
+How much more daringly than my poor pen would venture, did life, all of
+a backhanded, flying leap of who knows what centrifugal force, transcend
+for Stella Schump the vague boundaries of the probable.
+
+The milky-fleshed, not highly sensitized, pinkly clean creature of an
+innocence born mostly of ignorance and slow perceptions, who that
+morning had risen sweet from eleven hours of unrestless sleep beside a
+mother whose bed she had never missed to share, suddenly here in
+slatternliness! A draggled night bird caught in the aviary of night
+court, lips a deep vermilion scar of rouge, hair out of scallop and
+dragging at the pins, the too ready laugh dashing itself against what
+must be owned a hiccough.
+
+Something congenital and sleeping subcutaneously beneath the surface of
+her had scratched through. She was herself, strangely italicized.
+
+A judge regarded her not unkindly. There were two of him, she would keep
+thinking, one merging slightly into his prototype.
+
+She stood, gazing up. Around her swam the court-room--rows of faces;
+comings and goings within her railed area. And heat--the dizzying, the
+exciting heat--and the desire to shake off the some one at her elbow.
+That some one was up before her now, in a chair beside the judge, and
+his voice was as far away as Archie Sensenbrenner's.
+
+"And she says to me, she says, your Honor, 'Got a girl?'"
+
+"Were those her exact words to you?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor."
+
+"Proceed."
+
+"And I says to her, I says, 'No,' and then she comes up close and says
+to me, she says, 'Buy me a drink?'"
+
+"Were those her exact words?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor, as near as I can remember."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"And I says to her, 'Where do you want to go?' and she says to me,
+giving me a wink, 'Cora's.'"
+
+"Cora's?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor; the Cora Jones mulatto woman that was cleaned out last
+week."
+
+"She suggested that you accompany her to the house of the Jones woman?"
+
+"Beg pardon, your Honor?"
+
+"She suggested this resort?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor. 'Cora Jones,' she said."
+
+Through the smoke of her bewilderment something irate stirred within
+Miss Schump, a smouldering sense of anger that burst out into a brief
+tongue of flame.
+
+"You! You! You're no amachure! Cora Jones! Cora Kinealy! Go tell it to
+the great Danes! Say it again! Gimme leave! Gimme leave!" The immediate
+peremptoriness of the gavel set her to blinking, but did not silence.
+"'Gimme leave,' was what I said--"
+
+"Come to order in the court!"
+
+"Aw!"
+
+A new presence at her elbow grasped her sharply. She subsided, but still
+muttering.
+
+"Proceed, officer."
+
+"And then, when she starts off with me, I says to her, I says, 'You're
+under arrest,' and brought her over."
+
+"That'll do."
+
+"Does the defendant wish to take the chair?"
+
+From her elbow, "His Honor asks if you want to state your case."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Do you wish to state your case from the witness-chair? Since you did
+not employ counsel, do you wish to state your own case?"
+
+"Nit."
+
+"Look up here, my girl. I am the judge, trying to help you."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Is this your first offense?"
+
+"Well, it's my offense, ain't it?"
+
+"Address the court properly. Are you intoxicated or only slightly
+dizzy?"
+
+"He lied about Cora Kinealy. He lied--that little skunk lied."
+
+"Didn't you ask him to go there with you?"
+
+"Sure; but he's no amachure."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"An amateur?"
+
+"No, this Jane ain't."
+
+"Will you go quietly into the next room with the matron and tell her all
+about it? The court does not want to have to deal too harshly with a
+girl like you. Do you want to engage counsel and have your case go over?
+If there is a chance, I don't want to have to send a girl like
+you away."
+
+"Aw, you--you're a poodle and a great Dane!"
+
+"Ten days," said the judge, rather wearily.
+
+The bridge officer took up the next slip from the pile of them, his
+voice the droning quality of a bee bumbling through sultry air:
+
+"Maizie Smith. Officer Jerry Dinwiddie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring and her annual epidemic of aching hearts and aching joints had
+advanced ten days and ten degrees. The season's first straw replacement
+of derby had been noted by press. The city itched in its last days of
+woolens and drank sassafras tea for nine successive mornings. A commuter
+wore the first sweet sprig of lilac. The slightly East Sixties took to
+boarding up house-fronts into bland, eyeless masks. The very East
+Sixties began to smell.
+
+When a strangely larger-eyed, strangely thinner, a whitened and somehow
+a tightened Stella Schump drew up, those ten days later, before the
+little old row with the little old iron balconies, there was already in
+the ridiculous patches of front yards a light-green powdering of grass,
+and from the doorbell of her own threshold there hung quite a little
+spray of roses, waxy white against a frond of fern and a fold of black.
+Deeper within that threshold, at the business of flooding its floor with
+a run of water from a tipped pail and sweeping harshly into it, was the
+vigorous, bony silhouette of Mrs. O'Connor, landlady.
+
+For the second that it took her presence to be felt, Miss Schump stood
+there trembling, all of a sudden more deeply and more rapidly. Then,
+Mrs. O'Connor leaned out, bare arms folded atop her broom.
+
+"So!" she said, a highly imperfect row of lower teeth seeming to jut
+out, and her voice wavy with brogue and vibrant to express all its
+scorn. "So!"
+
+"Mrs. O'Connor--"
+
+"So! Ye've come back in time for the buryin'! Faith, an' it's a foine
+toime for the showin'-up of the chief mourner! Faith now it is!"
+
+"Mrs. O'Connor--"
+
+"Ain't ye ashamed? Ain't ye ashamed before the Lord to face your Maker?"
+
+"Please--please--Mrs. O'Connor--what--what--"
+
+"The pasty-faced lyin' ways of ye! I can see now how ye look what ye
+are! I'd have believed it as soon of my own. It's the still water that
+run deep in ye, is the way your girl friend put it. The hussy under that
+white complexion of yours! Your sainted mither! Oh, ain't ye ashamed in
+the name of the Lord to face your Maker?"
+
+"O God--please what--"
+
+"Your sainted mither! Niver, after that letter from ye the next night
+after her scourin' the city, a whimper more out of her--"
+
+"I wrote--I wrote--they gimme a stamp--I wrote--how--Where is she?"
+
+"A cousin had called ye sudden-like for sickness was how she put it.
+Faith and me niver once a-smellin' the mice, the way she lay there,
+waitin', waitin' day after day, doubled up in the joints and waitin' for
+thim ten days to pass--"
+
+"O God!"
+
+"I found her in bed yisterday, a-clutchin' the letter, or niver to my
+own dyin' would I have known the shameful truth of it. It's screw open
+her poor hands I had to, for the readin' of the letter that had been
+eatin' 'er for all them days of waitin'. Ye hussy! Ye jailbird--and me
+niver thinkin' but what it was the sick cousin! Me niver smellin' the
+mice! Your own girl friend, neither. Ye hussy! Jailbird!"
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+"It's only because she was sainted I'm lettin' ye up in on her. She
+layin' up there, waitin'. Strangers that crossed her poor hands on her
+poor breast and strangers that laid her out. Niver even a priest called
+in on her. She a-layin' up there, waitin'--the Lord have mercy on your
+soul! If ye ain't afraid before the Lord to look on her, come up. It's
+thankin' God I am she can't open her eyes to see ye."
+
+Hands clutching her throat, Miss Schump remained standing there on the
+sun-drenched steps, gazing after the figure receding into the musty
+gloom of the hallway. She wanted to follow, but instead could only stand
+there, repeating and repeating:
+
+"O my God! O my God! God! God! What have I done? What have I done?
+Mamma--mamma--mamma! O my God! What? What--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the pyramidal plot-structure of this story the line of descent is by
+far the sheerer. Short-story correspondence-schools would call it the
+brief downward action leading to denouement.
+
+With Stella Schump it was almost a straight declivity. There were days
+of the black kind of inertia when to lift the head from its sullen
+inclination to rest chin on chest was not to be endured. There was
+actually something sick in the eyes, little cataracts of gray cloud
+seeming to float across. She would sit hunched and looking out of them
+so long and so unseeingly that her very stare seemed to sleep.
+
+She had removed the stick or two that remained unsold to a little rear
+room high up in a large, damp-smelling lodging-house on West Twentieth
+Street, within view of a shipping-pier. There was a sign inserted in the
+lower front window:
+
+ROOMS. LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+INQUIRE WITHIN.
+
+She would sit in that room, so heavy with its odor of mildew, her window
+closed against the long, sweetly warm days, hunched dumbly on the
+cot-edge and staring into the stripe and vine, stripe and vine of the
+wall-paper design, or lie back when the ache along her spine began to
+set in. There were occasional ventures to a corner bake-shop for raisin
+rolls and to the delicatessen next door for a quarter-pound of Bologna
+sausage sliced into slivers while she waited. She would sit on the
+cot-edge munching alternately from sliver to roll, gulping through a
+throat that was continually tight with wanting to cry, yet would not
+relax for that relief.
+
+There was little attempt for employment except when the twenty dollars
+left from the sale of effects and funeral expenses began to dwindle. She
+would wake up nights, sweaty with the nightmare that her room was some
+far-off ward for incorrigibles and that one of the strange, veiny-nosed
+inmates was filching her small leather bag from beneath her pillow.
+
+When her little roll had flattened finally down to five one-dollar bills
+she took to daily and conscientiously buying morning papers and scanning
+want-advertisements as she stood at the news-stand, answering first
+those that were within walking-distance.
+
+She would make a five-block detour of the Criterion rather than pass
+the nearer to it.
+
+Once, returning after a fruitless tour of the smaller department stores,
+and borne along by the six-o'clock tide of Sixth Avenue, her heart
+leaped up at sight of Miss Cora Kinealy, homeward bound on her smart
+tall heels that clicked, arm in arm with Mabel Runyan of the notions.
+Standing there with her folded newspaper hugged to her and the small
+hand-bag dangling, Stella Schump gazed after.
+
+It was not only the lack of references or even of experience that
+conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack
+of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a
+furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon
+the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were
+application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and,
+after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was
+still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of
+plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday half-holiday, rather than break
+into her last bill, she ate a three-cent frankfurter-sausage sandwich
+from off a not quite immaculate push-cart, leaning forward as she bit
+into it to save herself from the ooze of mustard. Again she had the
+sense of Cora Kinealy hurrying along the opposite side of the street on
+the tall heels that clicked. She let fall the bun into the gutter and
+stood there trembling.
+
+She obtained, one later afternoon, at the instance of a window-card, the
+swabbing of the tiled floor of an automobile show-room. She left before
+her first hour was completed, crying, her finger-tips stinging, two
+nails broken.
+
+Finally came that chimera of an hour when she laid down her last coin
+for the raisin rolls. She ate them on the cot-edge. And then, because
+her weekly dollar-and-twenty-five-cent room rent fell due that evening,
+she wrapped two fresh and self-laundered waists, some white but unlacy
+underwear, a mound of window-dried handkerchiefs, a little knitted
+shoulder-shawl so long worn by her mother, her tooth-brush and tube of
+paste, and all her sundry little articles no less indispensable, into a
+white-paper package. There were left a short woolen petticoat, too
+cumbersome to include, the small wooden rocker and lamp with the china
+shade which she had rather unexplainably held out from the dealer's
+inventory. She closed the door softly on them one evening and, parcel in
+hand, tiptoed down the stonily cold halls and out into a street of long,
+thin, high-stooped houses. Outside in the May evening it was as black,
+as softly deep, as plushy as a pansy. She walked swiftly into it as if
+with destination. But after five or six of the long cross-town blocks
+her feet began to lag. She stood for a protracted moment outside a
+drug-store window, watching the mechanical process of a pasteboard man
+stropping his razor; loitered to read the violent three-sheet outside a
+Third Avenue cinematograph. In the aura of white light a figure in a
+sweater and cap nudged up to her.
+
+"Lonesome?"
+
+She moved on.
+
+In Stuyvesant Square were a first few harbingers of summer scattered
+here and there--couples forcing the gladsome season of the dim park
+bench; solitary brooders who can sit so long, so droop-shouldered, and
+so deeply in silence. On one of these benches, beside a slim,
+scant-skirted, light-spatted silhouette, Stella Schump sat finally down.
+It was ten o'clock. There was a sense of panic, which she felt mostly at
+her throat, rising in her. Then she would force herself into a state of
+quiet, hand on bundle, nictitating, as it were--eyes opening, eyes
+closing. The figure beside her slid over a bit, spreading the tiny width
+of skirt as if to reserve the space between them.
+
+"Workin'?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Lord!" she said, indicating Second Avenue with a nod. "The lane's like
+a morgue to-night."
+
+"Cold, ain't it?" said Stella Schump, shivering with night damp.
+
+A figure with a tilted derby came sauntering toward them.
+
+"Lay off my territory. I seen him first."
+
+"Oh--sure--yes--all right."
+
+The place in between them was filled then, the tilted derby well forward
+and revealing a rear bulge of head. There was an indeterminate moment of
+silence broken by the slim-skirted silhouette.
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+Straightening, Miss Schump could hear more.
+
+"No place. Where you goin'?"
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Buy you a drink?"
+
+In the shaft of arc-light Miss Schump could see the little face framed
+in the wan curls lift and crinkle the nose to smile.
+
+"Come on."
+
+She watched them recede down the narrow asphalt of the parkway. At
+eleven o'clock, to lessen her stiffening of joints, she walked twice the
+circumference of the fenced-in inclosure, finally sitting again, this
+time beneath a gaunt oleander that was heavy with bud.
+
+"O God!" she kept repeating, her stress growing. "O God! God! God!"
+
+With the lateness, footfalls were growing more and more audible, the
+gong of a street-car sounding out three blocks down.
+
+"O my God!" And then in rapid succession, closing her eyes and digging
+her finger-nails into her palms: "Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!"
+
+She wanted and wanted to cry, but her throat would not let her, and so
+she sat and sat.
+
+There were still occasional figures moving through the little lanes and
+a couple or two deep in the obscurity of benches. After another while,
+at the remote end of her own bench, a figure sat down, lighting a pipe.
+She watched him pu-pu-pup. At half after eleven she slid along
+the bench.
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+He turned to look down.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+"No place."
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Pu-pu-pup."
+
+"I am."
+
+"Pu-pu-pup."
+
+She leaned around, trying to bring her face to front his and to lift her
+nose to a little wrinkly smile.
+
+"Aw, you!"
+
+"Go home and go to bed," he said. "A nice-appearin' girl like you ought
+to be ashamed."
+
+"I--ain't."
+
+"Run along."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You're barkin' up the wrong tree."
+
+She fell silent. A chill raced through her.
+
+"O God!" she began, under her breath. "O God! God!" Then: "Mamma! Mamma!
+Mamma!"
+
+"You _are_ cold," he said, reaching out to pinch her jacket sleeve.
+"That's a warm coat. Where do you live?"
+
+"Lemme alone," she said, staring out before her as if she were seeing
+the stripe and vine, stripe and vine.
+
+"You got the shivers," he said. "Better go home."
+
+"Lemme alone."
+
+"Ain't there no way you girls can learn to behave yourselves?
+Here"--digging down into his pocket--"here."
+
+"No."
+
+"Where you live?"
+
+"I dunno. I dunno."
+
+"You surely know where you live."
+
+She looked up at him in one of the rare moments of opening wide her
+eyes.
+
+"I tell you I dunno."
+
+"What's in there?"
+
+"My--my clothes."
+
+"Let's see."
+
+She plucked at the knot, drawing back for him to lean to see the top
+layer of neatly folded waist.
+
+"Don't," she said, withdrawing it quickly from his touch.
+
+"Why," he said, "you poor little kid! What's got you into this mess?"
+
+At that in his voice, such a quick, a thick, a hot layer of tears sprang
+to her eyes that she could not relax her throat for words.
+
+"What got you in?"
+
+"I--I--I dunno."
+
+"Aw, now, yes, you do know. Try to think--take your time--what got you
+in?"
+
+"I--I--can't--"
+
+"Yes, you can. Go on; I ain't lookin' at you."
+
+He turned off to an angle.
+
+Her first sob burst from her, tearing her throat and ending in a tremolo
+of moans in her throat.
+
+"Now, now," he said, still in profile; "that won't do. Not for a
+sensible little girl like you. Easy--easy--take your time--"
+
+"You see, mister--you see, it was my--my mamma--my beautiful, darling
+mamma--O God!--"
+
+"Yes, yes; it was your mamma--and then what?"
+
+"It was my mamma, my beautiful, darling mamma! What'll I do, mister? I
+can't make it up to her. No way--nohow. She's gone--she's gone--"
+
+"Easy--easy--try to keep easy."
+
+"I used to kiss her hands when they was embroiderin'. I used to grease
+'em for her all night when she screamed with the pain of 'em. I used to
+scream at night, too, when I was doin' my time--her there waitin'--she
+died alone--there waitin'--the letter they gave me the stamp for--I--I
+was crazy with scare when I wrote it--O God!--mamma--mamma--mamma!"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! 'Sh-h-h! Try to keep easy."
+
+"It was this way--O God, how was it?--it was this way--you see, me and
+my mamma and sometimes a friend--Cora Jones--no--no--no--Cora
+Kinealy--we used to sit in the lamplight--no--no--first, I was in the
+shoes--the children's shoes--they used to come in, little kiddies with
+their toes all kicked out wantin' new shoes--cute little baby-shoes that
+I loved to try on 'em. My friend--Cora--my friend--O God!--"
+
+"Now, now, like a good girl--go on."
+
+"My friend Cora--my darling little mamma--I never knew nothing about
+anything except me and my mamma, we--it worried her that I didn't have
+it like--like other girls--I--you see--you see, mister?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I see."
+
+Her voice, so jerked up with sobs, quieted down to a drone finally, to a
+low drone that talked on and on through an hour, through two. There were
+large, shining beads of tears flowing constantly from her cheeks, but
+she wiped at them unceasingly with her handkerchief and talked evenly
+through a new ease in her throat.
+
+"She died, mister," she ended up finally, turning her salt-bitten eyes
+full upon him; "she died of that letter written when I was so full of a
+scared craziness from bein' in--in that place--that terrible, terrible
+place--but she didn't die believin' me bad. I never seen her alive again
+to hear it from her, but there in her--her little coffin I--I seen it in
+her little face, all sunk, she didn't believe it--she didn't die
+thinkin' me bad. Mister, did she? Did she?"
+
+He did not answer, sitting there, drooped forward for so long that
+finally she put out her hand to touch his.
+
+"Did she?"
+
+He did not turn his face, but reached around, inclosing her wrist,
+pressing it, gripping it.
+
+"Did she, mister?"
+
+"No, no," he said, finally, "no, Stella; she didn't die thinkin' you
+bad."
+
+She sighed out, eyes closing, and her quivering lips falling quiet.
+
+"Do you think I'm bad, mister?"
+
+"No, Stella! No! No! No! My God, no!"
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Come."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I'm goin' to take you across the street there to the Young Women's
+Shelter Home for to-night. Just across there. See the sign? Don't be
+afraid, Stella. Please don't be afraid."
+
+"I ain't."
+
+He retied the white-paper package, tucking it up under one arm.
+
+"Come, Stella."
+
+She rose, swaying for the merest second. His arm shot out.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, steadying herself, smilingly, shamefacedly,
+but relaxing gratefully enough to the flung support.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Stella," he said. "I'm here. I'm here."
+
+His forearm where the cuff had ridden up bore a scar, as if molten lead
+had run a fiery, a dagger-shaped, an excoriating course.
+
+
+
+
+WHITE GOODS
+
+On a slope a white sprinkling of wood anemones lay spread like a patch
+of linen bleaching in the sun. From a valley a lark cut a swift diagonal
+upward with a coloratura burst of song. A stream slipped its ice and
+took up its murmur where it had left off. A truant squelched his toes in
+the warm mud and let it ooze luxuriantly over and between them.
+
+A mole stirred in its hole, and because spring will find a way, even
+down in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store, which is far below
+the level of the mole, Sadie Barnet, who had never seen a wood anemone
+and never sniffed of thaw or the wet wild smell of violets, felt the
+blood rise in her veins like sap, and across the aisle behind the
+white-goods counter Max Meltzer writhed in his woolens, and Sadie
+Barnet, presiding over a bin of specially priced mill-ends out mid-aisle
+between the white goods and the muslin underwear, leaned toward him, and
+her smile was as vivid as her lips.
+
+"Say, Max, guess why I think you're like a rubber band."
+
+Classic Delphi was never more ready with ambiguous retort.
+
+Behind a stack of Joy-of-the-Loom bed-sheets, Max Meltzer groped for
+oracular divination, and his heart-beats fluttered in his voice.
+
+"Like a rubber band?"
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Give up."
+
+"Aw, give a guess."
+
+"Well, I don't know, Miss Sadie, unless--unless it's because I'm stuck
+on you."
+
+Do not, ascetic reader, gag at the unsocratic plane. True, Max Meltzer
+had neither the grain nor the leisure of a sophist, a capacity for
+tenses or an appreciation of Kant. He had never built a bridge, led a
+Bible class, or attempted the first inch of the five-foot bookshelf. But
+on a two-figure salary he subscribed an annual donation to a
+skin-and-cancer hospital, wore non-reversible collars, and maintained a
+smile that turned upward like the corners of a cycle moon. Remember,
+then, ascetic reader, that a rich man once kicked a leper; Kant's own
+heart, that it might turn the world's heart outward, burst of pain; and
+in the granite canon of Wall Street, one smile in every three-score and
+ten turns upward.
+
+Sadie Barnet met Max Meltzer's cycle-moon smile with the blazing eyes of
+scorn, and her lips, quivering to a smile, met in a straight line that
+almost ironed out the curves.
+
+"'Cause you're stuck on me! That's a swell guess. Gee! you're as funny
+as a sob, you are."
+
+The words scuttered from her lips like sharp hailstones and she glanced
+at him sidewise over a hump of uplifted shoulder and down the length of
+one akimbo arm.
+
+"'Cause you're stuck on me! Huh!"
+
+Max Meltzer leaned across a counter display of fringed breakfast
+napkins.
+
+"Ain't that a good reason, Miss Sadie? It's a true one."
+
+"You're one swell little guesser, you are _not_. You couldn't get inside
+a riddle with a can-opener. 'Cause you're stuck on me! Gee!"
+
+"Well, I am."
+
+"I didn't ask you why you was like a bottle of glue. I asked you why you
+was like a rubber band."
+
+"Aw, I give up, Miss Sadie."
+
+"'Cause you're so stretchy, see? 'Cause you're so stretchy you'll yawn
+your arm off if you don't watch it."
+
+Max Meltzer collapsed in an attitude of mock prostration against a
+stock-shelf.
+
+"Gee! that must have been cracked before the first nut."
+
+"Smarty!"
+
+Across the specially priced mill-ends she flashed the full line of her
+teeth, and with an intensity his features ill concealed he noted how
+sweet her throat as it arched.
+
+"It's the spring fever gets inside of me and makes me so stretchy, Miss
+Sadie. It's a good thing trade is slow down here in the basement to-day,
+because it's the same with me every year; the Saturday before
+spring-opening week I just get to feeling like all outdoors."
+
+"Wait till you see me with a new red-satin bow stuck on my last
+summer's shape. Dee Dee's got to lend me the price for two yards of
+three-inch red-satin ribbon for my spring opening."
+
+His breath rose in his throat.
+
+"I bet you look swell in red, Miss Sadie. But a girl like you looks
+swell in anything."
+
+"Red's my color. Dee Dee says my mamma was a gay one, too, when it came
+to color. Had to have a red bow pinned somewheres around all the months
+she was in bed and--and up to the very night she died. Gimme red every
+time. Dee Dee's the one that's always kicking against red; she says I
+got too flashy taste."
+
+"Say, if she keeps bossing and bossing at you, what do you keep on
+living with her for?"
+
+"Wouldn't you live with your own mother's sister if she raised you from
+a kid? What am I going to do, put her in cold storage, now that her eyes
+are going back on her? Up in the ribbons she can't hardly keep her
+colors graduated no more, that's how blind she's getting. Only yesterday
+a dame brought back some lavender ribbon and wiped up the whole
+department with Dee Dee for putting it over on her as blue. What am I
+going to do?"
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, I didn't know that she was your aunt and that her
+eyes was bad. I've seen you two together a lot and noticed her thick
+lenses, but I just didn't think."
+
+"Well, now I'm telling you."
+
+"I just thought she was some old girl up in the ribbons you was living
+with for company. Honest, I didn't know she had bad eyes. Gee!"
+
+"No, they ain't bad. Only she's so blind she reads her paper upside down
+and gets sore if you tell her about it."
+
+"And me thinking she was nothing but a near-sighted old grouch with a
+name like a sparrow."
+
+Miss Barnet laughed with an upward trill.
+
+"Dee Dee ain't her real name. When I was a kid and she took me to raise,
+that's the way I used to pronounce Aunt Edith. Gee! you don't think Dee
+Dee was the name they sprinkled on her when they christened her,
+did you?"
+
+Max Meltzer leaned to the breath of her laughter as if he would fill his
+lungs with it.
+
+"Gee! but you're a cute little lady when you laugh like that."
+
+"Say, and ain't you the freshie! Just because you're going to be
+promoted to buyer for your department won't get your picture in the
+Sunday supplement. No white-goods buyer I know of ever had to build
+white marble libraries or present a bread-line to the city to get rid of
+his pin-money."
+
+"I bet you was a cute little black-eyed, red-cheeked little youngster,
+alrighty."
+
+"I wasn't so worse. Like I tell Dee Dee, the way she's held me down and
+indoors evenings, it's a wonder a kid like me grew up with any pep
+at all."
+
+"Poor little lady!"
+
+"It's like Dee Dee says, though. I never was cut out for life behind the
+counter. Gee! I'd soak my pillow in gasolene every night in the week if
+it would make me dream I'm automobiling."
+
+"Poor little lady!"
+
+"Say, ain't it hot? With the Opening on Monday, they better get the fans
+working. Last year three girls keeled. Honest, sometimes I think I'd
+rather spend the summer under the daisies out on the hill than down here
+in this basement."
+
+"Don't I wish I had an auto to take you spinning in to-night."
+
+"You ought to see the flier a friend of mine has got. A Mercury Six with
+a limousine top like a grand-opera box."
+
+"Your--your--friend?"
+
+"Yes. He's that slick-looking, little fat fellow that's a cousin to
+Mamie Grant up in the ready-to-wears. He was down here talking to me the
+other day."
+
+"I seen him."
+
+"Gee! you ought to feel yourself in his Mercury Six. 'Lemme die,' I says
+to him the last time I was in it. 'Just lemme close my eyes right in
+here and die happy,' I says, cuddled up in the red-leather seat with a
+cornucopia of daffodils tickling my nose and a street-car full of
+strap-hangers riding along-side of us."
+
+"I--I guess if you got swell friends like that, a boat excursion down
+the river 'ain't got much of a sound for you."
+
+"He says he's got a launch in summer--"
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, I--I just been trying for the better part of two
+weeks to ask permission if I could come and call on you some evening,
+Miss Sadie, but--"
+
+"Whoops! ain't he the daredevil!"
+
+"The first boat of the season, Miss Sadie, a swell new one they call the
+_White Gull_, goes down to Coney to-night, and, it being real
+springtime, and you feeling kind of full of it, I thought maybe, it
+being the first boat of the season, maybe you would take a river ride
+this grand April night, Miss Sadie."
+
+Her glance slanted toward him, full of quirks.
+
+"My aunt Dee Dee, Mr. Meltzer, she's right strict with me. She don't
+think I ought to keep company with any boys that don't come to see me
+first at my house."
+
+"I know it, Miss Sadie; that's the right way to do it, but I think I can
+get around her all right. Wasn't she down here in the basement the day I
+first heard about my promotion, and didn't she give me the glad hand and
+seem right friendly to me? I can get around her all right, Miss Sadie. I
+can always tell if a person likes me or not."
+
+"Anyways, if her eyes ain't too bad, Mr. Meltzer, I got a date with my
+friend if his car is out of the shop from having the limousine top taken
+off. We--we're going for a little spin."
+
+A quick red belied her insouciance and she made a little foray into the
+bin of mill-ends.
+
+"Gee! if I've made three sales this livelong day I don't know nothing
+about two of them."
+
+Max Meltzer met her dancing gaze, pinioning it with his own quiet eyes.
+
+"You're right to pick out the lucky fellows who can buy a good time. A
+little girl like you ought to have every enjoyment there is. If I could
+give it to you, do you think I would let the other fellows beat me to
+it? The best ain't none too good for a little lady like you."
+
+"Aw, Mr. Meltzer!" Her bosom filled and waned. "Aw, Mr. Meltzer!"
+
+"I mean it."
+
+An electric bell grilled through his words. Miss Barnet sprang reflexly
+from the harness of an eight-hour day.
+
+"Aw, looka, and I wanted to sneak up before closing and get Dee Dee to
+snip me two yards of red satin, and she won't cut an inch after the
+bell. Ain't that luck for you? Ain't that luck?"
+
+Her lips drew to a pout.
+
+"Lemme get it for you, Miss Sadie. I know a girl up in the ribbons--"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Meltzer. I--I got to charge it to Dee Dee, and, anyways,
+she gets mad like anything if I keep her waiting. I gotta go. 'Night,
+Mr. Meltzer! 'Night!"
+
+She was off through the maze of the emptying store, in the very act of
+pinning on her little hat with its jaunty imitation fur pompon, and he
+breathed in as she passed, as if of the perfume of her personality.
+
+At the ribbon counter on the main floor the last of a streamlet of
+outgoing women detached herself from the file as Miss Barnet ascended
+the staircase.
+
+"Hurry up, Sadie."
+
+"Dee Dee! How'd you girls up here get on your duds so soon? I thought
+maybe if I'd hurry upstairs you--you'd find time to cut me a two-yard
+piece of three-inch red satin for my hat, Dee Dee--to-morrow being
+Sunday. Two yards, Dee Dee, and that'll make two-sixty-nine I owe you.
+Aw, Dee Dee, it won't take a minute, to-morrow Sunday and all! Aw,
+Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Barnet slid ingratiating fingers into the curve of the older
+woman's arm; her voice was smooth as salve.
+
+"Aw, Dee Dee, who ever heard of wearing fur on a hat in April? I gotta
+stick a red bow on my last summer's sailor, Dee Dee."
+
+Miss Edith Worte stiffened so that the muscles sprang out in the crook
+of her arm and the cords in her long, yellowing neck. Years had dried on
+her face, leaving ravages, and through her high-power spectacles her
+pale eyes might have been staring through film and straining to see.
+
+"Please, Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Barnet held backward, a little singsong note of appeal running
+through her voice.
+
+Miss Worte jerked forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of
+cold dish-water, showed through it. Dusk in the city comes sadly,
+crowding into narrow streets and riddled with an immediate quick-shot of
+electric bulbs.
+
+"'Ain't you got no sense a-tall? 'Ain't you got no sense in that curly
+head of yourn but ruination notions?"
+
+"Aw, Dee Dee!"
+
+They were in the flood tide which bursts through the dam at six o'clock
+like a human torrent flooding the streets, then spreading, thinning, and
+finally seeping into homes, hall bedrooms, and Harlem flats.
+
+Miss Edith Worte turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and
+against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts around
+her thin legs.
+
+"Watch out, Dee Dee! Step down; there's a curb."
+
+"I don't need you. It's lots you care if I go blind on the spot."
+
+"Dee Dee!"
+
+"God! if I didn't have nothing to worry me but red ribbons! I told the
+doctor to-day while he was putting the drops in my eyes, that if he'd
+let me go blind I--I--"
+
+"Now, now, Dee Dee! Ain't you seeing better these last few days?"
+
+"If you had heard what the doctor told me to-day when he put the drops
+in my eyes you'd have something to think about besides red ribbon,
+alrighty."
+
+"I forgot, Dee Dee, to-day was your eye-doctor day. He's always scarin'
+you up. Just don't pay no attention. I forgot it was your day."
+
+"Sure you forgot. But you won't forget if I wake up alone in the dark
+some day."
+
+"Dee Dee!"
+
+"You won't forget then. You won't forget to nag me even then for duds to
+go automobiling with fly men that can't bring you no good."
+
+"Dee Dee, I 'ain't been but one night this week. I been saving up all
+my nights for--for to-night."
+
+"To-night. Say, I can't keep you from going to the devil on skates if--"
+
+"It's only the second time this week, Dee Dee, and I--I promised. He'll
+have the limousine top off to-night--and feel, it is just like summer. A
+girl's gotta have a little something once in a while."
+
+"What do I gotta have? What do I gotta have but slave and work?"
+
+"It's different with you, Dee Dee. You're older even than my mamma was,
+and didn't you say when you and her was girls together there wasn't a
+livelier two sisters? Now didn't you, Dee Dee?"
+
+"In a respectable way, yes. But there wasn't the oily-mouthed,
+bald-headed divorced man alive, with little rat eyes and ugly lips, who
+could have took me or your mamma out auto-riding before or after dark.
+We was working-girls, too, but there wasn't a man didn't take off his
+hat to us, even if he was bald-headed and it was twenty below zero."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Yes, 'aw'! You keep running around with the kind of men that don't look
+at a girl unless she's served up with rum-sauce and see where it lands
+you. Just keep running if you want to, but my money don't buy you no red
+ribbons to help to drive you to the devil!"
+
+"The way you keep fussing at me, when I don't even go to dances like the
+other girls! I--sometimes I just wish I was dead. The way I got to
+watch the clock like it was a taximeter the whole time I'm out
+anywheres. It's the limit. Even Max Meltzer gimme the laugh to-day."
+
+"You'd never hear me say watch the clock if you'd keep company with a
+boy like Max Meltzer. A straight, clean boy with honest intentions by a
+girl lookin' right out of his face. You let a boy like Max Meltzer begin
+to keep steady with you and see what I say. You don't see no yellow
+streak in his face; he's as white as the goods he sells."
+
+"I know. I know. You think now because he's going to be made buyer for
+the white goods in September he's the whole show. Gee! nowadays that
+ain't so muchy much for a fellow to be."
+
+"No, I think the kind of fellows that fresh Mamie Grant gets you
+acquainted with are muchy much. I'm strong for the old rat-eyed sports
+like Jerry Beck, that 'ain't got a honest thought in his head. I bet he
+gives you the creeps, too, only you're the kind of a girl, God help you,
+that's so crazy for luxury you could forget the devil had horns if he
+hid 'em under a automobile cap."
+
+"Sure I am. I 'ain't seen nothing but slaving and drudging and pinching
+all my life, while other girls are strutting the Avenue in their furs
+and sleeping mornings as long as they want under eider-down quilts.
+Sure, when a man like Jerry Beck comes along with a carriage-check
+instead of a Subway-ticket I can thaw up to him like a water-ice, and I
+ain't ashamed of it, neither."
+
+They turned into a narrow aisle of street lined with unbroken rows of
+steep, narrow-faced houses. Miss Worte withdrew her arm sharply and
+plunged ahead, her lips wry and on the verge of tremoling.
+
+"When a girl gets twenty, like you, it ain't none of my put-in no more.
+Only I hope to God your mother up there is witness that if ever a woman
+slaved to keep a girl straight and done her duty by her it was me. That
+man 'ain't got no good intentions by--"
+
+"Oh, ain't you--ain't you a mean-thinking thing, ain't you? What kind of
+a girl do you think I am? If he didn't have the right intentions by me
+do you think--"
+
+"Oh, I guess he'll marry you if he can't get you no other way. Them kind
+always do if they can't help themselves. A divorced old guy like him,
+with a couple of kids and his mean little eyes, knows he's got to pay up
+if he wants a young girl like you. Oh, I--Ouch--oh--oh!"
+
+"Dee Dee, take my arm. That was only an ashcan you bumped into. It's the
+drops he puts in your eyes makes 'em so bad to-night, I guess. Go on,
+take my arm, Dee Dee. Here we are home. Lemme lead you up-stairs. It's
+nothing but the drops, Dee Dee."
+
+They turned in and up and through a foggy length of long hallway. Spring
+had not entered here. At the top of a second flight of stairs a slavey
+sat back on her heels and twisted a dribble of gray water from her cloth
+into her bucket. At the last and third landing an empty coal-scuttle
+stood just outside a door as if nosing for entrance.
+
+"Watch out, Dee Dee, the scuttle. Lemme go in first. Gee! it's cold
+indoors and warm out, ain't it? Wait till I light up. There!"
+
+"Lemme alone. I can see."
+
+An immemorial federation of landladies has combined against Hestia to
+preserve the musty traditions of the furnished room. Love in a cottage
+is fostered by subdivision promoters and practised by commuters on a
+five-hundred-dollars-down, monthly-payment basis. Marble halls have been
+celebrated in song, but the furnished room we have with us always at
+three cents per agate line.
+
+You with your feet on your library fender, stupefied with contentment
+and your soles scorching, your heart is not black; it is only fat. How
+can it know the lean formality of the furnished room? Your little
+stenographer, who must wear a smile and fluted collars on eight dollars
+a week, knows it; the book agent at your door, who earns eighteen cents
+on each Life of Lincoln, knows it. Chambermaids know it when they knock
+thrice and only the faint and nauseous fumes of escaping gas answer them
+through the plugged keyhole. Coroners know it.
+
+Sadie Barnet and Edith Worte knew it, too, and put out a hand here and
+there to allay it. A comforting spread of gay chintz covered the sag in
+their white iron bed; a photograph or two stuck upright between the
+dresser mirror and its frame, and tacked full flare against the wall was
+a Japanese fan, autographed many times over with the gay personnel of
+the Titanic Store's annual picnic.
+
+"Gee! Dee Dee, six-twenty already! I got to hurry. Unhook me while I
+sew in this ruching."
+
+"Going for supper?"
+
+"Yeh. He invited me. This is cottage-pudding night; tell old lady Finch
+when I ain't home for supper you got two desserts coming to you."
+
+"I don't want no supper."
+
+"Aw, now, Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Worte dropped her dark cape from her shoulders, hung it with her
+hat on a door peg, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
+
+"God! my feet!"
+
+"Soak 'em."
+
+Miss Barnet peeled off her shirt-waist. Her bosom, strong and _flat_ as
+a boy's, rose white from her cheaply dainty under-bodice; at her
+shoulders the flesh began to deepen, and her arms were round and full
+of curves.
+
+"Here, Dee Dee, I'm so nervous when I hurry. You sew in this ruche; you
+got time before the supper-bell. See, right along the edge like that."
+
+Miss Worte aimed for the eye of the needle, moistening the end of the
+thread with her tongue and her fluttering fingers close to her eyes.
+
+"God! I--I just 'ain't got the eyes no more. I can't see, Sadie; I can't
+find the needle."
+
+Sadie Barnet paused in the act of brushing out the cloud of her dark
+hair, and with a strong young gesture ran the thread through the needle,
+knotting its end with a quirk of thumb and forefinger.
+
+"It's the drops, Dee Dee, and this gaslight, all blurry from the
+curling-iron in the flame, makes you see bad."
+
+Miss Worte nodded and closed her eyes as if she would press back the
+tears and let them drip inward.
+
+"Yeh, I know. I know."
+
+"Sure! Here, lemme do it, Dee Dee. I won't stay out late, dearie, if
+your eyes are bad. We're only going out for a little spin."
+
+Miss Worte lay back on the chintz bedspread and turned her face to the
+wall.
+
+"I should worry if you come home or if you don't--all the comfort you
+are to me."
+
+"You say that to me many more times and you watch and see what I do; you
+watch and see."
+
+"The sooner the better."
+
+In the act of fluting the soft ruche about her neck, so that her fresh
+little face rose like a bud from its calyx, Miss Barnet turned to the
+full length of back which faced her from the bed.
+
+"That's just the way I feel about it--the sooner the better."
+
+"Then we think alike."
+
+"You 'ain't been such a holy saint to me that I got to pay up to you for
+it all my life."
+
+"That's the thanks I get."
+
+"You only raised me because you had to. I been working for my own living
+ever since I was so little I had to He to the inspectors about my age."
+
+"Except what you begged out of my wages."
+
+"I been as much to you as you been to me and--and I don't have to stand
+this no longer. Sure I can get out and--and the sooner the better. I'm
+sick of getting down on my knees to you every time I wanna squeeze a
+little good time out of life. I'm tired paying up for the few dollars
+you gimme out of your envelop. If I had any sense I--I wouldn't never
+take it from you, nohow, the way you throw it up to me all the time. The
+sooner the better is what I say, too; the sooner the better."
+
+"That's the thanks I get; that's the--"
+
+"Aw, I know all that line of talk by heart, so you don't need to ram it
+down me. You gotta quit insinuating about my ways to me. I'm as straight
+as you are and--"
+
+"You--you--take off that ivory-hand breast-pin; that ain't yours."
+
+"Sure I'll take it off, and this ruche you gimme the money to buy, and
+this red bracelet you gimme, and--and every old thing you ever gimme.
+Sure I'll take 'em all off. I wish I could take off these gray-top shoes
+you paid a dollar toward, and I would, too, if I didn't have to go
+barefoot. It's the last time I borrow from--"
+
+"Aw, you commenced that line of talk when you was ten."
+
+"I mean it."
+
+"Well, if you do, take off them gloves that I bought for myself and you
+begged right off my hands. Just take 'em off and go barehanded with your
+little-headed friend; maybe he can buy--"
+
+"You--Oh, I--I wish I was dead! I--I'll go barehanded to a snowball
+feast rather than wear your duds. There's your old gloves--there!"
+
+Tears were streaming and leaving their ravages on the smooth surface of
+her cheeks.
+
+"I just wish I--I was dead."
+
+"Aw, no, you don't! There's him now, with a horn on his auto that makes
+a noise like the devil yelling! There's your little rat-eyed, low-lived
+fellow, now. You don't wish you was dead now, do you? Go to him and his
+two divorces and his little roundhead. That's where you belong; that's
+where girls on the road to the devil belong--with them kind. There he is
+now, waiting to ride you to the devil. He don't need to honk-honk so
+loud; he knows you're ready and waiting for him."
+
+Miss Barnet fastened on her little hat with fingers that fumbled.
+
+"Gimme--the key."
+
+"Aw, no, you don't. When you come home tonight you knock; no more
+tiptoe, night-key business like last time. I knew you was lying to me
+about the clock."
+
+"You gimme that key. I don't want you to have to get up, with all your
+kicking, to open the door for me. You gimme the key."
+
+"If you wanna get in this room when you come home to-night, you knock
+like any self-respecting girl ain't afraid to do."
+
+"You--oh--you!" With a shivering intake of breath Miss Barnet flung wide
+the door, slamming it after her until the windows and the blue-glass
+vase on the mantelpiece and Miss Worte, stretched full length on the
+bed, shivered.
+
+Two flights down she flung open the front door. There came from the
+curb the bleat of a siren, wild for speed.
+
+Stars had come out, a fine powdering of them, and the moist evening
+atmosphere was sweet, even heavy. She stood for a moment in the
+embrasure of the door, scenting.
+
+"Do I need my heavy coat, Jerry?"
+
+The dim figure in the tonneau, with his arms flung out their length
+across the back of the seat, moved from the center to the side.
+
+"No, you don't. Hurry up! I'll keep you warm if you need a coat. Climb
+in here right next to me, Peachy. Gimme that robe from the front
+there, George.
+
+"Now didn't I say I was going to keep you warm? Quit your squirming,
+Touchy. I won't bite. Ready, George. Up to the Palisade Inn, and let out
+some miles there."
+
+"Gee! Jerry, you got the limousine top off. Ain't this swell for
+summer?"
+
+Mr. Jerome Beck settled back in the roomy embrasure of the seat and
+exhaled loudly, his shoulder and shoe touching hers.
+
+She settled herself out of their range.
+
+"Now, now, snuggle up a little, Peachy."
+
+She shifted back to her first position.
+
+"That's better."
+
+"Ain't it a swell night?"
+
+"Now we're comfy--eh?"
+
+They were nosing through a snarl of traffic and over streets wet and
+slimy with thaw. Men with overcoats flung over their arms side-stepped
+the snout of the car. Delicatessen and candy-shop doors stood wide
+open. Children shrilled in the grim shadows of thousand-tenant
+tenement-houses.
+
+"Well, Peachy, how are you? Peachy is just the name for you, eh? 'Cause
+I'd like to take a bite right out of you--eh, Peachy? How are you?"
+
+"Fine and--and dandy."
+
+"Look at me."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Look at me, I say, you pretty little peach, with them devilish black
+eyes of yours and them lips that's got a cherry on 'em."
+
+She met his gaze with an uncertain smile trembling on her lips.
+
+"Honest, you're the limit."
+
+"What's your eyes red for?"
+
+"They--they ain't."
+
+"Cryin'?"
+
+"Like fun."
+
+"You know what I'd do if I thought you'd been crying? I'd just kiss them
+tears right away."
+
+"Yes, you would _not_."
+
+"Little devil!"
+
+"Quit calling me that." But she colored as if his tribute had been a
+sheath of lilies.
+
+They veered a corner sharply, skidding on the wet asphalt and all but
+grazing the rear wheels of a recreant taxicab.
+
+"Gad, George! you black devil you, why don't you watch out what you're
+doing?"
+
+"But, suh, I--"
+
+"None of your black back-talk."
+
+"Jerry!" She was shivering, and a veil of tears formed over her hot,
+mortified eyes. "Gee! what are you made of? You seen he couldn't help it
+when that taxi turned into us so sudden."
+
+He relaxed against her. "Aw, did I scare the little Peachy? That's the
+way they gotta be handled. I ain't ready by a long shot to let a black
+devil spill my brains."
+
+"'Shh-h. He couldn't--"
+
+"Sure he could, if he watched. He's a bargain I picked up cheap,
+anyways, 'cause he's lame and can't hold down heavy work. And bargains
+don't always pay. But I'll break his black back for him if--Aw, now,
+now, did I scare the little peach? Gee! I couldn't do nothing but kill
+_you_ with kindness if you was driving for me. I'd just let you run me
+right off this road into the Hudson Ocean if you was driving for me."
+
+They were out toward the frayed edge of the city, where great stretches
+of sign-plastered vacant lots began to yawn between isolated patches of
+buildings and the river ran close enough alongside of them to reflect
+their leftward lights. She smiled, but as if her lips were bruised.
+
+"It ain't none of my put-in, but he couldn't help it, and I hate for you
+to yell at anybody like that, Jerry."
+
+"Aw, aw, did I scare the little Peachy? Watch me show the little Tootsie
+how nice I can be when I want to--Aw--aw!"
+
+"Quit."
+
+She blinked back the ever-recurring tears.
+
+"All tired out, too; all tired out. Wait till you see what I'm going to
+buy you to-night. A great big beefsteak with mushrooms as big as dollars
+and piping-hot German fried potatoes and onions. M-m-m-m! And more
+bubbles than you can wink your eye at. Aw--aw, such poor cold little
+hands, and no gloves for such cold little hands! Here, lemme warm 'em.
+Wouldn't I just love to wrap a little Peachy like you up in a great big
+fur coat and put them little cold hands in a great big muff and hang
+some great big headlight earrings in them little bittsie ears. Wouldn't
+I, though. M-m-m-m! Poor cold little hands!"
+
+Her wraith of a smile dissolved in a spurt of hot tears which flowed
+over her words.
+
+"Gee! Ain't I the nut to--to cry? I--I'll be all right in a minute."
+
+"I knew when I seen them red eyes the little Peachy wasn't up to snuff,
+and her cute little devilishlike ways. What's hurting you, Tootsie? Been
+bounced? You should worry. I'm going to steal you out of that cellar,
+anyways. Been bounced?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"The old hag 'ain't been making it hot for you, has she?"
+
+"Sh-she--"
+
+"Gad! that old hag gets my fur up. I had a mother-in-law once tried them
+tricks on me till I learned her they wouldn't work. But the old hag
+of yourn--"
+
+"It's her eyes; the doctor must have scared her up again to-day. When
+she gets scared like that about 'em she acts up so, honest, sometimes
+I--I just wish I was dead. She don't think a girl oughtta have no life."
+
+"Forget it. Just you wait. She's going to wake up some morning soon and
+find a little surprise party for herself. I know just how to handle an
+old bird like her."
+
+"Sometimes she's just so good to me, and then again, when she gets sore
+like to-night, and with her nagging and fussing at me, I don't care if
+she is my aunt, I just _hate_ her."
+
+"We're going to give her a little surprise party." Beneath the lap robe
+his hand slid toward hers. She could feel the movement of the arm that
+directed it and her own shrank away.
+
+"But ain't I the limit, Jerry, airing my troubles to you, like you was a
+policeman."
+
+"Now, now--"
+
+"Quit! Leggo my hand."
+
+They were spinning noiselessly along a road that curved for the moment
+away from the river into the velvet shadows of trees. He leaned forward
+suddenly, enveloping her.
+
+"I got it. Why don't you lemme kidnap you, kiddo?"
+
+"What--"
+
+"Lemme kidnap you to-night and give the old hag the surprise of her life
+when she wakes up and finds you stolen. I'm some little kidnapper when
+it comes to kidnapping, I am, kiddo. Say, wouldn't I like to take you
+riding all wrapped up in a fur coat with nothing but your cute little
+face sticking out."
+
+"Aw, you're just fooling me."
+
+"Fooling! Lemme prove it, to-night. Lemme kidnap you this very night.
+I--"
+
+She withdrew stiff-backed against his embrace.
+
+"Is--is that what you mean by--by kidnapping me?"
+
+"Sure. There ain't nothing I'd rather do. Are you on, Peaches? A
+sensible little queen like you knows which side her bread is buttered
+on. There ain't nothing I want more than to see you all bundled up in a
+fur coat with--headlights in your little bittsie pink ears."
+
+She sprang the width of the seat from him.
+
+"You--What kind of a girl do you think I am? O God! What kind of a girl
+does he think I am? Take me home--take me--What kind of a girl do you
+think I am?"
+
+He leaned toward her with a quick readjustment of tone.
+
+"Just what I said, Peachy. What I meant was I'd marry you to-night if we
+could get a license. I'd just kidnap you to-night if--if we could
+get one."
+
+"You--you didn't mean that."
+
+"Sure I did, Peachy. Say, with a little girl of my own I ain't one of
+them guys that you think I am. Ain't you ashamed of yourself,
+Peachy--now ain't you?"
+
+The color flowed back into her face and her lips parted.
+
+"Jerry--Only a girl like me's got to be careful--that was all I meant,
+Jerry. Jerry!"
+
+He scooped her in his short arms and kissed her lips, with her small
+face crumpled up against his shoulder, and she lay quiescent enough in
+his embrace. Wind sang in her ears as they rushed swiftly and surely
+along the oiled road, but the two small fists she pressed against his
+coat lapels did not relax.
+
+"Aw, now, Peachy, you mustn't treat a fellow cold no more! Ain't I going
+to marry you? Ain't I going to set you up right in my house out in
+Newton Heights? Ain't I going to give you a swell ten-room house? Ain't
+you going to live right in the house with my girl, and ain't she going
+to have you for a little stepmother?"
+
+"Jerry, the--the little girl. I wonder if she wants--"
+
+"Sure she does. Her mother gets her every other month. I'd let her go
+for good if you don't want her, except it would do her mother too much
+good. The courts give her to me every other month and I'll have her down
+to the last minute of the last hour or bust."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+"That's what I gotta keep up the house out there for. The court says I
+gotta give her a home, and that's why I want a little queen like you in
+it. Gad! Won't her mother throw a red-headed fit when she sees the
+little queen I picked! Gad!"
+
+"Oh, Jerry, her your first wife and all! Won't it seem funny my going in
+her house and--and living with her kid."
+
+"Funny nothing. Cloonan won't think it's funny when I tell her she's
+finished running my house for me. Funny nothing. To-morrow's Sunday and
+I'm going to take you out in the afternoon and show you the place, and
+Monday, instead of going to your bargain bin, we're going down for a
+license, and you kiss the old hag good-by for me, too. Eh, how's that
+for one day's work?"
+
+"Gee! and--and--Monday the spring opening and me not there! Jerry, I--I
+can't get over me being a lady in my own house. Me! Me that hates
+ugliness and ugly clothes and ugly living so. Me that hates street-cars
+and always even hated boat excursions 'cause they was poor folks'
+pleasures. Me a lady in my own house. Oh, Jerry!"
+
+She quivered in his arms and he kissed her again with his moist lips
+pressed flat against hers.
+
+"Ten rooms, Peachy--that's the way I do things."
+
+They were curving up a gravel way, and through the lacy foliage of
+spring lights gleamed, and there came the remoter strains of
+syncopated music.
+
+She sat up and brushed back her hair.
+
+"Is this the place?"
+
+"Right-o! Now for that steak smothered in mushrooms, and, gad! I could
+manage a sweetbread salad on the side if you asked me right hard."
+
+They drew up in the flood-light of the entrance.
+
+"'Ain't I told you not to open the door for me, George? I don't need no
+black hand reaching back here to turn the handle for me. That don't make
+up for bad driving. Black hands off."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+They alighted with an uncramping and unbending of limbs.
+
+"How'd some Lynnhavens taste to you for a starter, Peachy?"
+
+"Fine, whatever they are."
+
+A liveried attendant bowed them up the steps.
+
+A woman in blue velvet, her white arms bare to the shoulder and stars in
+her hair, paused in the doorway to drop her cloak. Her heavy perfume
+drifted out to meet them.
+
+Sadie Barnet's clutch of her companion's arm quickened and her thoughts
+ran forward.
+
+"Jerry--gee! wouldn't I look swell in--in a dress like that? Gee! Jerry,
+stars and all!"
+
+The cords in the muscles of his arm rose under her fingers.
+
+"Them ain't one-two-three-six to the duds I'm going to hang on you. I
+know her; she's an old-timer. Them duds ain't one-two-three-six."
+
+"Gee--Jerry!"
+
+In the heart of a silence as deep as a bottomless pool, with the black
+hours that tiptoe on the heels of midnight shrouding her like a nun's
+wimple, limbs trembling and her hands reluctant, Sadie Barnet knocked
+lightly at her door, once, twice, thrice, and between each rap her heart
+beat with twice its tempo against her breast.
+
+Then her stealthy hand turned the white china knob and released it so
+that it sprang backward with a click.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Me, Dee Dee."
+
+Her voice was swathed in a whisper.
+
+She could hear the plong of the bedspring, the patter of bare feet
+across the floor; feel the slight aperture of the opening door. She
+oozed through the slit.
+
+"All right, Dee Dee."
+
+"God! I--I must have been sound asleep. What time is it?"
+
+"It isn't late, Dee Dee."
+
+"Light the gas."
+
+"I--I can undress in the dark."
+
+"Light the gas."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Light it, I say."
+
+"It's lit, Dee Dee."
+
+The figure in the center of the room, in her high-necked, long-sleeved
+nightdress, her sparse hair drawn with unpleasant tension from her brow,
+her pale eyes wide, moved forward a step, one bare foot, calloused even
+across the instep, extended.
+
+"Lit?"
+
+"Dee Dee, what's the matter?"
+
+"Gimme--my glasses."
+
+She took them from Miss Barnet's trembling ringers and curved them about
+her ears.
+
+"Quit your nonsense now and light the gas. I ain't in no humor for
+foolin'. Quit waving that little spark in front of me. Light the gas. I
+ain't going to look at the clock. I'm done worrying about your
+carryings-on. I'm done. Light the gas, Sadie, there's a good girl.
+Light the gas."
+
+"Dee Dee! My God! Dee Dee, I--I tell you it's lit--big."
+
+"There's a good girl, Sadie. Don't fool your old aunt."
+
+"See, dearie, I ain't fooling. See, the gas-jet here beside the dresser.
+Look--I can't turn it no higher. Hear it sing and splutter. You ain't
+awake good yet, Dee Dee."
+
+Silence--the ear-splitting silence that all in its brief moment is
+crammed with years and years upon years. A cold gray wash seemed
+suddenly to flow over Miss Worte's face.
+
+"Put my finger next to the gas flame. You--you're lying to me to--to
+fool your old aunt. Lemme feel my finger get burnt."
+
+They moved, these two, across the floor, their blanched faces straining
+ahead. With the sudden sting of heat finally across her palm, reddening
+it, Miss Worte flung wide her arms and her head backward, and her voice
+tore out without restraint.
+
+"God! God! God!" And she fell to trembling so that her knees gave way
+under her and she crouched on the floor with her face bared to the
+ceiling, rocking herself back and forth, beating her fists against her
+flat breasts.
+
+"God! God! God!"
+
+"Dee Dee!--Dee Dee! my darling! my darling!"
+
+"O God! O God! O God!"
+
+"Dee Dee darling, it ain't nothing! A little too much strain, that's
+all. 'Shh-h-h! Lemme bathe them. 'Shh-h-h, my darling. Oh, my God!
+darling! 'Shh-h-h!"
+
+"Lemme go! Lemme go! He told me to-day it would come like this! Only he
+didn't say how soon. Not how soon. I'm done for, I tell you! I'm done!
+Kill me, Sadie; if you love me, kill me! He told me and I wouldn't
+believe it! Kill me, girl, and put me out of it! I can't breathe in the
+dark! I can't! I can't! I can't live in the dark with my eyes open! Kill
+me, girl, and put me out of it--kill me! Kill me!"
+
+"Dee Dee, my darling, ain't I right here with you? Didn't you always
+say, darling, when it came you--you'd face it?"
+
+Like St. Cecilia, who could not die, she crouched, and the curve of her
+back rose and fell.
+
+"O God! Oh--"
+
+"Dee Dee darling, try not to holler out so! Maybe it ain't for--for
+good. Aw, darling, keep your head down here next to me! Feel how close I
+am, Dee Dee, right here next to you. 'Shh-h-h! O God! Dee Dee darling,
+you'll kill yourself going on like that! Don't pull at your hair,
+darling--don't! Oh, my God, don't!"
+
+"I'm done! Kill me! Kill me! Don't make me live in the dark with my eyes
+open--don't! There's a good girl, Sadie. Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+From the room adjoining came a rattling at the barred door between.
+
+"Cut it, in there! This ain't no barroom. Go tell your D. T.'s to a
+policeman."
+
+They crouched closer and trembling.
+
+"'Shh-h-h! Dee Dee, darling, try to be easy and not raise the
+house--try!"
+
+Miss Worte lay back exhausted against Miss Barnet's engulfing arms. Her
+passion ebbed suddenly and her words came scant, incoherent, and full
+of breath.
+
+"No use. No use. He told me to-day he wouldn't operate. He told me. No,
+no, all the colors so pale--even the reds--so pale! Lavender and blue
+I--I just couldn't tell. I couldn't. So pale. Two yards she brought back
+next day, kicking at--Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
+
+'"Shh-h-h, darling! Don't take on so! Wait till morning and we'll get
+new drops from him. 'Shh-h-h! Maybe it's only strain."
+
+"I know. I'm in the dark for good, Sadie. Oh, my God! I'm in the dark!"
+
+Except that her face was withered, she was like Iphigenia praying for
+death.
+
+"Lemme die! Lemme die!"
+
+"'Shh-h-h--darling--That's it, rest quiet."
+
+Suddenly Miss Worte flung up one arm about Sadie Barnet's neck, pressing
+her head downward until their faces touched.
+
+"Dee Dee darling, you--you hurt."
+
+"You won't never leave me, Sadie, like you said you would? You won't
+leave me alone in the dark, Sadie?"
+
+"No, no, my darling; you know I won't, never, never."
+
+"You'll keep me with you always, promise me that, Sadie. Promise me
+_that_ on the curl of your mother's hair you wear in your locket.
+Promise me, little Sadie, you won't leave your aunt Dee Dee alone in
+the dark. My poor little girl, don't leave me alone in the dark. I can't
+see; Sadie, I can't see no more. Promise me, Sadie, promise me,
+promise me!"
+
+From Sadie Barnet's heart, weakening her like loss of blood, flowed her
+tears. She kissed the heart of Edith Worte where it beat like a clock
+beneath the high-necked nightdress; she made of her bosom a pillow of
+mercy and drew the head up to its warmth.
+
+"I--I promise, Dee Dee, on her curl of hair. Sure I promise. Always will
+I keep you with me, darling, always, always, so help me, always."
+
+Along the road to Newton Heights Spring and her firstlings crept out
+tenderly. Even close up to the rim of the oiled highway itself, an
+occasional colony of wood violets dared to show their heads for the
+brief moment before they suffocated. The threat of rain still lay on the
+air, but the Sunday rank and file of motors threw back tops, lowered
+windshields, and turned shining noses toward the greening fields.
+
+In the red-leather tonneau, with her little face wind-blown and bared to
+the kiss in the air, Sadie Barnet turned to her companion and peered
+under the visor of his checked cap and up into his small inset eyes.
+
+"Is--is that the house up on the hill there, Jerry?"
+
+"Not yet. It's right around the next bend."
+
+"Gee! My--my hands are like ice, I--I'm that nervous."
+
+"Lemme feel."
+
+"No."
+
+"That's a swell way to treat a fellow who's promised to marry you."
+
+"You--you must excuse me to-day, Jerry. Honest, without a wink of
+sleep last night--you must excuse me to-day. I--I'm so upset with poor
+Dee Dee, and on top of that so nervous about--your little girl and the
+house and everything. And, Dee Dee--when I think of Dee Dee."
+
+"Don't think, Peachy; that's the way to get around that."
+
+"I--I can't help it. You ought to seen her at the doctor's this
+morning, how--how the poor thing lost her nerve when he told her that
+there--there wasn't no hope."
+
+"Aw, now, cut the sob stuff, Peachy! You can't help it. Nobody can,
+that's the trouble. Say, what kind of a little queen will they think you
+are if I bring you home all soppy with crying?"
+
+"I ought not to have come, Jerry. I'm no kind of company to-day, only
+all of a sudden she's got so--so soft with me and she made me come while
+she--she tried to take a nap. Poor old Dee Dee!"
+
+"Yeh, and poor old devil. Maybe she's just getting what's due to her."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+"Sure, I believe every one of us gets what's coming to us."
+
+"She--"
+
+"Here we are, Tootsie. See, Peachy, that's the house I bought her and
+her mother, and they was kicking at it before the plaster was dry."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"That's a concrete front. Neat, ain't it? That's a mosaic-floor porch,
+too, I built on a year after her and her mother vamoosed."
+
+"It's a beau-tiful house, Jerry."
+
+"You're the land of a kid that knows how to appreciate a home when she
+gets it. But her with her she-devil of a mother, they no sooner got in
+than they began to side with each other against me--her and her old
+mother trying to learn me how to run my own shebang."
+
+"Where--"
+
+"Gad! they're living in a dirty Harlem flat now and tryin' to put it
+over on me that they're better off in it. Bah! if I had to double up on
+alimony, I wouldn't give her a smell at this house, not a smell."
+
+"Say, but ain't it pretty, Jerry, right up over the river, and country
+all around, and right over there in back the street-cars for the city
+when you want them?"
+
+"This is going to be your street-car, Peachy, a six-cylinder one."
+
+She colored like a wild rose.
+
+"Oh, Jerry, I--I keep forgetting."
+
+"By Gad! it's a good thing I'm going to give up my city rooms and come
+out here to watch my p's and q's. Gosh darn her neck! I told her to quit
+cluttering up that side-yard turf with her gosh darn little flower-beds!
+Gosh darn her neck! There never was a servant worth her hide."
+
+"Jerry, why, they're beautiful! They just look beautiful, those pansies,
+and is that the little girl sitting up there on the porch steps? Is--is
+that Maisie?"
+
+They drew to a stop before the box-shaped ornate house, its rough
+concrete front pretentiously inlaid over the doors and windows with a
+design of pebbles stuck like dates on a cake, and perched primly on the
+topmost step of the square veranda the inert figure of a small girl.
+
+"Aw, ain't she cute?"
+
+Miss Barnet sprang lightly to the sidewalk, and beside her Mr. Jerome
+Beck flecked the dust of travel from the bay of his waistcoat, shaking
+his trousers knees into place.
+
+"This has got your Twenty-third Street dump beat a mile, and then some,
+'ain't it, Peachy?"
+
+"Jerry, call her here, the little girl. You tell her who--who I am. Tell
+her gently, Jerry, and--and how good I'm going to be to her and--Aw,
+ain't I the silly, though, to feel so trembly?"
+
+The child on the step regarded their approach with unsmiling eyes, nor
+did she move except to draw aside her dark stuff skirts and close her
+knees until they touched.
+
+"Hello there! Moping again, eh? Get up! Didn't I tell you not to let me
+catch you not out playing or helping Cloonan around? Say howdy to this
+lady. She's coming out here to live. Come here and say howdy to her."
+
+The child shrank to the newel-post, her narrow little face overtaken
+with an agony of shyness.
+
+"Cat got your tongue? Say howdy. Quit breathing through your mouth like
+a fish. Say howdy, that's a good girl."
+
+"Don't force her, Jerry. She's bashful. Ain't you, dearie? Ain't you,
+Maisie?"
+
+"Moping, you mean. If it was her month in the dirty Harlem flat she'd be
+spry enough. She knows what I mean whan I say that, and she knows she
+better cut out this pouting. Quit breathing through your mouth or I'll
+stick a cork in it."
+
+"Aw, Jerry, she can't help that!"
+
+"Cat got your tongue? Where's Cloonan?"
+
+The child's little face quivered and screwed, each feature drawing
+itself into position for tears. Her eyes disappeared, her nostrils
+distended, her mouth opened to a quivering rectangle, and she fell into
+silent weeping.
+
+"Aw, Jerry--you--you scared her! Come here, darling; come here to me,
+Maisie; come, dearie."
+
+But the child slid past the extended arms, down the wooden steps, and
+around a corner of the house, her arm held up across her eyes.
+
+"Aw, Jerry, honest, you can be awful mean!"
+
+"I'll get that out of her or know the reason why. They've poisoned her
+against me, that's about how it is in a nutshell. I'll get that pouting
+to be in that dirty Harlem hole with her mother and grandmother out of
+her or know the reason why."
+
+"She--"
+
+"Look, this is the front hall. Guess this 'ain't got that sty in
+Twenty-third Street beat some. Look! How do you like it? This way to the
+parlor and dining-room."
+
+Sadie Barnet smiled through the shadows in her eyes.
+
+"Jerry! Say, ain't this beau-tiful! A upright piano and gold, chairs
+and--Why, Jerry! why, Jerry!"
+
+"And look in here, the dining-room. Her and her mother shopped three
+weeks to get this oak set, and see this fancy cabinet full of china.
+Slick, ain't it?"
+
+Her fingers curled in a soft, clutch around her throat as if her breath
+came too fast.
+
+"Jerry, it--it's just grand."
+
+He marshaled her in all the pride of ownership.
+
+"Look, butler's pantry, exposed plumbing."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Kitchen."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Here, Cloonan. I told you I was going to bring somebody out to take
+hold and sit on you and your bills, didn't I? This lady's coming out
+here tomorrow, bag and baggage. Hand over your account-book to her and I
+bet she does better with it. See that you fix us up in honeymoon style,
+too. Bag and baggage we're coming. Savvy?"
+
+The figure beside the ill-kept stove, bowl in lap and paring potatoes
+with the long fleshless hands of a bird, raised a still more
+fleshless face.
+
+"Howdy!"
+
+"Cloonan's been running this shebang for two years now, Peachy, and
+there ain't nothing much she can't learn you about my ways. They ain't
+hard. Look! Porcelain-lined sink. It's got Twenty-third Street beat
+some, 'ain't it?"
+
+"Yes, Jerry."
+
+"Fix us a beefsteak supper, Cloonan, and lemme weigh up them groceries I
+sent out and lemme see your books afterward. Come, Peachy, here, up
+these stairs. This is the second floor. Pretty neat, ain't it? Her and
+her mother shopped three more weeks on this oak bed-set. Some little
+move out here from Twenty-third Street for a little rooming-house queen
+like you, eh? Neat little bedroom, eh, Peachy? Eh?"
+
+His face was close to her and claret red with an expression she did not
+dare to face.
+
+"And what's this next room here, Jerry? Ain't it sweet and
+quiet-looking! Spare room? Ain't it pretty with them little white
+curtains? Quit, quit, Jerry! You mustn't--you mustn't."
+
+She broke from his embrace, confusion muddling her movements.
+
+"Is this the--the spare room?"
+
+"It is, now. It used to be the old woman's till I laid down on the
+mother-in-law game and squealed. Yeh, I used to have a little
+mother-in-law in our house that was some mother-in-law. Believe me, she
+makes that old devil of yourn look like a prize angel."
+
+"I--This'll be just the room for Dee Dee, Jerry, where she can feel the
+morning sun and hear the street-cars over there when she gets lonesome.
+She ought to have the sunniest room, because it's something she can feel
+without seeing--poor thing. This will be a swell room for poor old blind
+Dee Dee, won't it, Jerry? Won't it, Jerry dear?"
+
+"Cut the comedy, Peachy. There's a neat free ward waiting for her just
+the other direction from the city than Newton Heights. Cut the
+comedy, Peachy."
+
+"Jerry, I--I gotta have her with me. I--Now that she--she's in the dark.
+She couldn't stand an institution, Jerry, she--she just couldn't."
+
+"That's what they all say, but they get over it. I know a--"
+
+"She couldn't, Jerry. She 'ain't had much in her life, but she's always
+had a roof over her head that wasn't charity, and she always said,
+Jerry, that she couldn't never stand a--a institution. She can take any
+other room you say, Jerry. Maybe there's a little one up-stairs in the
+third story we could fix up comfy for her; but she's in the dark now,
+Jerry, and, my God! Jerry, she just couldn't stand an institution!"
+
+He patted her shoulder and drew her arm through his.
+
+"You lemme take care of that. She don't need to know nothing about it.
+We'll tell her we're sending her for a visit to the country for a while.
+After the second day she'll be as snug as a bug in a rug. They're good
+to 'em in those places; good as gold."
+
+"No, no, Jerry! No, no! I gotta have her with me! She raised me from a
+kid and--and she couldn't stand it, Jerry! I gotta have her, I gotta! I
+want her!"
+
+His mouth sagged downward suddenly and on an oblique.
+
+"Say, somebody must have given you a few lessons in nagging, yourself.
+Them's the lines she used to recite to me about her she-devil of a
+mother, too. Gad! she used to hang on her mother's apron-strings like
+she was tied."
+
+"Jerry, I--"
+
+"Come, Peachy, don't get me sore. Come, let's talk about to-morrow. We
+gotta get the license first and--"
+
+"Jerry, I--Promise me I can have her with me first. I--Just a little yes
+is all I want--Jerry dear--just a little yes."
+
+A frown gathered in a triple furrow on his brow.
+
+"Now, kiddo, you got to cut that with me, and cut it quick. If there's
+two things I can't stand it's nagging and pouting. Cloonan can tell you
+what pouting can drive me to. I'll beat it out of that girl of mine
+before she's through with me, and I won't stand it from no one else. Now
+cut it, Peachy, that's a nice girl."
+
+He paced the carpeted space of floor between the dresser and bed, his
+mouth still on the oblique.
+
+"Now cut it, Peachy, I said, and cut it quick."
+
+She stood palpitating beside the window, her eyes flashing to his face
+and fastening there.
+
+"God! I--I wanna go."
+
+"Where?"
+
+Her glance flashed past him out of the window and across the patch of
+rear lawn. A street-car bobbed across the country; she followed it with
+eager eyes.
+
+"I wanna go."
+
+He advanced, conciliatory. "Aw, now, Peachy, a row just the day before
+we are married. You don't want to start out making me train you just
+like you was a little kid. If you was a little girl I could beat your
+little ways out of you, but I wanna be on the level with you and show
+you how nice I can be. All the things I'm going to give you, all--"
+
+"Quit, you! I wanna go! I wanna go!"
+
+"You can go to hell, for my part. I'm going to get a steak inside of me
+before we budge. Quit your fooling. See, you nearly got me sore there.
+Come, the car won't be back for us until six. Come, Peachy, come."
+
+She was past him and panting down the stairs, out across the patch of
+rear lawn, and toward the bobbing street-car, the streamer of ribbon at
+her throat flying backward over her shoulder.
+
+In the bargain basement of the Titanic Store the first day of the spring
+opening dragged to its close. In a meadow beside a round pond a tree
+dripped apple blossoms, each so frail a thing that it fluttered out and
+away, too light to anchor.
+
+In careless similitude the bargain basement of the Titanic Store
+resuscitated from its storerooms, and from spring openings long gone by,
+dusty garlands of cotton May blossoms, festooning them between the great
+white supporting pillars of the basement and intertwining them.
+
+Over the white-goods counter and over Sunday, as it were, a papier-mache
+pergola of green lattice-work and more cotton-back May blossoms had
+sprung up as if the great god Wotan had built it with a word. Cascades
+of summer linens, the apple green and the butter yellow, flowed from
+counters and improvised tables. Sadie Barnet's own mid-aisle bin had
+blossomed into a sacrificial sale of lawn remnants, and toward the close
+of the day her stock lay low, depleted.
+
+Max Meltzer leaned out of his bower, and how muted his voice, as if it
+came from an inner throat that only spoke when the heart bade it.
+
+"Little one, them remnants went like hot cakes, didn't they?"
+
+"Hot cakes! Well, I guess. You'd have thought there was a mill-end sale
+on postage stamps."
+
+"And if you don't look all tired out! If you just don't!"
+
+The ready tears swam in her voice.
+
+"It's--it's been awful--me away from her all day like this. But,
+anyways, I got news for her when I go home to-night about her five
+weeks' benefit money. Old Criggs was grand. He's going to send the
+committee to see her. Anyways, that's some good news for her."
+
+"I just can't get her out of my mind, neither. Seems like I--I just can
+see her poor blind face all the time."
+
+"M-me, too."
+
+"They say the girls up in the ribbons been crying all day. She was no
+love-bird, but they say she wasn't bad underneath."
+
+"God knows she--she wasn't."
+
+"That's the way with some folks; they're hard on top, but everybody
+knows hard-shell crabs have got sweeter meat than soft."
+
+"Nobody knows that she was a rough diamond better than me. I got sore at
+her sometimes, but I--I know she was always there when I--I needed her,
+alrighty."
+
+"Now, now, little girl, don't cry! You're all worn out."
+
+"She--she was always there to stand by me in--in a pinch."
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, you look just like a pretty little ghost. What you
+need is some spring air, girlie, some spring air for a tonic. Wouldn't I
+just love to take you all by your little self down the river to-night on
+one of them new Coney boats, where we could be--right quiet. Say,
+wouldn't I?"
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"I wanna talk to you, Miss Sadie. Can't you guess? I wanna get you all
+by yourself and talk to you right in your little ear."
+
+'"Shh-h-h! You mustn't talk like that."
+
+"That's the only way I have of trying to tell you how--how I feel, Miss
+Sadie--dearie."
+
+'"Shh-h-h!"
+
+"When I call you that it means--well, you know, dearie, you know. That's
+why I wanna take you to-night, dearie, all by your little self and--"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Meltzer! I can't leave her alone like that. I promised I
+would never leave her alone in the dark if--if I could help it."
+
+"Ain't I the dub? Sure you can't leave her. We gotta stick by her now,
+dearie. 'Ain't we? 'Ain't we?"
+
+A red seepage of blood surged across his face and under his hair.
+Beneath his little hedge of mustache his lips quivered as if at their
+own daring.
+
+"We gotta stick by her, dearie."
+
+All her senses swam, nor could she control the fluttering of her hands.
+
+"Oh--Mr. Meltzer--Max!"
+
+"What you and poor old Dee Dee need is some of this spring air. Gee!
+wouldn't I love to take you--and her down the river to-night on one of
+them new Coney boats? Gee! would I? Just you and--and her."
+
+"Max--oh, Max dearie!"
+
+
+
+
+"HEADS"
+
+By the great order of things which decreed that about the time Herod,
+brother to no man, died, Jesus, brother to all men, should be born; and
+that Rabelais, moral jester, should see light the very year that
+orthodox Louis XI passed on, by that same metaphysical scheme reduced to
+its lowliest, Essman's drop-picture machine, patent applied for, was
+completed the identical year that, for Rudolph Pelz, the rainy-day skirt
+slumped from a novelty to a commodity.
+
+At a very low tide in the affairs of the Novelty Rainy Day
+Skirt Company, Canal Street, that year of our Lord, 1898, when
+letter-head stationery was about to be rewritten and the
+I-haven't-seen-you-since-last-century jocosity was about to be born,
+Rudolph Pelz closed his workaday by ushering out Mr. Emil Hahn, locking
+his front door after his full force of two women machine-stitchers, and
+opening a rear door upon his young manhood's estate. A modest-enough
+holding in the eyes of you or me as beholders; but for the past week not
+an evening upon opening that door but what tears rushed to his throat,
+which he laughed through, for shame of them.
+
+On a bed, obviously dragged from its shadowy corner to a place beside
+the single window, and propped up so that her hair, so slickly banding
+her head in two plaits, sprang out against the coarsely white pillows,
+Mrs. Rosa Sopinsky Pelz, on an evening when the air rose sultry, stale,
+and even garbage-laden from a cat-and-can-infested courtyard, flashed
+her quick smile toward that opening door, her week-old infant suckling
+at her breast.
+
+"You ought to seen, Roody; she laughed! Puckered herself up into the
+cutest little grin when mamma left just now."
+
+Mr. Pelz wound his way through an overcrowded huddle of furniture that
+was gloomily, uglily utilitarian. A sideboard spread in pressed glass; a
+chest of drawers piled high with rough-dry family wash; a coal-range,
+and the smell and sound of simmering. A garland of garlic, caught up
+like smilax, and another of drying red peppers. On a shelf above the
+sink, cluttered there with all the pitiful unprivacy of poverty, a
+layout, to recite which will label me with the nigritude of the realist,
+but which is actually the nigritude of reality--a dish of
+brown-and-white blobs of soap; a coffee-cup with a great jag in its lip;
+a bottle of dried beans; a rubber nipple floating in a saucer of water;
+a glass tumbler containing one inverted tooth-brush; a medicine-bottle
+glued down in a dark-brown pool of its own substance; a propped-up bit
+of mirror, jagged of edge; a piece of comb; a rhinestone breastpin; a
+bunion-plaster; a fork; spoon; a sprouting onion. Yet all of this
+somehow lit by a fall of very coarse, very white, and very freshly
+starched lace curtains portiere-fashion from the door, looped back in
+great curves from the single window, and even skirting stiffly and
+cleanly the bureau-front and bed-edge.
+
+"How is my little mammela?" said Mr. Pelz, leaning over the bed to kiss
+Mrs. Pelz on the shining plaits, the light-tan column of throat and the
+little fist pressed so deeply into her bosom.
+
+"Just ought to seen, Roody--honest, she laughed and nearly jerked off
+mamma's _sheidel!_" [Footnote: Black wig worn by orthodox Jewish
+women after marriage.]
+
+
+"Red head!" he said, stroking down at the warm "bulge of blanket, so
+snugly enclosed in the crotch of mothering arm.
+
+"It's redder than yours already, Roody."
+
+"She's sure a grand little thing cuddled up there, ain't it so,
+mammela?"
+
+She reached up to pat his blue shirt-sleeve.
+
+"There's some herring on the table mamma brought over, and some raw meat
+and onions. That's some _borshtsh_ on the stove Etta carried all the way
+over from Hester Street for your supper."
+
+"And what for the little mammela?"
+
+"I'm fed up, Roody. Mamma closed the store at five to run over with some
+of that milk-shake like Doctor Aarons said. He sent his little son
+Isadore over with the prescription. Like I said to mamma, she should let
+the Canal Street Kosher Sausage Company do double the business from five
+until six while she closes shop to carry her daughter a milk-shake! Like
+I was used to it from home!"
+
+"When my girl gets to be a little mammela, the best shouldn't be none
+too good."
+
+She continued to stroke up at his sleeve and occasionally on up into
+his uneven shock of red hair.
+
+"You miss me in the shop, Roody?"
+
+"You should just see once how that Ruby Grabenheiner sits at your
+machine! She does one-half your work not one-half so good."
+
+"I'll be back next week Monday."
+
+He patted her quickly. "No! No! A mammela's place is with her baby."
+
+"Roody, you make me laugh. I should sit at home now since we got a new
+mouth to feed? That would be a fine come-off!"
+
+"Who do you think was just in, Rosie? Emil Hahn."
+
+"Sol is going to make for me, Roody, one of those little packing-case
+cribs like he built for Etta up in the pants-factory, so when the
+machine works it rocks, too. Did--did the check from Solomon & Glauber
+come in on the last mail, Roody?"
+
+"Now, Rosie, you mustn't worry yourself about such--"
+
+"What you looking so funny for, Roody?"
+
+"I was starting to tell you, Rosie--Hahn was just in and--"
+
+"Roody, don't change the subject on me always. You looked funny. Is it
+something wrong with Solomon & Glau--"
+
+"If you don't take the cake, Rosie! Now, why should I look funny?
+'Funny,' she says I look, I'm hungry. I smell Etta's _borshtsh_."
+
+She half raised herself, the pulling lips of the child drawing up the
+little head from the cove of arm.
+
+"Rosie, you mustn't lift up that way!"
+
+"Roody, I can read you like a book! Solomon & Glauber have
+countermanded, too."
+
+"Now, Rosie, wouldn't that keep until--"
+
+"They have!"
+
+"Well, if you got to know it, Rosie, they're shipping back the
+consignment."
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"What you going to do about it? Give you my word never seen the like.
+It's like the rainy-day skirt had died overnight. All of a sudden from a
+novelty, I find myself with such a commodity that every manufacturer in
+the business is making them up for himself."
+
+"You seen it first, though, Roody. Nobody can take it away from you that
+you seen first how the rainy-day skirt and its shortness would be such a
+success with the women."
+
+"'Seen it first,' she says! Say, what good does it do me if I didn't see
+far enough? I pick for myself such a success that I crowd myself out of
+business."
+
+"It's a dirty shame! A big firm like Solomon & Glauber should not be
+allowed to--"
+
+"Say, if it wouldn't be Solomon & Glauber, it would be Funk & Hausman or
+any other firm. The rainy-day skirt has slipped out of my hands, Rosie,
+to the big fellows. We must realize that for ourselves. That's the
+trouble when you don't deal in a patented product. What's the little
+fellows like myself to do against a firm like Solomon & Glauber? Start
+something?"
+
+"Three countermands in a week, and no orders coming in!"
+
+"Say, it don't tickle my ribs no more than yours."
+
+"Roody, maybe it's the worst thing ever happened to us you wouldn't
+listen to mamma and be satisfied with being chief cutter at Lipschuts'."
+
+"Shame on you, Rosie! You want your daughter to grow up with a
+pants-cutter all her life for a father? You want I should die in
+somebody else's harness. Maybe I didn't hit it right away, but I say
+yet, if a fellow's got the eyes and the nerve to see ahead a little with
+his imagination--"
+
+"'Imagination.' He talks like a story-book."
+
+"Now--now, take Hahn, Rosie--there's a fellow's got imagination--but not
+enough. I know it makes you mad when I talk on his picture-machine, but
+you take it from me--there's a fellow with a good thing under his very
+nose, but he--he 'ain't quite got the eyes to see ahead."
+
+"Say, for such a good thing like Emil Hahn's picture-machine, where his
+wife had to work in my own mother's sausage-store, I can't make
+myself excited."
+
+"He 'ain't quite got the eyes to see, Rosie, the big idea in it. He's
+afraid of life, instead of making it so that life should be afraid of
+him. Ten dollars cheaper I can buy that machine to-day than last week. A
+song for it, I tell you."
+
+"Ninety dollars to me is no cheap song, Roody."
+
+"The people got to be amused the same as they got to be fed. A man will
+pay for his amusements quicker than he will pay his butcher's or his
+doctor's bill. It's a cash business, Rosie. All you do with such a
+machine like Hahn's is get it well placed, drop your penny in the slot,
+and see one picture after another as big as life. I remember back in the
+old country, the years before we came over, when I was yet a
+youngster--"
+
+"You bet Hahn never put his good money in that machine. I got it from
+Birdie Hahn herself. For a bad debt he took it over along with two
+feather beds and--"
+
+"One after another pictures as big as life, Rosie, like real people
+moving. One of them, I give you my word, it's grand! A woman it shows
+all wrapped tight around in white, on a sofa covered over with such a
+spotted--what you call--leopard-skin."
+
+"To me that has a sound, Roody, not to be proud of--"
+
+"A living picture, with such neck and arms and--"
+
+"That's enough, Roody! That's enough! I'm ashamed even for your daughter
+here!"
+
+"Such a machine, maybe some day two or three, set up in a place like
+Coney Island or, for a beginning, in Pleasure Arcade, is an immense
+idea, Rosie. Until an invention like this, nine-tenths of the people
+couldn't afford the theyater. The drop-picture machine takes care of
+them nine-tenths."
+
+"Theyaters are no place for the poor."
+
+"That's where you're wrong--they need it the most. I don't want to get
+you worked up, Rosie, while you ain't strong, but every day that we wait
+we're letting a great idea slip through our fingers. If I don't buy that
+machine off Emil Hahn, somebody else will see in it what I see. Then
+all our lives we will have something to reproach ourselves with."
+
+Mrs. Pelz let slide her hand beneath the pillow, eyes closing and her
+face seeming to whiten.
+
+"Ninety dollars! Twenty dollars less than every cent we got saved in the
+world. It ain't right we should gamble with it, Roody. Not now."
+
+"Why not now, Rosie? It's all the more reason. Is it worth maybe a
+little gamble our Bleema should grow up like the best? I got bigger
+plans for her and her little mammela than such a back room all their
+lives. In a few years, maybe three rooms for ourselves in one of them
+newfangled apartment-houses up on Second Avenue with turn-on
+hot water--"
+
+"That's right--you'll have her riding in a horseless carriage next!"
+
+"I tell you, it's a big idea!"
+
+"I wish we had ten cents for every big idea you've been struck with."
+
+"That's just why, Rosie, I'm going to hit one right."
+
+Mrs. Pelz withdrew then the slow hand from beneath the pillow and a
+small handkerchief with a small wad knotted into it.
+
+"Nearly every--cent--in--the world, Roody, that we've got. Saved nearly
+penny by penny. Our Bleema--it's a sin--our--our--"
+
+"Sin nothing!"
+
+"Our week-old little girl--it--"
+
+"Nothing ventured in life, Rosie, nothing squeezed out of it. Don't put
+it back! Look, the baby herself wants it! Papa's little Bleema! Look!
+She's trying to lift herself. Ain't that remarkable, Rosie--look at
+that child lifting for that handkerchief!"
+
+"Our little baby girl! If it was for ourselves alone, all right, maybe,
+take a chance--but for--"
+
+Suddenly Mr. Pelz clapped his thigh. "I got it! I got it! Well let the
+little Bleema decide it for us. How's that? She should decide it for us
+if we take a gamble on her daddy's big idea! Here--I put a five-cents
+piece in her little hand and see which way she drops it. The little
+mammela will say which way it is to be--heads or tails. How's that,
+Rosie--the baby should decide it for us?"
+
+"Roody--we mustn't!"
+
+"Heads or tails, Rosie?"
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"Quick!"
+
+"H-heads!"
+
+"Quick now, papa's baby, open up little fist!"
+
+"Roody, not so rough! She can't hold that big nickel."
+
+"That's just what I want--she should let it fall."
+
+"Roody, Roody, I hope it's tails."
+
+The coin rolled to the bed-edge, bounced off to the floor, rolled to the
+zinc edge.
+
+Immediately after, on all-fours, his face screwed up for scrutiny and
+the back of his neck hotly ridden with crimson, Mr. Pelz leaned after.
+
+"Roody--what?"
+
+"Heads!"
+
+Where Riverside Drive reaches its rococo climax of the
+twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year and twelve-story-high apartment-house de
+luxe and duplex, and six baths divided by fourteen rooms is equal to
+solid-marble comfort, Elsinore Court, the neurotic Prince of Denmark and
+Controversy done in gilt mosaics all over the foyer, juts above the
+sky-line, and from the convex, rather pop-eyed windows of its top story,
+bulges high and wide of view over the city.
+
+From one of these windows, looking north, Rudolph Pelz, by the
+holding-aside of a dead weight of pink brocade and filet lace, could
+gaze upon a sweep of Hudson River that flowed majestically between the
+great flank of the city and the brobdingnagian Palisades.
+
+After a day when he had unerringly directed the great swinging crane of
+this or that gigantic transaction it had a laving effect upon him--this
+view of sure and fluent tide that ran so perpetually into infinitude.
+
+Yet for Mr. Pelz to attempt to articulate into words this porcelain-thin
+pillar of emotions was to shatter it into brittle bits.
+
+"Say, Rosie, ain't that a view for you? That's how it is with life--a
+river that rises with getting born and flows into death, and the
+in-between is life and--and--"
+
+"Roody, will you please hurry for sup--dinner? Do you want Feist to
+arrive with you not yet dressed?"
+
+Mr. Pelz turned then into an interior that was as pink and as silk as
+the inside of a bud--satin walls with side brackets softly simulating
+candles; a Canet bed, piled with a careful riot of sheerest and roundest
+of pillows; that long suit of the interior decorator, the
+_chaise-longue_; the four French engravings in their gilt frames; the
+latest original Josephine's _secretaire_; the shine of a white adjoining
+bathroom. Before a door-impaneled mirror, Mrs. Pelz, in a black-lace
+gown that was gracious to her rotundity.
+
+"Just look! I'm all dressed already."
+
+Mr. Pelz advanced to her, his clasp closing over each of her bare arms,
+smile and gaze lifting.
+
+"Rosie, you've got them all beat! Guess why I wish I was your diamond
+necklace."
+
+"Roody, it's nearly seven. Don't make me ashamed for Feist."
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"All right, then, I guess."
+
+"So I could always be round your neck."
+
+His hand flew immediately to the lay of gems at her throat, a small
+flush rising.
+
+"Roody, you hear me--hurry! Stop it, I tell you! You pinch." But she was
+warmly pink now, the shake of her head setting the heavy-carat gems in
+her ears waggling.
+
+Time, probably emulating destiny, had worked kindly here; had brought to
+Mrs. Pelz the soft, dove-like maturity of her little swell of bosom; the
+white, even creamy shoulders ever so slightly too plump between the
+blades; the still black hair polished and waved into expensive
+permanence. Out of years that had first veered and finally taken course
+under his unquestionable captaincy, Rudolph Pelz, with some of their
+storm and stress written in deep brackets round his mouth, the red hair
+just beginning to pale and thin, and a certain roundness of back
+enhancing his squattiness, had come snugly and simply into harbor. Only
+the high cheek-bones and bony jaw-line and the rather inconveniently low
+voice, which, however, had the timbre of an ormolu clock in the chiming,
+indicating his peculiar and covert power to dominate as dynamically as
+ungrammatically a board of directors reckoning in millions across
+the mahogany.
+
+"Shall I call in Sato to help you dress, Roody?"
+
+"Please--no! Just to have him in the room with his yellowness and
+tiptoes makes me nervous like a cat."
+
+"I got your shirt and studs laid out myself."
+
+He pinched her cheek again. "Rosie Posy!"
+
+"You had a hard day, Roody? You look tired."
+
+"I don't like the battle of Waterloo in the 'Saint Elba' picture."
+
+"Roody, that scene it took such a fortune to build into the shape of the
+letter A?"
+
+"It looks like what is it. Fake! The way it reads in that _French
+Revolution_ by that fellow Carlyle they gave me to read and the way it
+looks in the picture is the difference of black from white. For fifty
+thousand dollars more or less on a four-hundred-thousand-dollar picture
+I don't have a fake Waterloo."
+
+"I should say not, Roody, when you're famous for your water scenes in
+all your big pictures! In 'The Lure of Silk' it's the scenes on the
+water they went craziest over."
+
+"I've already got the passage engaged for next week to shoot the
+company over to France. That windmill scene on Long Island looks as much
+like the windmill north of Fleuris, where Napoleon could see the Blucher
+troops from, as I look like a windmill scene. 'Sol,' I says, 'it looks
+just like what it is--a piece of pasteboard out of the storehouse set up
+on a rock. Eat those feet of film, Sol,' I says to him, 'plant 'em,
+drown 'em--anything you like with 'em. That kind of fake stuff won't
+make 'Saint Elba' the greatest picture ever released, and every picture
+turned out from these studios has got to be just that.' I wish you could
+have heard, Rosie, in the projection-room, quiet like a pin after I came
+out with it."
+
+"Fifty thousand dollars, Roody?"
+
+"Yes. 'Fifty thousand dollars,' begins Sol with me, too. 'Fifty
+thousand--one hundred thousand--two!' I said. 'It would make no
+difference. If we can't fake the kind of battle-plain that wouldn't make
+Napoleon turn over in his grave, we cross the ocean for the real thing.'
+'Fifty thousand dollars,' Sol keeps saying--you know how he cries with
+his voice. 'Fifty thousand dollars your grandmother!' I hollered. 'For a
+few dollars more or less I should make a Rudolph Pelz picture something
+I'm ashamed of.' Am I right, Rosie? Am I right?"
+
+"I should say so, Roody, for a few dollars you should not belittle
+yourself."
+
+"Not if your old man knows it, by golly! and I think he does."
+
+"Hurry now, Roody; you know how Bleema likes it you should be dressed."
+
+"Believe me, if Feist had his choice he wouldn't be dressed, neither.
+Full dress for grandma and all of us to look at each other in! When
+there's company, it's bad enough, but for Feist and a few servants,
+hanged if I see it!"
+
+"Does it hurt, Roody, to give the child a little pleasure? Anyway, she's
+right--people like us should get dressed up for sup--dinner. I wouldn't
+be surprised if she didn't bring Lester Spencer back for dinner from
+automobiling."
+
+"He leaves to-night at ten with the company for Pennsylvania and the
+Horseshoe Bend picture. Anyways, I don't see where it comes in that for
+a fellow who draws his salary off of me I have to dress. I got to say it
+for him, though, give the devil his due, he does a good piece of work
+where Sol succeeds in getting him off center-stage in his scene with
+Wellington."
+
+"Lester is a good actor. Madame Coutilly, to-day, when I had my
+manicure, just raved over him and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure
+of Silk.'"
+
+"He'll be a screen proposition some day if we can chain down some of his
+conceit. Only, where such friendships with him and Bleema comes in, I
+don't see. I don't like it."
+
+"Say, the child likes to run around with celebrities. Why shouldn't it
+give her pleasure over the other girls from Miss Samuels's school to be
+seen out once in a while with Lester Spencer, their favorite, or Norma
+Beautiful? 'America's Darlings,' I see this week's _Screen Magazine_
+calls 'em. It's natural the child should enjoy it."'
+
+"Let her enjoy; only, where it comes in I should have to sit across
+from him at supper three times this week, I don't see. Out of the
+studio, me and Spencer don't talk the same language. To-night, him and
+Feist would mix like oil and water."
+
+"Does Feist know yet, Roody, you closed the deal on the Grismer estate?"
+
+"Sure! I says to him to-day: 'Feist, with us for next-door neighbors of
+your country estate, together we own nearly half of Long Island.' Am
+I right?"
+
+"Like I says last night in mamma's room to Etta and Sol, 'I was used to
+thirty-four rooms and nineteen baths from home yet!' Poor mamma--how she
+laughed! Just like before her stroke."
+
+"Nothing, Rosie, not one hundred rooms and fifty baths--nothing I can
+ever do for you is one-tenth that you deserve."
+
+"And nothing, Roody, that I can do for you is one-hundredth what you
+deserve."
+
+"I sometimes wonder, Rosie, if, with all we got, there isn't maybe some
+little happiness I've overlooked for you."
+
+She lifted herself by his coat lapels, kissing him. "Such a question!"
+
+"So many times it comes up in the scenarios and the picture-plots,
+Rosie, how money don't always bring happiness."
+
+"It wouldn't, Roody--not a penny's worth to me without you and Bleema.
+But with you, Roody, no matter how happy I feel, it seems to me I can't
+ever feel happy enough for what we have got. Why, a woman just
+couldn't--why, I--I always say about you, Roody, only yesterday to my
+own sister-in-law, 'Etta,' I says, 'it's hard for me to think of
+anything new to wish for.' Just take last week, for instance, I wished
+it that, right after the big check you gave for the Armenian sufferers,
+you should give that extra ten thousand in mamma's name to the Belgian
+sufferers. Done! Thursday, when I seen that gray roadster I liked so
+much for Bleema, this afternoon she's out riding in it. It is a wonder I
+got a wish for anything left in me."
+
+"To have you talk like this, Rosie, is the highest of all my successes."
+
+"If--if there's one real wish I got now, Roody, it is only for our
+Bleema. We got a young lady, honey; we got to put on our thinking-cap."
+
+"'Young lady'--all of a sudden she decides we've got! Young baby, you
+better say."
+
+"A graduate this month from Miss Samuels's Central Park School he calls
+a baby!"
+
+"Let me see--how old is--"
+
+"He don't know his own child's age! Well, how many years back is it
+since we were in rainy-day skirts?"
+
+"My God! Ten--fourteen--eighteen! Eighteen years! Our little Bleema! It
+seems yesterday, Rosie, I was learning her to walk along Grand Street."
+
+"You haven't noticed, Roody, David Feist?"
+
+"'Noticed'?"
+
+"Say, you may be a smart man, Rudolph Pelz--everybody tells me you
+are--but they should know once on the Picture Rialto how dumb as a
+father you are. 'Noticed?' he asks. All right then--if you need a brick
+house--noticed that David Feist hates your daughter and 'ain't got eyes
+for her and don't try every excuse to get invited here for sup--dinner."
+
+"You mean, Rosie--"
+
+"Of course I mean! It's pitiful how he follows her everywhere with his
+eyes. In the box last night at the opera you was too asleep to see it,
+but all evening Etta was nudging me how he nearly ate up our Bleema just
+with looks."
+
+"You women with your nonsense!"
+
+"I guess, Rudolph, it would be a bad thing. Our daughter and a young man
+smart enough to make himself from a celluloid collar-cutter to a
+millionaire five times over on a little thing like inventing a
+newfangled film-substance should tie up with the only child of Rudolph
+Pelz, the picture king."
+
+"I give you my word, Rosie, such talk makes me sick."
+
+"You'd hate it, wouldn't you? A prince like David Feist."
+
+"People don't talk such things till they happen. If our daughter could
+have the King of England and didn't want him, I'd say she should not
+marry the King of England. I want my girl home by me yet, anyway, for
+many a long day. She should be playing with her dolls instead of her
+mother and aunt Etta filling her up with ideas. Don't think I'm so
+stuck, neither, on how she runs around with my film stars."
+
+"Honest, Roody, the way you're so strict with that child it's a shame!
+The girl has got to have her pleasure."
+
+"Well, if she's got to have her pleasure, she should have it with young
+men like Feist and not with--"
+
+"There! Didn't I tell you so? Didn't I?"
+
+"Say, I don't deny if I got some day to have a son-in-law, my first
+choice for him would be Feist."
+
+"Roody, the two estates together in one!"
+
+"I'm surprised at you, Rosie--honest, I'm surprised. Such talk!"
+
+Mrs. Pelz took a pinch of his each cheek, tiptoeing to kiss him squarely
+on the lips.
+
+"Go get dressed," she said, "and I'll wait for you."
+
+"Rosie Posy," he said, clucking into his cheek with his tongue and
+moving away through the pink-shaded twilight.
+
+At the door to the whitely glittering bathroom she called to him again,
+softly; he turning.
+
+"What'll you bet, Roody, that I get my biggest wish as soon as I got the
+gray roadster and the Belgian check?"
+
+"Women's nonsense!" said Mr. Pelz, his voice suddenly lost in the
+violent plunge of water into porcelain.
+
+In a drawing-room faithful to Dunlap Brothers' exorbitant interpretation
+of the Italian Renaissance, a veritable forest of wrought-iron
+candle-trees burned dimly into a scene of Pinturicchio table,
+tapestry-surmounted wedding-chest, brave and hideous with _pastiglia_
+work, the inevitable camp-chair of Savonarola, an Umbrian-walnut chair
+with lyre-shaped front, bust of Dante Alighieri in Florentine cap and
+ear-muffs, a Sienese mirror of the soul, sixteenth-century suit of
+cap-a-pie armor on gold-and-black plinth, Venetian credence with
+wrought-iron locks. The voiceless and invoiced immobility of the museum
+here, as if only the red-plush railing, the cords from across chairs,
+and the "Do Not Sit" warnings to the footsore had been removed.
+
+Against a chair cruel to the back with a carved coat of arms of the
+Lombardi family Mr. David Feist leaned lightly and wisely. If his
+correct-enough patent pumps ever so slightly escaped the floor, his span
+of shoulders left hardly an inch to be desired. There was a peninsula of
+rather too closely shaved but thick black hair jutted well down Mr.
+Feist's brow, forming what might have been bald but were merely hairless
+inlets on either side. Behind _pince-nez_ his eyes sparkled in points
+not unlike the lenses themselves. Honed to a swift, aquiline boniness of
+profile which cut into the shadows, there was something swiftly vigorous
+about even his repose.
+
+Incongruous enough on the Pinturicchio table, and as if she had dared to
+walk where mere moderns feared to tread, a polychrome framed picture of
+Miss Bleema Pelz, tulle-clouded, piquant profile flung charmingly to the
+northwest, and one bare shoulder prettily defiled with a long
+screw-curl, lit, as it were, into the careful gloom.
+
+Deliberately in range of that photograph, and so beatific of gaze that
+it was as if his sense were soaked in its loveliness, Mr. Feist smiled,
+and, smiling, reddened. Enter then Mrs. Pelz, hitting softly into white
+taffetas beneath the black lace; Mr. Pelz, wide, white and boiled of
+shirt-front.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Feist! It's a shame the way we kept you waiting."
+
+"Not at all, Mrs. Pelz--a pleasure. Hello! how's my friend, the picture
+king?"
+
+"Rotten," said Mr. Pelz, amiably, shaking hands with a great riding-up
+of cuff, and seating himself astride a Florentine bench and the
+leather-embossed arms of the Strozzi family.
+
+"Roody, what a way to sit!"
+
+"'What a way to sit,' she tells me. I'd like to see a fellow sit any way
+in this room without making a monkey of himself. Am I right, Feist? The
+Eyetalians maybe didn't know no better, but I should have to suffer,
+too, when for four-seventy-nine I can buy myself at Tracy's the finest
+kind of a rocking-chair that fits me."
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"Say, Feist agrees with me; only, he don't know you well enough yet to
+let on. I notice that with all his Louis-this and Louis-that rooms in
+his own house, up in his own room it is a good old Uncle Sam's cot and a
+patent rocker."
+
+"You've got a gorgeous room here just the same, Pelz."
+
+"Gorgeous for a funeral."
+
+"Every collector in the country knows that table. I had my eye on it for
+my music-room once myself when it was shown at Dunlap's."
+
+"Dunlap's are a grand firm of decorators, Mr. Feist. I'm having them do
+Grismer, too."
+
+"Well, Feist, how does it feel to have us for neighbors?"
+
+"Immense, Pelz!"
+
+"Like I said to my husband, between us the way the estates adjoin, we
+got a monopoly on Long Island--ain't it so?"
+
+"And believe me, Mrs. Pelz, you'll never regret the buy. The finest
+pleasure my money brought me yet is that view of my little bedroom I
+took you up to, Pelz."
+
+"Wonderful!"
+
+"I've got an outlook there, Mrs. Pelz, is a paradise to see. You can
+have all my forty-two rooms and two garages if you'll leave me my little
+top room with its miles of beautiful greenness, and--and so--so much
+beauty that--that it gets you by the throat. I--don't express it the way
+I see it, but--"
+
+"I should say so, Mr. Feist! Out of every one of our thirty-four rooms
+and eighteen baths you can see a regular oil-painting."
+
+Mr. Pelz leaned over, tongue in cheek and, at the screwing noise again,
+poking Mr. Feist in the region of the fifth rib.
+
+"She said to me up-stairs just now, Feist, 'Like we was used to it from
+home?' Eh? C-c-c-cluck! Eighteen baths a day! I know the time when one
+every Saturday night was stuck up."
+
+"Roody, honest, you're awful!"
+
+"Say, me and Feist speak the same language. We ain't entertaining a lot
+of motion-picture stars to-night."
+
+"I want Mr. Feist to come over some night to sup--dinner when we have a
+few of them over. We're great friends, Mr. Feist, with Norma Beautiful
+and Allan Hunt and Lester Spencer and all that crowd. We entertain them
+a good deal. My daughter is quite chums with them all. Elsie Love sleeps
+here some nights. Honest, Mr. Feist, you never saw a more unassuming
+girl for her salary."
+
+"Yes, especially is she unassuming when she spoils ninety feet of film
+yesterday in a row with Spencer over who should have one-half inch
+nearer to the center of the picture."
+
+"My husband, Mr. Feist, has got no patience with temperament."
+
+"Honey, a little supper wouldn't hurt."
+
+"I'll send and see if Bleema is ready yet. She's been out, taking Lester
+Spencer in her new runabout her papa bought her. I wish you could see,
+Mr. Feist, the way the traffic policemen smile after that girl the way
+she handles a car. If I do say it, she's a picture."
+
+"If you ask me, Mrs. Pelz, the finest of the objects in this room of
+fine things, it won't take me long to tell you," said Mr. Feist, leaning
+forward to lift for closer gaze the framed photograph.
+
+"Now you're shouting, Feist!"
+
+"That picture don't half do her justice. If I do say it, Mr. Feist--if
+that child had to make her living, she'd be a fortune in pictures. 'No,
+mamma,' she always says; 'God forbid if I have to make my living some
+day, I want to be a famous writer.' I want you to read sometime, Mr.
+Feist, some of that girl's poetry. I cry like a baby over the sad ones.
+And stories! There's one about a poor little girl who could look out of
+her window into the house of a rich girl and--"
+
+"Feist, her mother just hates that child!"
+
+"Say, old man, I don't see any medals on you for hating her."
+
+"He's worse than I am, Mr. Feist; only, he hides it behind making fun of
+me. I always say if Bleema Pelz wanted the moon, her father would see to
+it that his property-man got the real one for her."
+
+"You--you've got a beautiful, sweet little girl there, Pelz. I don't
+blame you."
+
+"Feist, if I didn't know it, I'd be an ungrateful dog."
+
+"Her papa can't realize, Mr. Feist, we haven't got a baby any more."
+
+"I--realize it, Mrs. Pelz."
+
+"You--you see, Roody?"
+
+"I--I--guess I'm the old-fashioned kind of a fellow, Pelz, when it comes
+to girls. I--I guess I do it the way they used to do it--the parents
+first--but--but--now that we--we're on the subject--I--I like your
+daughter, Pelz--my God! Pelz, but--but I like your little daughter!"
+
+An Augsburg clock ticked into a suddenly shaped silence, Mr. Pelz
+rising, Mr. Feist already risen.
+
+"I haven't got much besides a clean record and all that love or money
+can buy her, Pelz, but--well--you know me for what I am, and--"
+
+"Indeed we do, Mr. Feist! I always say to my husband my favorite of all
+the young men who come here is--"
+
+"You know what my standing--well, with men and in business is, Pelz, and
+as far as taking care of her goes, I can make her from a little princess
+into a little queen--"
+
+"The young man that is lucky enough to get Bleema, Mr. Feist--"
+
+"Not that the money part is everything, but if what I am suits you and
+Mrs. Pelz, I want to enter the ring for her. I might as well come out
+with it. I wouldn't for anything on earth have her know that I've spoken
+to you--yet--not till after I've spoken with her--but--well, there's my
+cards on the table, Pelz."
+
+Mr. Pelz held out a slow and rigid arm, one hand gripping, the other
+cupping Mr. Feist at the elbow.
+
+"It's the finest compliment I could pay to any man on God's earth to say
+it, Feist, but if it's got to be that my little baby girl has grown up
+to an age where she--"
+
+"She's already a year older than me when I married you, Roody."
+
+"If it's got to be, then there's one man on earth I can give her up to
+with happiness. That man is you, Feist."
+
+Into this atmosphere so surcharged that it had almost the singing
+quality of a current through it entered Miss Bleema Pelz, on slim silver
+heels that twinkled, the same diaphanous tulle of the photograph
+enveloping her like summer, her hair richer, but blending with the
+peach-bloom of her frock, the odor of youth her perfume.
+
+"Bleema darling, you're just in time!"
+
+"Hello, moms!"--in the little lifted voice trained to modulation, and
+kissing Mrs. Pelz in light consideration of powdered areas. "Hello,
+dads!"--tiptoeing and pursing her mouth into a bud. "Good evening,
+Mr. Feist."
+
+"Looks like I'm the left-over in this party," said Mr. Feist, slow to
+release her hand and wanting not to redden.
+
+"Naughty-naughty!" said Miss Pelz, with a flash of eyes to their
+corners, a flouncing of tulle, and then landing ever so lightly on her
+father's knee and at the immediate business of jerking open his tie.
+"Bad, bad dad! Didn't let Sato dress him to-night."
+
+"You little red head, you!"
+
+"Stop it! Hold up your chin."
+
+"Honey, we're all starvationed."
+
+"Lester'll be here any minute now."
+
+"Lester Spencer coming for dinner, Bleema?"
+
+"Surely. I dropped him just now at the Lions' Club to change his
+clothes. Now, don't get excited, dads; he's leaving right after dinner
+to catch his train for Horseshoe Bend."
+
+"I must tell Williams to lay another--"
+
+"I've already told him, mamma. Here he is now! Come on in, Lester;
+you're holding up the family. You've never met Mr. Feist, have you, the
+film king? You two ought to get acquainted--one makes the films and the
+other makes them famous."
+
+There was a round of greetings, Mr. Spencer passing a hand that had
+emerged white and slim through the ordeal of thousands of feet
+of heroics.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Pelz? Boss! Mr. Feist, glad to know you!"
+
+What hundreds of thousands of men, seeming to despise, had secretly, in
+the organ-reverberating darkness of the motion-picture theater, yearned
+over Mr. Lester Spencer's chest expansion, hair pomade, and bulgeless
+front and shirt-front! When Lester Spencer, in a very slow fade-out,
+drew the exceedingly large-of-eye and heaving-of-bosom one unto his own
+immaculate bosom, whole rows of ladies, with the slightly open-mouthed,
+adenoidal expression of vicarious romance, sat forward in their chairs.
+Men appraised silently the pliant lay of shirt, the uncrawling
+coat-back, and the absence of that fatal divorce of trousers and
+waistcoat.
+
+"I was telling my husband, Lester, my manicurist just raved to-day about
+you and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure of Silk.'"
+
+"Isn't that just the sweetest picture, moms?"
+
+"It certainly is! Mr. Pelz took me down to the projection-room to see
+its first showing, and I give you my word I said to him and Sol--didn't
+I, Roody?--'That picture is a fortune.' And never in my life did I fail
+to pick a winner--did I, Roody? I got a knack for it. Mr. Feist, have
+you seen 'The Lure of Silk'?"
+
+"Sorry to say I have not."
+
+"If you think that is a riot, Mrs. Pelz, you wait until you see the way
+they're going to eat me up in the court scene in 'Saint Elba.' I had the
+whole studio crying down there to-day--didn't I, Mr. Pelz? Crying like
+babies over the scene where I stand like this--so--overlooking--"
+
+"Say, Rosie, that's twice already Williams announced dinner is served."
+
+"Overlooking the--"
+
+"I hear Friedman & Kaplan made an assignment, Feist."
+
+"Come, Lester; you take me in to dinner. Rudolph, you go and get mamma.
+Bleema, you and Mr. Feist be escorts."
+
+In a dining-room so unswervingly Jacobean that its high-back chairs
+formed an actual enclosure about the glittering, not to say noble, oval
+of table, the dinner-hour moved through the stately procession of its
+courses. At its head, Mrs. Miriam Sopinsky, dim with years and the kind
+of weariness of the flesh that Rembrandt knew so well, her face even
+yellower beneath the black wig with the bold row of machine-stitching
+down its center, the hands veiny and often uncertain among the dishes.
+
+"Roody, cut up mamma's chicken for her. She trembles so."
+
+"Moms, let Williams."
+
+"No; she likes it when your father does it."
+
+Mr. Pelz leaned over, transferring his own knife and fork. In Yiddish:
+
+"Grandmother, I hear you've been flirting with Doctor Isadore Aarons.
+Now, don't you let me hear any more such nonsense. The young girls in
+this house got to walk the straight line."
+
+The old face broke still more furiously into wrinkle, the hand reaching
+out to top his.
+
+"Don't tease her, Roody; she likes to be let alone in public."
+
+MR. FEIST: The old lady certainly holds her own, don't she? Honest, I'd
+give anything if I knew how to talk to her a little.
+
+"No, Mr. Feist, mamma's breaking. Every day since her stroke I can see
+it more. It nearly kills me, too. It's pretty lonesome for her, up here
+away from all her old friends. Outside of my husband and Bleema, not a
+soul in the house talks her language except Sol and Etta when they
+come over."
+
+"She's my nice darling grandma," said Miss Pelz, suddenly pirouetting up
+from her chair around the table, kissing the old lips lightly and then
+back again, all in a butterfly jiffy.
+
+MRS. PELZ (_sotto to Mr. Feist_). Ain't she the sweetest thing with her
+grandmother?
+
+"Umh!" said Mr. Spencer, draining his wine-glass to the depth of its
+stem. "Mr. Pelz, believe me if the Atlantic Ocean was made out of this
+stuff, you wouldn't have to engage passage for me; I'd swim across."
+
+"You better learn how first," said Mr. Pelz. "You've cost me a fortune
+already in dummies for the water scenes."
+
+"It's a riot, Mr. Pelz, the way they go mad over me in that Pelham Bay
+scene in 'The Marines Are Coming.' I dropped into the Buckingham to see
+it last night, and before I knew it the house had it that I was present
+and was going wild over me. They had to throw the spotlight on the box."
+
+"I love that scene, too, Lester! Honest, I just squeeze up with
+excitement where you stand there at the edge of the deck and take the
+plunge into the water to rescue Norma Beautiful."
+
+"You mean a super for five a day takes the plunge."
+
+"Tell you another scene where I simply raise the roof off the house
+in--"
+
+MR. PELZ: Williams, pass Mr. Feist some more of them little cabbages.
+
+"Brussels sprouts, dad."
+
+MRS. PELZ: I guess you miss Norma Beautiful not playing with you in
+"Saint Elba," don't you, Lester? You and her are so used to playing with
+each other.
+
+"I was the one first suggested she wouldn't be the type to play
+Josephine, Mrs. Pelz. Too thin. I've got to be contrasted right or it
+kills me--"
+
+"Williams, a little more of that chicken stuffing. It's almost good
+enough to remind me how you and grandma used to make it, Rosie."
+
+"Speaking of 'Saint Elba,' Mr. Pelz, somebody must speak to Mabel Lovely
+about the way she keeps hogging center-stage in that scene with me on--"
+
+"There's no center-stage left to hog with you in the picture, Spencer."
+
+"She crowds me to profile. They want me full-face. If you'd put in a
+word to Sol to direct it that way! Other night, at the Buckingham, it
+was a riot every time I turned full-face. Just because a fellow happens
+to have a good profile is no reason why--"
+
+"Well, Feist, how does the war look to-day?"
+
+"Ugly, Pelz, ugly. Every hour this country lets pass with Belgium
+unavenged she is going to pay up for later."
+
+"It's not our fight, Mr. Feist."
+
+"Maybe it's not our fight, Mr. Spencer, but if ever there was a cause
+that is all humanity's fight, it is those bleeding and murdered women
+and children of Belgium. You're sailing over there yourself next week,
+Mr. Spencer, and I hope to God you will see for yourself how much of our
+fight it is."
+
+"Ain't things just simply terrible? Honest, I said to Roody, when I
+picked up the paper this morning, it gives me the blues before I
+open it."
+
+"Nobody can tell me that this country is going to sit back much longer
+and see autocracy grind its heel into the face of the world."
+
+"You're right, Feist! I think if there is one thing worse than being too
+proud to fight, it is not being proud enough to fight."
+
+"Lester Spencer, if you don't stop making eyes!"
+
+"Mr. Pelz, every time I drink to your daughter only with my eyes she
+slaps me on the wrist. You put in a good word for me."
+
+"Little more of that ice-cream, Feist?"
+
+"Thanks, Pelz; no."
+
+"You, Lester?"
+
+"Don't care if I do, Miss Bleema Butterfly."
+
+Mr. Pelz flashed out a watch. "Don't want to hurry you, Spencer, but if
+you have to catch that ten-o'clock train, by the time you get back and
+change clothes--"
+
+"You're right, Mr. Pelz; I'd better be getting on."
+
+Miss Pelz danced to her feet. "Mamma and papa will excuse us, Lester, if
+we leave before coffee. Come; I'll shoot you to the club."
+
+"Why, Bleema! George will bring the limousine around and--"
+
+"I promised! Didn't I promise you, Lester, that if you came up to dinner
+I'd drive you back to the club myself?"
+
+"She sure did, Mrs. Pelz."
+
+"Bleema, you stay right here and finish your supper. There's two
+chauffeurs on the place to drive Spencer around to his club."
+
+"But, dad, I promised."
+
+"Why, Bleema, ain't you ashamed? Mr. Feist here for dinner and you to
+run off like that. Shame on you!"
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Pelz. I'll stay around and be entertained by
+you and Mr.--"
+
+"I'll be back in twenty minutes, moms. Surely you'll excuse me that
+long! I want to drive him down in my new runabout. I promised. Please,
+moms! Dad?"
+
+"Ask your papa, Bleema; I--I don't know--"
+
+"Dad?"
+
+"You heard what I said, Bleema. No!"
+
+A quick film of tears formed over Miss Pelz's eyes, her lips quivering.
+"Oh, well--if--if you're going to be that mean--oh, you make me so
+mad--. Come on, Lester--I--I guess I can take you as far as the front
+door without the whole world jumping on me. Oh--oh--you make me so mad!"
+And pranced out on slim feet of high dudgeon.
+
+"Poor child!" said Mrs. Pelz, stirring into her coffee. "She's so high
+strung."
+
+"She's got to quit wasting her time on that conceited jackass," said Mr.
+Pelz, swallowing off his demi-tasse at a gulp. "Won't have it!"
+
+"It makes her papa mad the way the boys just kill themselves over that
+girl," said Mrs. Pelz, arch of glance toward Mr. Feist, who was stirring
+also, his eyes lowered.
+
+"Me, too," he said, softly.
+
+"Jealous!" flashed Mrs. Pelz.
+
+After an interval, and only upon despatching a servant, Miss Pelz
+returned, the tears frank streaks now down her cheeks.
+
+"Sit down, baby, and drink your coffee."
+
+"Don't want any."
+
+"Williams, bring Miss Bleema some hot coffee."
+
+"I'm finished, mother--please!"
+
+"I was telling Mr. Feist a while ago, Bleema, about your ambition to be
+a writer, not for money, but just for the pleasure in it. What is it you
+call such writing in your French, honey? Dilytanty?"
+
+"Please, mamma, Mr. Feist isn't interested."
+
+"Indeed I am, Miss Bleema! More interested than in anything I know of."
+
+"She's mad at her papa, Feist, and when my little girl gets mad at her
+papa there's nothing for him to do but apologize with a big kiss."
+
+Suddenly Miss Pelz burst into tears, a hot cascade of them that flowed
+down over her prettiness.
+
+"Why, Bleema!"
+
+"Now, now, papa's girl--"
+
+The grandmother made a quick gesture of uplifted hands, leaning over
+toward her, and Miss Pelz hiding her face against that haven of shrunken
+old bosom.
+
+"Oh, grandma, make 'em let me alone!"
+
+"Why, Bleema darling, I'm surprised! Ain't you ashamed to act this way
+in front of Mr. Feist? What'll he think?"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Pelz, don't mind me; she's a little upset--that's all."
+
+"You--you made me look like--like thirty cents before Lester
+Spencer--that--that's what you did."
+
+"Why, Bleema, do you think that if papa thought that Lester Spencer was
+worth bothering that pretty red head of yours about that he would--"
+
+"There you go again! Always picking on Lester. If you want to know it,
+next to Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt he's the biggest money-maker your
+old corporation has got."
+
+"What's that got to do with you?"
+
+"And he'll be passing them all in a year or two, you see if he
+don't--if--if--if only you'd stop picking on him and letting Uncle Sol
+crowd him out of the pictures and everybody in the company take
+advantage of him--he--he's grand--he--"
+
+"He's a grand conceited fool. If not for the silly matinee women in the
+world he couldn't make salt."
+
+"That shows all you know about him, papa! He's got big ideals, Lester
+has. He got plans up his sleeve for making over the moving-picture
+business from the silly films they show nowadays to--"
+
+"Yes--to something where no one gets a look-in except Lester Spencer.
+They're looking for his kind to run the picture business!"
+
+"Roody--Bleema--please! Just look at poor grandma! Mr. Feist, I must
+apologize."
+
+"He's a nix, an empty-headed--"
+
+"He is--is he? Well, then--well, then--since you force me to it--right
+here in front of Mr. Feist--Lester Spencer and I got engaged to-day!
+He's the only man in my life. We're going to be married right off, in
+time for me to sail for France with the company. He's going to talk to
+you when he gets back from Horseshoe Bend. We're engaged! That's how
+much I think of Lester Spencer. That's how much I know he's the finest
+man in the world. Now then! Now then!"
+
+There was a note in Miss Pelz's voice that, in the ensuing silence,
+seemed actually to ring against the frail crystal. She was on her feet,
+head up, tears drying.
+
+"Blee-Bleema!"
+
+"Moms darling, aren't you happy? Isn't it wonderful--moms?"
+
+"Roody! For God's sake, Bleema, you're choking your father to death!
+Roody, for God's sake, don't get so red! Williams--some
+water--quick! Roody!"
+
+"I'm all right. All right, I tell you. She got me excited. Sit down,
+Bleema--sit down, I said."
+
+"Pelz, if you don't mind, I think maybe I'd better be going."
+
+"You stay right here, Feist. I want you to hear every word that I'm
+going to say. If my daughter has no shame, I haven't, either. Williams,
+call Mrs. Sopinsky's maid, and see that she gets to her room
+comfortable. Sit down, Bleema!"
+
+"My God!--I can't believe my ears--Bleema and such a _goy_ play-actor--"
+
+"Please, Rosie!"
+
+"A _goy_ that--"
+
+"Rosie, I said, 'Please!' Bleema, did you hear me? Sit down!"
+
+Miss Pelz sat then, gingerly on the chair-edge, her young lips straight.
+"Well?"
+
+Her father crunched into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of
+it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with
+carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy
+for the moment, infatuated with--"
+
+"I'm not infatuated!"
+
+"Bleema, Bleema, don't talk to your father so ugly!"
+
+"Well, I guess I know my own mind. I guess I know when I'm in love with
+the finest, darlingest fellow that ever--"
+
+"You hush that, Bleema! Hush that, while I can hold myself in. That I
+should live to hear my child make herself common over a loafer--"
+
+"Papa, if you call him another name, I--I--"
+
+"You'll sit right here and hear me out. If you think you're going to let
+this loafer ruin your own life and the lives of your parents and poor
+grandmother--"
+
+"Papa, papa, you don't know him! The company are all down on him because
+they're jealous. Lester Spencer comes from one of the finest old
+Southern families--"
+
+"Roody, Roody, a _goy_ play-actor--"
+
+"'A _goy_ play-actor'! I notice, mamma, you are the one always likes to
+brag when the girls and fellows like Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt and
+Lester and--and all come up to the house. It's the biggest feather in
+your cap the way on account of papa the big names got to come running
+when you invite them."
+
+"Your mother's little nonsenses have got nothing to do with it."
+
+"She reproaches me with having brought about this _goy_ mix-up! Me that
+has planned each hour of that girl's life like each one was a flower in
+a garden, A young man, a grand young man like Mr. Feist, crazy in lo--"
+
+"Mrs. Pelz, for God's sake! Mrs. Pelz, please!"
+
+"Rosie, we'll leave Feist out of this."
+
+"Lester Spencer, papa, is one of the finest characters, if only you--"
+
+"I ask you again, Bleema, to cut out such talk while I got the strength
+left to hold in. It's a nail in my coffin I should live to talk such
+talk to my little daughter, but it's got to where I've got to say it.
+Lester Spencer and the fine character you talk about--it's free gossip
+in all the studios--is one of the biggest low-lifes in the
+picture-world. He has a reputation with the women that I'm ashamed to
+mention even before your mother, much less her daughter--"
+
+"Oh, I know what you mean! Oh, you're like all the rest--down on him.
+You mean that silly talk about him and Norma Beautiful--"
+
+"Oh my God, Roody, listen to her!"
+
+"I can clear that up in a minute. He never cared a thing for her. It was
+just their always playing in the same pictures, and that silly matinee
+public, first thing he knew, got to linking their names together."
+
+"Bleema--for God's sake--baby--what do you know about such?"
+
+"Bleema, you're killing your mother! Your mother that used to rock you
+in your cradle while she stitched on the machine to buy you more
+comforts--a mother that--"
+
+"Oh, if you're going to begin that!"
+
+"Your poor old grandmother--don't she mean nothing? You saw how she
+looked just now when they took her out, even before she knows what it's
+all about--"
+
+"I hope she never has a worse trouble than for me to marry the best--"
+
+Then Mr. Pelz came down with crashing fist that shattered an opalescent
+wine-glass and sent a great stain sprawling over the cloth.
+
+"By God, I'll kill him first! The dirty hou--"
+
+"Pelz, for God's sake, control yourself!"
+
+'I'll kill him, I tell you, Feist!"
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"You can't scare me that way, dad. I'm no baby to be hollered at like
+that. I love Lester Spencer, and I'm going to marry him!"
+
+"I'll kill him; I'll--"
+
+"Roody, Roody, for God's sake! 'Sh-h-h, the servants! Williams, close
+quick all the doors. Roody, for my sake, if not your child's! Mr. Feist,
+please--please make him, Mr. Feist!"
+
+"Pelz, for God's sake, man, get yourself together! Excitement won't get
+you anywheres. Calm down. Be human."
+
+Then Mr. Pelz sat down again, but trembling and swallowing back with
+difficulty. "She got me wild, Feist. You must excuse me. She got me wild
+--my little girl--my little flower--"
+
+"Papa--dad darling! Don't you think it kills me, too, to see you like
+this? My own darling papa that's so terribly good. My own darling sweet
+mamma. Can't you see, darlings, a girl can't help it when--when--life
+just takes hold of her? I swear to you--I promise you that, when you
+come to know Lester as I know him you'll think him as fine and--and
+gorgeous as I do. Mamma, do you think your little Bleema would marry a
+man who doesn't just love you, and dad, too? It isn't like Lester is a
+nobody--a high-salaried fellow like him with a future. Why, the best
+will be none too good! He loves you both--told me so to-day. The one aim
+in his life is to do big things, to make you both proud, to make his
+name the biggest--"
+
+"Feist--Feist--can't you talk to her? Tell her it's madness--tell her
+she's ruining herself."
+
+"Why, Miss Bleema, there's nothing much a--a stranger like me can say at
+a time like this. It's only unfortunate that I happened to be here. If I
+were you, though, I think I'd take a little time to think this over.
+Sometimes a young girl--."
+
+"I have thought it over, Mr. Feist. For weeks and weeks I've thought of
+nothing else. That's how sure I am--so terribly sure."
+
+"I won't have it, I tell you! I'll wring his--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, Pelz. If you'll take my advice, you'll handle this thing
+without threats. Why not, Miss Bleema, even if you do feel so sure, give
+yourself a little more time to--"
+
+"No! No! No!"
+
+"Just a minute now. If you feel this way so strongly to-night, isn't it
+just possible that to-morrow, when you wake up, you may see things
+differently?"
+
+"I tell you I'm going to France with him--on our honeymoon. It's all
+fixed if--moms--dad--won't you please--darlings--can't you see--my
+happiness--"
+
+"O God, Roody, were ever parents in such a fix?"
+
+"Listen to me, Miss Bleema, now: I'm an old friend of the family, and
+you don't need to take exception to what I'm going to suggest. If your
+heart is so set on this thing, all right then, make up your mind it's an
+engagement and--"
+
+"By God, Feist, no!"
+
+"Wait, Pelz, I tell you you're making a mistake with your state of
+excitement."
+
+"Let Mr. Feist talk, Roody."
+
+"Make up your mind as I was saying, Miss Bleema, that this engagement
+exists between you and--and this young man. Then, instead of doing the
+hasty thing and marrying next week, you remain here a happy, engaged
+girl until the company returns in three weeks, and meanwhile you will
+have time to know your own mind and--"
+
+"No! No! No! I do know it! It's all fixed we're--"
+
+"That's a fine idea of Mr. Feist's, Bleema darling. For mamma's sake,
+baby. For grandma's. If it's got to be an engagement, hold it until
+after he gets back. Don't go rushing in. Take time to think a little.
+France is no place for a honeymoon now--submarines and all."
+
+"Oh, I know! You hope he'll get sunk with a submarine."
+
+"Shame, Miss Bleema; shame!"
+
+"All mamma means, darling, is take a little time and get a--a trousseau
+like a girl like you has to have. If your heart is so set on it, can't
+you do that much to please mamma? That much?"
+
+"There's a trick. You want me to wait and then--"
+
+"Miss Bleema, is my promise to you enough that there's no trick? On my
+respect for your parents and grandmother, there's no trick. If it is
+only to please them, wait those few weeks and do it more dignified. If
+it's got to be, then it's got to be. Am I right, Pelz?"
+
+Mr. Pelz turned away, nodding his head, but with lips too wry to speak.
+
+"O my God, yes! Mr. Feist, you're right. Bleema, promise us! Promise!"
+
+"Just a matter of a few weeks more or less, Miss Bleema. Just so your
+parents are satisfied you know your own mind."
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Then, I say, if you still feel as you do, not even they have the right
+to interfere."
+
+"Promise us, Bleema; promise us that!"
+
+"I--I'll be engaged on your word of honor--without any fussing about
+it?"
+
+"An engaged girl, Miss Bleema, like any other engaged girl."
+
+"But dad--look at him--he won't--p-promise," trembling into tears.
+
+"Of course he will--won't you, Pelz? And you know the reputation your
+father has for a man of his word."
+
+"Will--will he promise?"
+
+"You do; don't you, Pelz?"
+
+Again the nod from the bitter inverted features.
+
+"Now, Miss Bleema?"
+
+"Well then, I--I--p-promise."
+
+On a May-day morning that was a kiss to the cheek and even ingratiated
+itself into the bale-smelling, truck-rumbling pier-shed, Mr. Lester
+Spencer, caparisoned for high seas by Fifth Avenue's highest
+haberdasher, stood off in a little cove of bags and baggage,
+yachting-cap well down over his eyes, the nattiest thing in nautical
+ulsters buttoned to the chin. Beside him, Miss Norma Beautiful, her
+small-featured pink-and-whiteness even smaller and pinker from the
+depths of a great cart-wheel of rose-colored hat, completely swathed in
+rose-colored veiling.
+
+"For a snap of my finger I'd spill the beans--that's how stuck on this
+situation I am!"
+
+Mr. Spencer plunged emphatic arms into large patch-pockets, his chin
+projecting beyond the muffle of collar.
+
+"Just you try it and see where it lands you!"
+
+Then Miss Beautiful from the rosy depths of hat began to quiver of
+voice, jerky little sobs catching her up.
+
+"I can't stand it! I b-bit off a b-bigger piece than I can swallow."
+
+"Now, Darling Beautiful, I ask you would your own Lester do anything
+that wasn't just going to be the making of his girl as well as himself?
+Is it anything, Angel Beautiful, he is asking you to do except
+wait until--"
+
+"I can't bear it, I tell you! A little red-haired kike like her! How do
+I know what I'm letting myself in for? There's only one ground for
+divorce in this state. What guarantee have I you'll get free on it?"
+
+"My guarantee, Pussy. You're letting yourself in for a pink limousine to
+match that pink sweetness of yours and a jumping-rope of pearls to match
+those sweet teeth of yours and--"
+
+"I want black pearls, Lester, like Lucille Du Pont's."
+
+"Black, then. Why, Angel Beautiful, you just know that there's not a
+hair on any head in the world, much less a red one, I'd change for one
+of my girl's golden ones. You think I'd ever have known the little
+Reddie was on earth if she hadn't just flung herself at my head! She
+could have been six Rudolph Pelz's daughters, and I wouldn't have had
+eyes for her."
+
+"But, Lester--she--she's right cute. What guarantee have I got?"
+
+"Cross my heart and swear to die, Angel! Haven't I already sworn it to
+you a thousand thousand times? You wouldn't want me to close my eyes to
+the chance of a lifetime--you know you wouldn't, Beautiful, when it's
+your chance as much as mine. Both ours!"
+
+"I--if only it was--over, Lester--all--over!"
+
+"What's three weeks, Angel Beautiful? The very day I'm back I'll pull
+the trick with the little red head, and then I'm for letting things
+happen quick."
+
+"And me, what'll I--"
+
+"I'm going to move you into the solid-goldest hotel suite in this here
+town, Pussy. I'm going to form the Norma Beautiful Film Corporation in
+my own girl's name, the first pop out of the box. Why, there's just
+nowhere Rudolph Pelz's son-in-law can't get his girl in the little while
+I'm going to stick."
+
+"How do I know? How do I know they won't find a way to hold you?"
+
+"Why, Darling Beautiful, when they're through with me, they'll pay me
+off in my weight in gold. Haven't you said things often enough about
+your boy's temper when he lets it fly? You think they're going to let
+me cut up nonsense with that little Reddie of theirs? Why, that old man
+would pay with his right eye to protect her!"
+
+"O God, it's rotten--a nice fellow like Pelz--a--"
+
+"It's done every day, Gorgeous Beautiful. Anyway, there's no way to
+really hurt the rich. Look at Warren Norton--the Talcott family paid
+Warren two hundred cool thousand to give her back quietly. It's done
+every day, Gorgeousness. Many a fellow like me has gotten himself roped
+into a thing he wanted to get out of quietly. That little girl lassoed
+me. I should have eyes for a little Reddie like her with the Deep-Sea
+Pearl of the world my very own. I'm going to marry you, too,
+Gorgeousness. I'm going to see you right through, this time. Jump right
+out of the frying-pan into the hottest, sweetest fire!"
+
+"I tell you I can't stand it! Promising to marry me with another one to
+see through before you get to me. It--it's terrible! I--"
+
+"There you go again! The Norma Beautiful Film Corporation doesn't tickle
+my pink rose on the eardrums! She doesn't want it! Wouldn't have it!"
+
+"I do, Lester; I do--only--only--I--the little Reddie--it's not right.
+She's a sweet little thing. I'm afraid, Lester--I think I must be going
+crazy! I wish to God I could hate you the way you ought to be hated. I
+tell you I can't stand it. You sailing off like this. The coming
+back--her--I'll kill myself during the ceremony. I--"
+
+"You create a scene down here and you'll be sorry!"
+
+"Lester--please!"
+
+"They'll be here any minute now. They're late as it is. Look--
+everybody's on board already! One more blast, and I'll have to go, too.
+You just kick up nasty at the last minute and watch me!"
+
+"I won't, Lester; I won't! I swear to God! Only, be good to me; be sweet
+to me, darling! Say good-by before they--she comes. I'm all right,
+darling. Please--please--"
+
+He caught her to him then, and back in the sheltering cove of baggage
+thrust back her head, kissing deep into the veiling.
+
+"Beautiful! Angel Beautiful!"
+
+"Swear to me, Lester, you'll see me through."
+
+"I swear, Beautiful."
+
+"Swear to me, or hope to die and lose your luck!"
+
+He kissed her again so that her hat tilted backward, straining at its
+pins.
+
+"Hope to die and lose my luck."
+
+"My own preciousness!" she said, her eyes tear-glazed and yearning up
+into his.
+
+"'Sh-h, Pussy; here comes Sol Sopinsky to hurry me on board. Funny the
+Pelz crowd don't show up. Quit it! Here they come! That's their car. Cut
+it--quick!"
+
+With noiselessly thrown clutch, the Pelz limousine drew up between an
+aisle of bales, its door immediately flung open. First, Mr. Pelz
+emerging, with an immediate arm held back for Mrs. Pelz. Last, Miss
+Pelz, a delightful paradox of sheer summer silk and white-fox furs, her
+small face flushed and carefully powdered up about the eyes.
+
+"There he is, dad! Over there with Norma and Uncle Sol!"
+
+"Don't run so, Bleema; he'll come over to you."
+
+But she was around and through the archipelago of baggage.
+
+"Lester darling! There was a tie-up at Thirty-third Street. I thought
+I'd die! Here's a little package of letters, love, one for each day on
+the steamer. Lester, have you got everything--are you all ready to leave
+your girlie--Hello, Norma--Uncle Sol! Lester are you--you sorry to leave
+you--your--"
+
+"Now, now--no water-works!"
+
+"My all! My own boy!" She drew him, to hide the quickening trembling of
+her lips, back behind the shelter of piled baggage.
+
+"Lester darling--I--I didn't sleep a wink all night! I--I'm so nervous,
+dear. What if a submarine should catch you? What if you meet a French
+girl and fall in--"
+
+"Now, now, Reddie! Is that what you think of your boy?"
+
+"I don't, dearest; I don't! I keep telling myself I'm a silly--What's
+three weeks? But when it means separation from the sweetest, dearest--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, Angel darling! There's the last blast, and your father's
+angry. See him beckoning! The company's been on board twenty minutes
+already. Look--there's the sailors lined up at the gangplank--Bleema--"
+
+"Promise me, Lester--"
+
+"I do! I do promise! Anything! Look, girlie: Miss Beautiful will feel
+hurt the way we left her standing. It isn't nice--our hiding this way."
+
+"I can't bear, dearest, to see you go--"
+
+"Look! See--there's David Feist come down, too. You don't want him to
+see my girl make a cry baby of herself over a three weeks' trip--"
+
+"You'll write, Lester, and cable every day?"
+
+"You just know I will!"
+
+"You won't go near the war?"
+
+"You just know I won't!"
+
+"You--"
+
+"Your father, Bleema--let's not get him sore, hiding back here. Come;
+they'll draw up the plank on me."
+
+"I'll be waving out from the edge of the pier, darling. I've got a
+special permit to go out there. I just couldn't stand not seeing my boy
+up to the last second. It's terrible for you to sneak off on a boat like
+this, darling, without flags and music the way it was before the war. I
+want music and flags when my boy goes off. Oh, Lester, I'll be working
+so hard on the sweetest little trousseau and the sweetest little--"
+
+"Bleema, please! There's Miss Beautiful overhearing every word. Please!"
+"Well, good-by, Miss Beautiful; don't walk off with the studio while
+we're gone--take care of yourself--"
+
+"Good-by--Mr. Spencer--_b-bon voyage_!"
+
+"Hi, Mr. Feist, mighty handsome of you to come down to see me off!"
+
+"Safe journey, Spencer! Remember you've got a precious piece of anxiety
+waiting back here for you."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Feist--isn't--isn't--it awful--submarine-time and all? I--I
+just can't bear it!"
+
+"Now! Now! Is that the way for a brave little girl to talk?"
+
+"Bleema, if you can't control yourself, you had better go sit in the
+car. I'm ashamed before the company."
+
+"Roody, the poor child!"
+
+"He--that's the only way papa talks to me these days--fault-finding!"
+
+"Now, now, Miss Bleema! Here--take mine; yours is all wet."
+
+Another blast then, reverberating into the din.
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+"Good-by, Lester--good-by, darling--cable every day--by--good-by--boy!"
+
+"Good-by, little Reddie! Thanks for the beautiful fruits and letters.
+Good-by, Mr. Pelz!"
+
+"Play fair in the picture, Spencer. Don't hog the scenes. Help instead
+of hinder Sopinsky."
+
+"Indeed I will, sir! Good-by, Mrs. Pelz!"
+
+"Good-by, Lester! God bless you, my boy! Take care of yourself, and
+remember my little girl is--"
+
+"Lester--Lester, a cable every day!"
+
+"Bleema, will you please let the man catch his boat? It's an
+embarrassment to even watch you."
+
+"Lester--Lester--"
+
+"Yes, yes; good-by, everybody!"
+
+"I'll be out at the pier-edge--wave back, darling!"
+
+"Yes, yes! Good-by, Miss Beautiful! By, all!" And then, from an upper
+deck, more and more shouted farewells.
+
+"They're moving! Come, Mr. Feist--please--with me--I've got the
+permit--don't let papa see us--come--the pier-edge!"
+
+"Sure! This way, Miss Bleema--here--under--quick!"
+
+Out in the open, May lay with Italian warmth over a harbor that kicked
+up the tiniest of frills. A gull cut through the blueness, winging it
+in festoons.
+
+"Over this way, Miss Bleema; we can see her steaming out."
+
+"Lester--good-by--Lester--a cable every day! I'll be waiting. Good-by!"
+
+All this unavailingly flung to the great hulk of boat moving so proud of
+bow and so grandly out to sea, decks of faces and waving kerchiefs
+receding quickly.
+
+"Good-by--darling--oh--oh--"
+
+"'Sh-h--'sh-h-h, Miss Bleema. Here--take another of mine. Yours is all
+wet again. My--what a rainy day! Here--let me dry them for you.
+Hold still!"
+
+"Oh--oh--cable every day, darling--write--oh, Mr. Feist--he
+don't see us--he's out of sight--don't wipe 'em so hard, Mr.
+Feist--you--you h-hurt!"
+
+Out toward the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer,
+cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay
+whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore
+the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of
+light from off everywhere--off smokestacks and polished railings, off
+plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank,
+to where gilt letters spelled out shiningly:
+
+"_LUSITANIA._"
+
+
+
+A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD
+
+How difficult it is to think of great lives in terms of the small
+mosaics that go to make up the pattern of every man's day-by-day--the
+too tepid shaving-water; the badly laundered shirt-front; the
+three-minute egg; the too-short fourth leg of the table; the draught on
+the neck; the bad pen; the neighboring rooster; the misplaced key; the
+slipping chest-protector.
+
+Richelieu, who walked with kings, presided always at the stitching of
+his red robes. Boswell says somewhere that a badly starched stock could
+kill his Johnson's morning. It was the hanging of his own chintzes that
+first swayed William Morris from epic mood to household utensils.
+Seneca, first in Latin in the whole Silver Age, prepared his own
+vegetables. There is no outgrowing the small moments of life, and to
+those lesser ones of us how often they become the large ones!
+
+To Samuel Lipkind, who, in a span of thirty years, had created and
+carried probably more than his share of this world's responsibilities,
+there was no more predominant moment in all his day, even to the signing
+of checks and the six-o'clock making of cash, than that matinal instant,
+just fifteen minutes before the stroke of seven, when Mrs. Lipkind, in
+a fuzzy gray wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed him awake,
+and, from across the hall, he could hear the harsh sing of his bath in
+the drawing.
+
+There are moments like that which never grow old. For the fifteen years
+that Samuel Lipkind had reached the Two Dollar Hat Store before his two
+clerks, he had awakened to that same kiss on his slightly open mouth,
+the gray hair and the ever-graying eyes close enough to be stroked, the
+pungency of coffee seeming to wind like wreaths of mundane aroma above
+the bed, and always across the aisle of hallway that tepid cataract
+leaping in glory into porcelain.
+
+Take the particular morning which ushers in our story, although it might
+have been any of twelve times three hundred others.
+
+"Sammy!" This upon opening his door, then crossing to close the
+conservative five inches of open window and over to the bedside for the
+kissing him awake. "Sammy, get up!"
+
+The snuggle away into the crotch of his elbow.
+
+"Sammy! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up! Sammy, a quarter to seven! You
+want to be late? I can't get him up!"
+
+"M-m-m-m-m-m!"
+
+"You want your own clerks to beat you to business so they can say they
+got a lazy boss?"
+
+"I'm awake, ma." Reaching up to stroke her hair, thin and gray now, and
+drawn back into an early-morning knob.
+
+"Don't splash in the bath-room so this morning, Sammy; it's a shame for
+the wall-paper."
+
+"I won't"--drawing the cord of his robe about his waist, and as if they
+did not both of them know just how faithfully disregarded would be that
+daily admonition.
+
+Then Mrs. Lipkind flung back the snowy sheets and bed-coverings, baring
+the striped ticking of the mattress.
+
+"Hurry, Sammy! I'm up so long I'm ready for my second cup of coffee."
+
+"Two minutes." And off across the hall, whistling, towel across arm.
+
+It was that little early moment sublimated by nothing more than the
+fusty beginnings of a workaday, the mere recollecting of which was one
+day to bring a wash of tears behind his eyes and a twist of anguish into
+his heart.
+
+Next breakfast, and to dine within reach of the coal-range which brews
+it is so homely a fashion that even Mr. Lipkind, upon whom such matters
+of bad form lay as a matter of course, was wont to remonstrate.
+
+"What's the matter with the dining-room, ma? Since when have
+dining-rooms gone out of style?"
+
+Pouring his coffee from the speckled granite pot, Mrs. Lipkind would
+smile up and over it.
+
+"All I ask is my son should never have it worse than to eat all his
+lifetime in just such a kitchen like mine. Off my kitchen floor I would
+rather eat than off some people's fine polished mahogany."
+
+The mahogany was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white
+spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within
+the soul of the housewife who achieves it--the lace-edged shelves, the
+scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss
+window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the
+sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white
+sink, hand-polished; the bland row of blue-and-white china jars spicily
+inscribed to nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. That such a kitchen could be
+within the tall and brick confines of an upper-Manhattan apartment-house
+was only another of the thousand thousand paradoxes over which the city
+spreads her glittering skirts. The street within roaring distance, the
+highway of Lenox Avenue flowing dizzily constantly past her windows, the
+interior of Mrs. Lipkind's apartment, from the chromos of the dear dead
+upon its walls to the upholstery of another decade against those walls,
+was as little of the day as if the sweep of the city were a gale across
+a mid-Victorian plain and the flow past the windows a broad river
+ruffled by wind.
+
+"You're right, ma; there's not a kitchen in New York I'd trade it for.
+But what's the idea of paying rent on a dining-room?"
+
+"Sa-y, if not for when Clara comes and how in America all young people
+got extravagant ideas, we was just as well off without one in our three
+rooms in Simpson Street."
+
+"A little more of that mackerel, please."
+
+You to whom the chilled grapefruit and the eggshell cup of morning
+coffee are a gastronomic feat not always easy to hurdle, raise not your
+digestive eyebrows. At precisely fifteen minutes past seven six mornings
+in the week, seven-thirty, Sundays, Mrs. Lipkind and her son sat down to
+a breakfast that was steamingly fit for those only who dwell in the
+headacheless kingdom of long, sleepful nights and fur-coatless tongues.
+
+"A few more fried potatoes with it, Sammy?"
+
+"Whoa! You want to feed me up for the fat boys' regiment!"
+
+Mrs. Lipkind glanced quickly away, her profile seeming to quiver. "Don't
+use that word, Sam--even in fun--it's a knife in me."
+
+"What word?"
+
+"'Regiment.'"
+
+He reached across to pat the vein-corduroyed back of her hand.
+
+"My little sweetheart mamma," he said.
+
+She, in turn, put out her hand over his, her old sagging throat visibly
+constricting in a gulp, and her eyes as if they could never be finished
+with yearning over him. "You're a good boy, Sammy."
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"I always say no matter what it is bad my life has had for me with my
+twenty-five years a widow, my only daughter to marry out six hundred
+miles away from me, my business troubles when I had to lose the little
+store what your papa left me, nothing ain't nothing, Sammy, when a
+mother can raise for herself a boy like mine."
+
+"You mean when a fellow can pick out for himself a little sweetheart
+mamma like mine."
+
+"Sammy, stop it with your pinching-me nonsense like I was your best
+girl!"
+
+"Well, ain't you?"
+
+She paused, her cup of coffee half-way to her lips, the lines of her
+face seeming to want to lift into what would be a smile. "No, Sammy;
+your mother knows she ain't, and if she was anything but a selfish old
+woman, she would be glad that she ain't."
+
+"'Sh! 'Sh!" said Mr. Lipkind, reaching this time half across the table
+for a still steaming muffin and opening it so that its hot fragrance
+came out. '"Sh! No April showers! Uh! Uh! Don't you dare!"
+
+"I ain't," said Mrs. Lipkind, smiling through her tear and dashing at it
+with the back of her hand. "For why should I when I got only everything
+to be thankful for?"
+
+"Now you're shouting!"
+
+"How you think, Sammy, Clara likes a cheese pie for supper to-night?
+Last week I could see she didn't care much for the noodle pudding I
+baked her."
+
+Mr. Lipkind, who was ever so slightly and prematurely bald and still
+more slightly and prematurely rotund, suffered a rush of color then, his
+ears suddenly and redly conspicuous.
+
+"That's--that's what I started to tell you last night, ma. Clara
+telephoned over to the store in the afternoon she--she thought she
+wouldn't come to supper this Wednesday night, ma."
+
+"Sammy--you--you and Clara 'ain't got nothing wrong together, the way
+you don't see each other so much these two months?"
+
+"Of course not, ma; it's just happened a few times that way. The
+trade's in town; that's all."
+
+"How is it all of a sudden a girl in the wholesale ribbon
+business should have the trade to entertain like she was in the
+cloak-and-suit chorus?"
+
+"It's not that Clara's busy to-night, ma. She--she only thought she--for
+a change--there's a little side table for two--for three--where she
+boards--she thought maybe if--if you didn't mind, I'd go over to her
+place for Wednesday-night supper for a change. You know how a girl like
+Clara gets to feeling obligated."
+
+"Obligated from eating once a week supper in her own future house!"
+
+"She asked I should bring you, too, ma, but I know how bashful you are
+to go in places like that."
+
+"In such a place where it's all style and no food--yes."
+
+"That's it; so we--I thought, ma, that is, if you don't mind, instead of
+Clara here to-night for supper, I--I'd go over to her place. If you
+don't mind, ma."
+
+There was a silence, so light, so slight that it would not have even
+held the dropping of a pin, but yet had a depth and a quality that set
+them both to breathing faster.
+
+"Why, of course, Sammy, you should go!"
+
+"I--we thought for a change."
+
+"You should have told me yesterday, Sammy, before I marketed poultry."
+
+"I know, ma; I--just didn't. Clara only 'phoned at four."
+
+"A few more fried potatoes?"
+
+"No more."
+
+"Sit up straight, Sam, from out your round shoulders."
+
+"You ain't--mad, ma?"
+
+"For why, Sammy, should I be mad that you go to Clara for a change to
+supper. I'm glad if you get a change."
+
+"It's not that, ma. It's just that she asked it. You know how a person
+feels, her taking her Wednesday-night suppers here for more than five
+years and never once have I--we--set foot in any of her boarding-houses.
+She imagines she's obligated. You know how Clara is, so independent."
+
+"You should go. I hear, too, how Mrs. Schulem sets a good table."
+
+"I'll be home by nine, ma--you sure you don't mind?"
+
+"I wouldn't mind, Sammy, if it was twelve. Since when is it that a
+grown-up son has to apologize to his mother if he takes a step
+without her?"
+
+"You can believe me, ma, but I've got so it don't seem like theater or
+nothing seems like going out without my little sweetheart mamma on one
+arm and Clara on the other."
+
+"It's not right, Sammy, you should spoil me so. Don't think that even if
+you don't let me talk about it, I don't know in my heart how I'm in
+yours and Clara's way."
+
+"Ma, now just you start that talk and you know what I'll do--I'll get up
+and leave the table."
+
+"Sammy, if only you would let me talk about it!"
+
+"You heard what I said."
+
+"To think my son should have to wait with his engagement for five years
+and never once let his mother ask him why it is he waits. It ain't
+because of to-night I want to talk about it, Sam, but if I thought it
+was me that had stood between you and Clara all these five years, if--if
+I thought it was because of me you don't see each other so much here
+lately, I--"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"I couldn't stand it, son. If ever a boy deserved happiness, that boy is
+you. A boy that scraped his fingers to the bone to marry his sister off
+well. A boy that took the few dollars left from my notion-store and made
+such a success in retail men's hats and has given it to his mother like
+a queen. If I thought I was standing in such a boy's way, who ain't only
+a grand business man and a grand son and brother, but would make any
+girl the grandest husband that only his father before him could equal, I
+couldn't live, Sammy, I couldn't live."
+
+"You should know how sick such talk makes me!"
+
+"I haven't got hard feelings, Sammy, because Clara don't like it here."
+
+"She does."
+
+"For why should an up-to-date American girl like Clara like such an
+old-fashioned place as I keep? Nowadays, girls got different ideas. They
+don't think nothing of seventy-five-dollar suits and twelve-dollar
+shoes. I can't help it that it goes against my grain no matter how fine
+a money-maker a girl is. In the old country my sister Carrie and me
+never even had shoes on our feet until we were twelve, much less--"
+
+"But, ma--"
+
+"Oh, I don't blame her, Sam. I don't blame her that she don't like it
+the way I dish up everything on the table so we can serve ourselves. She
+likes it passed the way they did that night at Mrs. Goldfinger's new
+daughter-in-law's, where everything is carried from one to the next one,
+and you got to help yourself quick over your shoulders."
+
+"Clara's like me, ma; she wants you to keep a servant to do the waiting
+on you."
+
+"It ain't in me, Sam, to be bossed to by a servant, just like I can't
+take down off the walls pictures of your papa _selig_ and your grandma,
+because it ain't stylish they should be there. It's a feeling in me for
+my own flesh and blood that nothing can change."
+
+"Clara don't want you to change that, ma."
+
+"She's a fine, up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to
+head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in
+her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old
+woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to
+Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such
+terrible fears for my boy and--and how things are now on the other side
+and--and--"
+
+"Now, now, ma; no April showers!"
+
+"An old woman that can't even be happy with a good daughter like Ruby,
+but hangs always on her son like a stone around his neck!"
+
+"You mean like a diamond."
+
+"A stone, holding him down."
+
+"Ma!" Mr. Lipkind pushed back, napkin awry at his throat and his eyes
+snapping points of light. "Now if you want to spoil my breakfast, just
+say so and I--I'll quit. Why should you be living with Ruby out in
+Marietta if you're happier here with me where you belong? If you knew
+how sore these here fits of yours make me, you'd cut them out--that's
+what you would. I'm not going over to Clara's at all now for supper, if
+that's how you feel about it."
+
+Mrs. Lipkind rose then, crossed, leaning over the back of his chair and
+inclosing his face in the quivering hold of her two hands. "Sammy,
+Sammy, I didn't mean it! I know I ain't in your way. How can I be when
+there ain't a day passes I don't invite you to get married and come here
+to live and fix the flat any way what Clara wants or even move down-town
+in a finer one where she likes it? I know I ain't in your way, son. I
+take it back."
+
+"Well, that's more like it."
+
+"You mustn't be mad at mamma when she gets old-fashioned ideas in her
+head."
+
+He stroked her hand at his cheek, pressing it closer.
+
+"Sit down and finish your breakfast, little sweetheart mamma."
+
+"Is it all right now, Sammy?"
+
+"Of course it is!" he said, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
+
+"Promise mamma you'll go over by Clara's to-night."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Promise me, Sammy; I can't stand it if you don't."
+
+"Alright, I'll go, ma."
+
+The Declaration of Economic Independence is not always a subtle one.
+There was that about Clara Bloom, even to the rather Hellenic swing of
+her very tailor-made back and the firm, neat clack of her not too high
+heels, which proclaimed that a new century had filed her fetter-free
+from the nine-teen-centuries-long chain of women whose pin-money had too
+often been blood-money or the filched shekels from trousers pocket or
+what in the toga corresponded thereto.
+
+And yet, when Miss Bloom smiled, which upon occasion she did
+spontaneously enough to show a gold molar, there were not only Hypatia
+and Portia in the straight line of her lips, but lurked in the little
+tip-tilt at the corners a quirk from Psyche, who loved and was so loved,
+and in the dimple in her chin a manhole, as it were, for Mr.
+Samuel Lipkind.
+
+At six o'clock, where the wintry workaday flows into dusk and Fifth
+Avenue flows across Broadway, they met, these two, finding each other
+out in the gaseous shelter of a Subway kiosk. She from the tall, thin,
+skylightless skyscraper dedicated to the wholesale supply of woman's
+insatiable demand for the ribbon gewgaw; he from a plate-glass shop with
+his name inscribed across its front and more humbly given over to the
+more satiable demand of the male for the two-dollar hat. There was a
+gold-and-black sign which ran across the not inconsiderable width of
+Mr. Lipkind's store-front and which invariably captioned his four inches
+of Sunday-news-paper advertisement:
+
+SAMMY LIPKIND WANTS YOUR HEAD
+
+As near as it is possible for the eye to simulate the heart, there was
+exactly that sentiment in his glance now as he found out Miss Bloom, she
+in a purple-felt hat and the black scallops of escaping hair, blacker
+because the red was out in her cheeks.
+
+He broke into the kind of smile that lifted his every feature,
+screw-lines at his eyes coming out, head bared, and his greeting
+beginning to come even before she was within hearing distance of it.
+
+There was in Mr. Lipkind precious little of Lothario, Launcelot,
+Galahad, or any of that blankety-blank-verse coterie. There remains yet
+unsung the lay of the five-foot-five, slightly bald, and ever so
+slightly rotund lover. Falstaff and Romeo are the extremes of what Mr.
+Lipkind was the not unhappy medium. Offhand in public places, men would
+swap crop conditions and city politics with him. Twice, tired mothers in
+railway stations had volunteered him their babies to dandle. Young
+women, however, were not all impervious to him, and uncrossed their feet
+and became consciously unconscious of him across street-car aisles. In
+his very Two Dollar Hat Store, Sara Minniesinger, hooked of profile, but
+who had impeccably kept his debits and credits for twelve years back
+under the stock-balcony and a green eye-shade, was wont to cry of
+evenings over and for him into her dingy pillow. He was so unconscious
+of this that, on the twelfth anniversary of her incarceration beneath
+the stock-balcony, he commissioned his mother to shop her a crown of
+thorns in the form of a gold-handled umbrella with a bachelor-girl
+flash-light attachment.
+
+There are men like that, to whom life is not only a theosophy of one
+God, but of one women who is sufficient thereof. When Samuel Lipkind
+greeted Clara Bloom there was just that in his ardently
+appraising glance.
+
+"Didn't mean to keep you waiting, Clara--a last-minute customer. _You_
+know."
+
+"I've been counting red heads and wishing the Subway was pulled by white
+horses."
+
+"Say, Clara, but you look a picture! Believe me, Bettina, that is some
+lid!"
+
+Miss Bloom tucked up a rear strand of curl, turning her head to extreme
+profile for his more complete approval.
+
+"Is it an elegant trifle, Sam? I ask you is it an elegant trifle?"
+
+"Clara, it's--immense! The best yet! What did it set you back?"
+
+"Don't ask me! I'm afraid just saying it would give your mother
+heart-failure by mental telepathy."
+
+He linked her arm. "Whatever you paid, it's worth the money. It sets you
+off like a gipsy queen."
+
+"None of that, Sam! Mush is fattening."
+
+"Mush nothing! It's the truth."
+
+"Hurry. Schulem's got a new rule--no reserving the guest-table."
+
+They let themselves be swept into the great surge of the underground
+river with all of the rather thick-skinned unsensitiveness to
+shoulder-to-shoulder contact which the Subway engenders. Swaying from
+straps in a locked train, which tore like a shriek through a tube whose
+sides sweated dampness, they talked in voices trained to compete
+with the roar.
+
+"What's the idea, Clara? When you telephoned yesterday I was afraid
+maybe it was--Eddie Leonard cutting in on my night again."
+
+"Eddie nothing. Is it a law, Sam, that I have to eat off your mother
+every Wednesday night of my life?"
+
+"No--only--you know how it is when you get used to things one way."
+
+"I told you I had something to talk over, didn't I?"
+
+They were rounding a curve now, so that they swayed face to face, nose
+to nose.
+
+A few crinkles, frequent with him of late, came out in rays from his
+eyes.
+
+"Is it anything you--you couldn't say in front of ma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He inserted two fingers into his collar, rearing back his head.
+
+"Anything wrong, Clara?"
+
+"You mean is anything right."
+
+They rode in silence after that, both of them reading in three colors
+the border effulgencies of frenzied advertising.
+
+But when they emerged to a quieter up-town night that was already
+pointed with a first star, he took her arm as they turned off into a
+side-street that was architecturally a barracks to the eye, brownstone
+front after brownstone front after brownstone front. Block after block
+of New York's side-streets are sunk thus in brown study.
+
+"You mustn't be so ready to be put out over every little thing I say,
+Clara. Is it anything wrong to want you up at the house just as often as
+we can get you?"
+
+"No, Sam; it ain't that."
+
+"Well then, what is it?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use beginning all that again? I want to begin to-night
+where we usually leave off."
+
+"Is it--is it something we've talked about before, Clara?"
+
+"Yes--and no. We've talked so much and so long without ever getting
+anywheres--what's the difference whether we've ever talked it before
+or not?"
+
+"You just wait, Clara; everything is going to come out fine for us."
+
+Her upper lip lifted slightly. "Yes," she said; "I've heard that
+before."
+
+"We're going to be mighty happy some day, just the same, and don't you
+let yourself forget it. We've got good times ahead."
+
+"Oh dear!" she sighed out.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+He patted her arm. "You'll never know, Clara, the torture it's been for
+me even your going out those few times with Eddie Leonard has put me
+through. You're mine, Clara; a hundred Eddies couldn't change that."
+
+"Who said anybody wanted to change it?"
+
+He patted her arm again very closely. "You're a wonderful girl, Clara."
+
+They turned up the stoop of Mrs. Schulem's boarding-house, strictly
+first-class. How they flourish in the city, these institutions of the
+Not Yet, the Never Was, the Never Will Be, and the Has Been! They are
+the half-way houses going up and the mausoleums coming down life's
+incline, and he who lingers is lost to the drab destiny of this or that
+third-floor-back hearthstone, hot and cold running water, all the
+comforts of home. That is why, even as she moved up from the rooming to
+the boarding-house and down from the third-floor back to the
+second-story front, there was always under Clara Bloom's single bed the
+steamer-trunk scarcely unpacked, and in her heart the fear that, after
+all, this might not be transiency, but home. That is why, too, she paid
+her board by the week and used printed visiting-cards.
+
+And yet, if there exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among
+boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem's was of it. None of the boiled odors lay
+on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of
+better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but
+the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor.
+The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his
+bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two
+more of him were also genii of the basement dining-hall, two low rooms
+made into one and entirely bisected by a long-stemmed T of dining-table,
+and between the lace-curtained windows a small table for two, with
+fairly snowy napkins flowering out of its water-tumblers, and in its
+center a small island of pressed-glass vinegar-cruet, bottle of darkly
+portentous condiment, glass of sugar, and another of teaspoons.
+
+It was here that Miss Bloom and Mr. Lipkind finally settled themselves,
+snugly and sufficiently removed from the T-shaped battalion of eyes and
+ears to insure some privacy.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Lipkind, unflowering his napkin, spreading it across
+his knees, and exhaling, "this is fine!"
+
+There was an aura of authoritativeness seemed to settle over Miss Bloom.
+
+This to one of the black-faced genii: "Take care of us right to-night,
+Johnson, and I'll fix it up with you. See if you can't manage it in the
+kitchen to bring us a double portion of those banana fritters I see
+they're eating at the big table. Say they're for Miss Bloom. I'll fix it
+up with you."
+
+"Now, Clara, don't you go bothering with extras for me. This is
+certainly fine. Sorry you never asked me before."
+
+"You know why I never asked you before."
+
+"Why, you never saw the like how pleased ma was. She was the first one
+to fall in with the idea of my coming to-night."
+
+She dipped into a shallow plate of amber soup. "I know," she said, "all
+about that."
+
+"Ma's a good sport about being left at home alone."
+
+"How do you know? You never tried it until to-night. I'll bet it's the
+first time since that night you first met me, five years ago, at Jerome
+Fertig's, and it wouldn't have been then if she hadn't had the neuralgia
+and it was your own clerk's wedding."
+
+He laid down his spoon, settling back a bit from the table, pulling the
+napkin across his knees out into a string.
+
+"I thought we'd gone all over that, Clara."
+
+"Yes; but where did it get us? That's why we're here to-night, Sam--to
+get somewheres."
+
+He crumbed his bread. "What do you mean, Clara?"
+
+She forced his slow gaze to hers calmly, her hands outstretched on the
+table between them. "I've made up my mind, Sam. Things can't go on this
+way no longer between us."
+
+"Just what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that we've either got to act or quit."
+
+He was rolling the bread pills again, a flush rising. "You know where I
+stand, Clara, on things between us."
+
+"Yes, Sam, and now you know where I stand." The din of the dining-room
+surged over the pause between them. Still in the purple hat, and her
+wrap thrown back over her chair, she held that pause coolly, level of
+eye. "I'm thirty-one now, Sam, three weeks and two days older than you.
+I don't see the rest of my days with the Arnstein Ribbon Company. I'm
+not getting any younger. Five years is a long time out of a girl's life.
+Five of the best ones, too. She likes to begin to see her future when
+she reaches my age. A future with a good providing man. You and me are
+just where we started five years ago."
+
+"I know, Clara, and I'd give my right hand to change things."
+
+"If I'd been able to save a cent, it might be different. But I
+haven't--I'm that way. I make big and spend big. But you can't blame a
+girl for wanting to see her future. That's me, and I'm not ashamed
+to say it."
+
+"If only, Clara, I could get you to see things my way. If you'd be
+willing to try it with ma. Why, with a little diplomacy from you, ma'd
+move heaven and earth to please you."
+
+"There's no use beginning that, Sam; it's a waste of time. Why--why,
+just the difference in the way me and--and your mother feel on money
+matters is enough. There's no use to argue that with me; it's a waste
+of time."
+
+He lifted and let droop his shoulders with something of helplessness in
+the gesture. "What's the use, then? I'm sure I don't know what more to
+say to you, Clara. Oh, don't think my mother don't realize how things
+are between us--it's all I can do to keep denying and denying."
+
+"Well, you can't say she knows from my telling."
+
+"No; but there's not a day she don't say to me, particularly these last
+few times since you been breaking your dates with us pretty
+regular--I--well she sees how it worries me, and there's not a day she
+don't say to me, 'Sammy,' she said to me, only this morning, 'if I
+thought I was keeping you and Clara apart--'"
+
+"A blind man could see it."
+
+"There's not a day passes over her head she don't offer to go to live
+with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting
+her that time nearly killed her."
+
+"Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody."
+
+"It's my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn't no more live with
+Isadore Katz than she could fly. He's a fine fellow and all that, but
+she's not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and
+the children's food and things like Isadore loves to. She's used to her
+own little home and her own little way."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away
+from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. 'Sammy,' she wrote to
+me that time after ma's visit out there, 'I love our mother like you do,
+but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the
+housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better
+than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home
+and her own ways of doing.'"
+
+"I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that."
+
+"It's not nerve, Clara; it's the truth. Ruby's a good girl in her way."
+
+"What about you--ain't your life to be thought of? Ain't it enough she
+was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest
+in a ladies' ready-to-wear store out there?"
+
+"Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or
+any other kind further down-town that she'd want to pick out for
+herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to
+make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don't know it, but on your
+Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o'clock in the
+morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you'll like."
+
+"I'm not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she's a grand
+woman, and I admire a fellow that's good to his mother. I always say,
+'Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow
+will be good to his wife.'"
+
+"I'm not pretending to say ma mayn't be a little peculiar in her ways,
+but you never saw an old person that wasn't, did you? Neither am I
+saying it's exactly any girl's idea to start out married life with a
+third person in--"
+
+"I've always swore to myself, Sam, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, that
+if I can't marry to improve myself, I'm going to stay single till I can.
+I'm not a six-dollar-a-week stenog that has to marry for enough to eat.
+I can afford to buy a seventy-five dollar suit every winter of my life
+and twelve-dollar shoes every time I need them. The hat on my head cost
+me eighteen-fifty wholesale, without having to be beholding to
+nobody, and--"
+
+"Ma don't mean those things, Clara. It's just when she hears the price
+girls pay for things nowadays she can't help being surprised the way
+things have changed."
+
+"I'm not a small potato, Sam. I never could live like a small potato."
+
+"Why, you know there's nothing I like better than to see you dressed in
+the best that money can buy. You heard what I said about that hat just
+now, didn't you? Whatever it cost, it's worth it. I can afford to dress
+my little wife in the best that comes. There's nothing too good
+for her."
+
+"Yes; but--"
+
+"All ma needs, Clara, is a little humoring. She's had to stint so all
+her life, it's a little hard to get her used to a little prosperity.
+Take me. Why, if I bring her home a little shawl or a pockabook that
+cost, say, ten dollars, you think I tell her? No. I say, 'Here's a
+bargain I picked up for three ninety-eight,' and right away she's happy
+with something reduced."
+
+"Your mother and me, Sam, and, mind you, I'm not saying she isn't a
+grand old lady, wasn't no more made to live together than we was made to
+fly. I couldn't no more live her way than she could live mine. I've got
+a practical head on my shoulders--I don't deny it--and I want to improve
+ourselves in this world when we marry, and have an up-to-date home like
+every young couple that starts out nowadays."
+
+"Sure, we--"
+
+"That flat of yours up there or any other one under the conditions would
+be run like the ark. I'm an up-to-date girl, I am. There's not a girl
+living would be willing to marry a well-off fellow like you and go huck
+herself in a place she couldn't even have the running of herself or have
+her own say-so about the purse-strings. It may sound unbecoming, but
+when I marry I'm going to better myself, I am."
+
+"I--why--"
+
+"If she can't even stand for her own son-in-law walking into his own
+kitchen in his own house--Oh, you don't find me starting my married
+life that way at this late date. I haven't held off five years
+for that."
+
+Mr. Lipkind pushed back his but slightly tasted food, lines of strain
+and a certain whiteness out in his face. "It--it just seems awful,
+Clara, this going around in a circle and not getting anywheres."
+
+"I'm at the end of my rope, I am."
+
+"I see your point in a way, Clara, but, my God! a man's mother is his
+mother! It's eating up my life just as it's eating yours, but what you
+going to do about it? It just seems the best years of our life are
+going, waiting for God knows what."
+
+Hands clasped until her finger-nails whitened, Miss Bloom leaned across
+the table, her voice careful and concentrated. "Now you said something!
+That's why you and me are here alone together to-night. There's not
+going to be a sixth year of this kind of waiting between us. Things have
+got to come to a head. I've got a chance, Sam, to marry. Eddie Leonard
+has asked me."
+
+"I--thought so."
+
+"Eddie Leonard ain't a Sam Lipkind, but after the war his
+five-thousand-dollar job is down at Arnstein's waiting for him, and he's
+got a good stiff bank-account saved as good as yours and--and no strings
+to it. I believe in a girl facing those facts the same as any other
+facts. Why, I--this war and all--why, if anything was to happen to you
+to-morrow--us unmarried this way--I'd be left high and dry without so
+much as a penny to show for the best five years of my life. We've got to
+do one thing or another, Sam. I believe in a girl being practical as
+well as romantic."
+
+"I--see your point, Clara."
+
+"I'm done with going around in this circle of ours."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"You know what I mean."
+
+The lower half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a
+kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard
+burning like brimstone before I let him have you!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"God! I don't know what to say--I don't know what to say!"
+
+"That's your trouble, Sam; you're so chicken-hearted you--"
+
+"My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings
+are to you, there's no power on earth can make me quit having to be him
+as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you--but if I
+got to pay with her happiness for--ours--then I never want happiness to
+the day I die."
+
+"In other words, it's the mother first."
+
+"Don't put it that way--it's her--age--first. It ain't what she wants
+and don't want; it's what she's got to have. My mother couldn't live
+away from me."
+
+"She could if you were called to war."
+
+There was something electric in the silence that followed, something
+that seemed to tighten the gaze of each for the other.
+
+"But I haven't been--yet."
+
+"The next draft will get you."
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Well, what'll you do then?"
+
+"That's something me and ma haven't ever discussed. The war hasn't been
+mentioned in our house for two years--except that the letters don't come
+from Germany, and that's a grief to her. There's enough time for her to
+cross that bridge when we come to it. She worries about it enough."
+
+"If I was a man I'd enlist, I would!"
+
+"I'd give my right hand to. Every other night I dream I'm a lieutenant."
+
+"Why, there's not a fellow I know that hasn't beaten the draft to it and
+enlisted for the kind of service he wants. I know a half a dozen who
+have got in the home guard and things and have saved themselves by
+volunteering from being sent to France."
+
+"I wouldn't dodge the front thataway. I'd like to enlist as a private
+and then work myself up to lieutenant and then on up to captain and get
+right into the fray on the front. I--"
+
+"You bet, if I was a fellow, I'd enlist for the kind of home service I
+wanted--that's what Eddie and all the fellows are doing."
+
+"So would I, Clara, if I was what you call a--free man. There's nobody
+given it more thought than me."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you? Talk's cheap."
+
+"You know why, Clara, to get back to going around in a circle again."
+
+"But you've got to go, sooner or later. You've got a comfortable married
+sister and independent circumstances of your own to keep your mother;
+you haven't got a chance for exemption."
+
+"I don't want exemption."
+
+"Well, then, beat the draft to it."
+
+"I--Most girls ain't so anxious to--to get rid of their best fellows,
+Clara."
+
+"Silly! Can't you see the point? If--if you'd enlist and go off to camp,
+I--I could go and live near you there like Birdie Harberger does her
+husband. See?"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Then--God forbid anything should happen to you!--I'm your wife. You
+see, Sam?"
+
+"Why, Clara--"
+
+"You see what I mean. But nothing can happen this way, because if you
+try to enlist in some mechanical department where they need you in this
+country--you see, Sam? See?"
+
+"I--see."
+
+"Your mother would have to get used to things then, Sam--it would be the
+easiest for her. An old lady like her couldn't go trailing around the
+outskirts of a camp like your wife could. Think of the comfort it'll be
+to her to have me with you if she can't be. She'll get so used
+to--living alone--"
+
+"I--You mustn't talk that way to me, Clara. When I'm called to serve my
+country, I'm the first one that will want to go. I've given more money
+already than I can afford to help the boys who are at the front. So far
+as I'm concerned, enlisting like this with--with you--around, would be
+the happiest thing ever happened to me, but--well, you see for
+yourself."
+
+"You mean, then, you won't?"
+
+"I mean, Clara, I can't."
+
+She was immediately level of tone again and pushed back, placing her
+folded napkin beside her place, patting it down.
+
+"Well, then, Sam, I'm done."
+
+"'Done,' Clara?"
+
+"Yep. That lets me out. I've given you every chance to make this thing
+possible. Your mother is no better and no different than thousands and
+thousands of other mothers who are giving their sons, only, she is
+better off than most, because she's provided for. It's all right for a
+fellow's mother to come first, maybe, but if his wife isn't even to
+come second or third or tenth, then it's about time to call quits. I
+haven't made up my mind to this in a day. I'm done."
+
+"Clara--"
+
+"Ed has asked me. I don't pretend he's my ideal, but he's more concerned
+about my future than he is about anybody else's. If I'm ready to leave
+with him on that twelve-o'clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he's
+going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we'll be married
+there to-morrow night, and I'll settle down somewhere near camp as long
+as I can. He's got a good nest-egg if--God forbid!--anything should
+happen. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."
+
+"My God! Clara, this is awful! Eddie Leonard he's not your kind; he--"
+
+"I've given you first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A
+one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be
+a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and
+you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to
+your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and
+your mother's got hers in back of her. Now choose."
+
+"My God! Clara, this is--terrible! Why--I'd rather be a thousand boobs
+than take my mother's heart and tear it to pieces."
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Don't say that, Sam. Go home and--sleep on it. Think it over. Please!
+Come to your senses, honey. Telephone me at eleven to keep me from
+catching that twelve-o'clock train. Don't let me take it with Eddie.
+Think it over, Sam. Honey--our--future--don't throw it away! Don't let
+me take that twelve-o'clock train!"
+
+There were tears streaming from her eyes, and her lips, so carefully
+firm, were beginning to tremble. "You can't blame a girl, Sam, for
+wanting to provide for her future. Can you, Sam? Think it over. Please!
+I'll be praying when eleven o'clock comes to-morrow morning for you to
+telephone me. Please, Sam--think!"
+
+He dropped his face low, lower toward the table, trembling under the red
+wave that surged over him and up into the roots of his hair. "I'll think
+it over, Clara--my girl--my own girl!"
+
+As if the moments themselves had been woven by her flying amber needles
+into a whole cloth of meditation, Mrs. Lipkind, beside a kitchen lamp
+that flowed in gracious light, knitted the long, quiet hours of her
+evening into fabric, her face screwed and out of repose and occasionally
+the lips moving. Age is prone to that. Memories love to be mumbled and
+chewed over--the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the
+years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk.
+
+A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on
+the window-ledge, gold and unswerving of eye. The silence was like the
+singing inside of a shell, and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind.
+
+By nine o'clock she was already glancing up at the clock, cocking her
+head to each and every of night's creaks.
+
+By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering
+through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had
+neither shape nor identity. Once she went down a long slit of hallway to
+the front door, opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor
+that was papered in embossed leatherette, one speckled incandescent bulb
+lighting it sadly. There was something impregnable, even terrible to her
+in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments. She
+tiptoed, almost ran, poor dear! with the consciousness of some one at
+her heels, back to the kitchen, where at least was the warm print of the
+cat's presence; fell to knitting again, clacking her needles for the
+solace of explainable sound.
+
+Identically with the round moment of ten Mr. Lipkind entered, almost
+running down the hallway.
+
+"Hello, ma! Think I got lost? Just got to talking and didn't realize.
+Haven't been worried, ma? Afraid?"
+
+She lifted her head from his kiss. "'Afraid!' What you take me for? For
+why should I be worried at only ten o'clock? Say, I'm glad if you stay
+out for recreation."
+
+He kissed her again, shaking out of his coat and unwinding his muffler.
+"I could just see you walking the floor and looking out of the window."
+
+"Sa-y, I been so busy all evening I didn't have time to think. I'm not
+such a worrier no more like I used to be. Like the saying is--life is
+too short."
+
+He drew up beside her, lifting her needles off her work. "Little
+sweetheart mamma, why don't you sit on the big sofa in the front room
+where it's more comfortable?"
+
+"You can't make, Sammy, out of a pig's ear a silk stocking."
+
+He would detain her hands, his eyes puckered and, so intent upon her.
+
+"You had a good time, Sammy?"
+
+"You'd be surprised, ma, what a nice place Clara boards at."
+
+"What did they have to eat? Good cooking?"
+
+"Not for a fellow that's used to my boarding-house."'
+
+"What?"
+
+"I couldn't tell if it was soup or finger-bowls they served for the
+first course."
+
+"I know--stylish broth. Let me warm you up a little of my thick barley
+soup that's left over from--"
+
+He pressed her down. "Please, ma! I'm full up. I couldn't. They had pink
+ice-cream, too, with pink cake and--"
+
+"Such mess-food what is bad for you. I'm surprised how Clara keeps her
+good complexion. Let me fix you some fried--"
+
+"Ma, I tell you I couldn't. It's ten o'clock. You mustn't try to fatten
+me up so. In war-time a man has got to be lean."
+
+She sat back suddenly and whitely quiet. "That's--twice already to-day,
+Sam, you talk like that."
+
+He took up her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes
+lowered. "Why not? Doesn't it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me
+are--are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to
+each other there ain't no war?"
+
+She laid a quick hand to her breast. "What you mean, Sammy?"
+
+"Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty
+closely, all right."
+
+"Sammy, you mean something!"
+
+"Now, ma, there's no need to get excited right away. Think of the
+mothers who haven't even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go."
+
+"Sammy--you 'ain't been--"
+
+"No, no; I haven't."
+
+"You have! I can see it in your face! You've come home with some news to
+break. You been drafted!"
+
+He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. "I
+tell you I haven't! Can't you take my word for it?"
+
+"Swear to me, Sammy!"
+
+"All right; I swear."
+
+"Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!"
+
+"I swear--thataway."
+
+She was still pressing against her breathing. "You're keeping something
+back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad
+news--O my God!"
+
+"No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you've been
+getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you're going to be this
+excitable and get yourself sick, I won't talk over anything with you.
+I'll quit."
+
+"You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book."
+
+"I'm done. If I can't talk facts over with you without your going to
+pieces this way, I'm done. I quit."
+
+She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. "Sammy, what is it?
+If you don't tell me, I can't stand it. Sammy?"
+
+"Will you sit quiet and not get excited?"
+
+"Please, Sammy, I will."
+
+"It's this: you see, ma, the way the draft goes. When a fellow's called
+to war, drafted, he's got to go, no questions asked. But when a fellow
+enlists for war, volunteers, you see, before the government calls him,
+then thataway he can pick out for himself the thing he wants to be in
+the army. Y'see? And then maybe the thing he picks out for himself can
+keep him right here at home. Y'see, ma--so he don't have to go away. See
+the point?"
+
+"You mean when a boy enlists he offers himself instead of gets offered."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"You got something behind all this. You mean you--you want to enlist."
+
+"Now, ma--you see, if I was to enlist--and stay right here in this
+country--with you near the camp or, as long as it's too rough life for
+you, with--with Clara there--a woman to look in on--"
+
+"Sammy--you mean it's enlistment!"
+
+Her voice rose in velocity; he could feel her pulse run beneath his
+fingers.
+
+"It's the best way, ma. The draft is sure to get me. Let me beat it and
+keep myself home--near you. We might as well face the music, ma. They'll
+get me one way or another. Let me enlist now, ma. Like a man. Right
+away. For my country!"
+
+Do you know the eyes of Bellini's "Agony in a Garden"? Can you hear for
+yourself the note that must have been Cassandra's when she shouted out
+her forebodings? There were these now in the glance and voice of Mrs.
+Lipkind as she drew back from him, her face actually seeming to shrivel.
+
+"No, Sammy! No! No! No!"
+
+"Ma--please--"
+
+"You wouldn't! You couldn't! No, Sammy--my son!"
+
+"Ma, for God's sake don't go on so!"
+
+"Then tell me you wouldn't! Against your own flesh and blood! Tell me
+you wouldn't!"
+
+"No, no, ma! For God's sake, don't take a fit--a stroke--no, no; I
+wouldn't--I wouldn't!"
+
+"Your own blood, Sammy! Your own baby cousins what I tucked you in bed
+with--mine own sister's children! Her babies what slept with you. Mine
+own sister who raised me and worked down her hands to the bone to make
+it so with my young husband and baby we could come to America--no--no!"
+
+"Mamma, for God's sakes--"
+
+"Three years like a snake here inside of it's eating me--all night--all
+day--I'm a good American, Sammy; I got so much I should be thankful
+for to America. Twenty-five years it's my home, the home where I had
+prosperity and good treatment, the home where I had happiness with your
+papa and where he lies buried, but I can't give you to fight against my
+own, Sammy--to be murdered by your own--my sister what never in her life
+harmed a bird--my child and her children--cousins--against each other.
+My beautiful country what I remember with cows and green fields and
+clover--always the smell of clover. It ain't human to murder against
+your own flesh and blood for God knows what reason!"
+
+"Mamma, there is a reason it--"
+
+"I tell you I'm a good American, Sammy. For America I give my last cent,
+but not to stick knives in my own--it ain't human--Why didn't I die
+before we got war? What good am I here? In my boy's way for his
+country--his marriage--his happiness--why don't I die?"
+
+"Ma, I tell you you mustn't! You're making yourself sick. Let me fan
+you. Here, ma, I didn't mean it. See--I'm holding you tight. I won't
+never let go. You're my little sweetheart mamma. You mustn't tremble
+like that. I'm holding you tight--tight--little mamma."
+
+"My boy! My little boy! My son! My all! All in their bed together.
+Three. Her two. Mine. The smell of clover--my boy--Sammy--Sam--" She
+fainted back into his arms suddenly, very white and very quiet and very
+shriveled.
+
+He watched beside her bed the next five hours of the night, his face so
+close above hers that, when she opened her eyes, his were merged into
+one for her, and the clasp of his hand never left hers.
+
+"You all right, ma? Sure? Sure you don't need the doctor?"
+
+She looked up at him with a tired, a burned-out, an ashamed smile. "The
+first time in my life, Sammy, such a thing ever happened to me."
+
+He pressed a chain of close kisses to the back of her hand, his voice
+far from firm. "It was me, ma. I'll never forgive myself. My little
+mamma, my little mamma sweetheart!"
+
+"I feel fine, son; only, with you sitting here all night, you don't let
+me sleep for worry that you ain't in bed."
+
+"I love it. I love to sit here by you and watch you sleep. You're sure
+you've no fever? Sure?"
+
+"I'm well, Sammy. It was nothing but what you call a fainting-fit. For
+some women it's nothing that they should faint every time they get a
+little bit excited. It's nothing. Feel my hands--how cool! That's always
+a sign--coolness."
+
+He pressed them both to his lips, blowing his warm breath against them.
+
+"There now--go to sleep."
+
+The night-light burning weakly, the great black-walnut bedstead
+ponderous in the gloom, she lay there mostly smiling and always
+shamefaced.
+
+"Such a thing should happen to me at my age!"
+
+"Try to sleep, ma."
+
+"Go in your room to bed, and then I get sleep. Do you want your own
+clerks should beat you to business to-morrow?"
+
+"A little whisky?"
+
+"Go away; you got me dosed up enough with such _Schnapps_."
+
+"The light lower?"
+
+"No. If you don't go in your room, I lay here all night with my eyes
+open, so help me!"
+
+He rose, stiff and sore-kneed, hair awry, and his eyes with the red rims
+of fatigue. "You'll sure ring the little bell if you want anything, ma?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You promise you won't get up to fix breakfast."
+
+"If I don't feel good, I let you fix mine."
+
+"Good night, little sweetheart mamma."
+
+"You ain't--mad at me, Sam?"
+
+"Mad! Why, ma, you mustn't ask me a--a thing like that; it just kills me
+to hear you. Me that's not even fit to black your shoes! Mad at you?
+Why, I--I--Good night--good--night--ma."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At just fifteen minutes before seven, to the pungency of coffee and the
+harsh sing of water across the hall, Mrs. Lipkind in a fuzzy wrapper the
+color of her eyes and hair, kissed her son awake.
+
+"Sam! Sammy! Get up! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up in the morning!"
+
+The snuggle away and into the crotch of his elbow.
+
+"Sam-my--quarter to seven!"
+
+He sprang up then, haggard, but in a flood of recollection and remorse.
+"Ma, I must 'a' dropped off at the last minute. You all right? What are
+you doing up? Go right back! Didn't I tell you not to get up?"
+
+"I been up an hour already; that's how fine I feel. Get up, Sammy; it's
+late."
+
+He flung on his robe, trying to withdraw her from the business of
+looping back the bed-clothing over the footboard and pounding into
+the pillows.
+
+"I tell you I won't have it! You got to lay in bed this morning."
+
+"I'm all right, Sammy. Wouldn't I say so if I wasn't?" But she sat down
+rather weakly on the edge of the bed, holding the right side of her,
+breathing too hard.
+
+"I--I shouldn't have beat that pillow is all. Let me get my breathing.
+I'm all right." Nevertheless, she let him relax her to his pillow, draw
+the covers down from the footboard, and cover her.
+
+"This settles it," he said, quietly. "I'm going to get a doctor."
+
+She caught his hand. "If--if you want to get me excited for sure, just
+you call a doctor--now--before I talk with you a minute--I want to
+talk--I'm all right, Sammy, if you let me talk to you. One step to that
+telephone, and I get excited--"
+
+"Please, ma--"
+
+"Sammy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you listen to me and do like I want it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I--been a bad old woman."
+
+"That's right--break my heart."
+
+"I got a brave boy for a son, and I want to make from him a coward."
+
+"Ma--please!"
+
+"I laid saying to myself all night, a mother should have such a son like
+mine and make things hard for him yet!"
+
+"Please, get it all out of your head--"
+
+"From America what has given to me everything I should hold back my son
+from fighting for. In war, it ain't your own flesh and blood what
+counts; it's the flesh and blood of your country--not, Sam? I been
+thinking only it's my family affair. If God lets be such a terrible
+thing like war, there is somewhere a good reason for it. I want you to
+enlist, Sammy, for your country. Not for in an office, but for where
+they need you. I want you to enlist to get some day to be such a
+lieutenant and a captain like you used to play it with tin soldiers.
+I want--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, you know you don't mean it!"
+
+"I want it, I tell you. All night I worked on it how dumb I've been, not
+right away to see it--last night. With Clara near you in the camp--"
+
+"Ma, I didn't mean it that way; I--"
+
+"Clara near you for a woman to look in on, I been so dumb not to right
+away see it. I'm glad you let it out, Sam. I wouldn't take five thousand
+dollars it didn't happen--I feel fine--I want it--I--"
+
+"I didn't mean it, ma--I swear! Don't rub it in this
+way--please--please--"
+
+"Why, I never wanted anything in my life like I want this, Sammy--that
+you should enlist--a woman to look in on--I been a bad woman, Sammy,
+I--I--oh--"
+
+It was then that Mr. Lipkind tore to the telephone, his hands so
+frenzied that they would not properly hold the receiver.
+
+At eight o'clock, and without even a further word, Mrs. Lipkind breathed
+out quietly, a little tiredly, and yet so eloquent of eye. To her son,
+pleading there beside her for the life she had not left to give, it was
+as if the swollen bosom of some stream were carrying her rapidly but
+gently down its surface, her gaze back at him and begging him to stay
+the current.
+
+"Mamma! Darling! Doctor--please--for God's sakes--please--she wants
+something---she can't say it--give it to her! Try to make her tell me
+what she wants--she wants something--this is terrible--don't let her
+want something--mamma--just one word to me--try--try--O my
+God--Doctor--"
+
+A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare
+which had begun to set in from the pillow.
+
+By ten o'clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally
+across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward
+huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the _sotto-voce_ comings
+and goings, all the black-coated _parvenus_ that follow the wake of
+death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot's wheel, a boyhood
+property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the
+thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval,
+twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost
+automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open
+door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there
+impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow
+behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed
+against the pane.
+
+Just so the iciness that had locked Samuel Lipkind seemed suddenly to
+melt in a tornado of sobs that swept him, felled him into a prostration
+of the terrible tears that men weep.
+
+At a training-camp--somewhere--from his side of a tent that had flapped
+like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind
+stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow
+that was stiff with chill and night damp.
+
+Out over the peaked city that had been pitched rather than built, and on
+beyond over the frozen stubble of fields, sounded the bugle-cry of the
+reveille, which shrills so potently:
+
+     I can't get 'em up; I can't get 'em up;
+     I can't get 'em up in the morn--ing!
+
+
+
+
+EVEN AS YOU AND I
+
+There is an intensity about September noonday on Coney Island, aided and
+abetted by tin roofs, metallic facades, gilt domes, looking-glass
+fronts, jeweled spires, screaming peanut and frankfurter-stands, which
+has not its peculiar kind of equal this side of opalescent Tangiers.
+Here the sea air can become a sort of hot camphor-ice to the cheek, the
+sea itself a percolator, boiling up against a glass surface. Beneath the
+tin roofs of Ocean Avenue the indoor heat takes on the kind of intense
+density that is cotton in the mouth and ringing in the ears.
+
+At one o'clock the jibberwock exteriors of Ocean Avenue begin fantastic
+signs of life. The House of Folly breaks out, over its entire facade,
+into a chicken-pox of red and green, blue and purple, yellow, violet,
+and gold electric bulbs. The Ocean Waves concession begins its
+side-splitting undulations. Maha Mahadra, India's foremost soothsayer
+(down in police, divorce, and night courts as Mamie Jones, May Costello,
+and Mabel Brown, respectively), loops back her spangled portiere. The
+Baby Incubator slides open its ticket-windows. Five carousals begin to
+whang. A row of hula-hula girls in paper necklaces appears outside of
+"Hawaii," gelatinously naughty and insinuating of hip. There begins a
+razzling of the razzle-dazzle. Shooting-galleries begin to snipe into
+the glittering noon, and the smell of hot spiced sausages and stale malt
+to lay on the air.
+
+Before the Palace of Freaks, a barker slanted up his megaphone, baying
+to the sun:
+
+"Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u! The greatest show on the Island! Ten cents to see
+the greatest freak congress in the world. Shapiro's freaks are gathered
+from every corner of the universe. Enter and shake hands with Baron de
+Ross, the children's delight, the world's smallest human being; age,
+forty-two years, eight months; height, twenty-eight inches; weight,
+fourteen and one-half pounds, certified scales. Enter and see the
+original and only authentic Siamese Twins! The Ossified Man! You are
+cordially invited to stick pins into this mystery of the whole medical
+world. Jastrow, the world's most famous strong man end glass-eater, will
+perform his world-startling feats. Show about to begin! Our glass-eater
+eats glass, not rock candy--any one doubting same can sample it first.
+We have on view within, and all included in your ten-cents admission,
+the famous Teenie, absolutely the heaviest woman in captivity. We
+guarantee Teenie to tip the certified scales at five hundred and
+fifty-five, a weight unsurpassed by any of the heavyweights in the
+history of the show business. Come in and fox-trot with Teenie, the
+world wonder. Come in and fox-trot with her. Show begins immediately.
+Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u!"
+
+Within the Palace of Freaks, her platform elevated and railed in
+against the unduly curious, Miss Luella Hoag, all that she was so
+raucously purported to be, sat back in her chair, as much in the
+attitude of relaxing as her proportions would permit.
+
+There is no way in which I can hope to salve your offended estheticisms
+with any of Miss Hoag's better points. What matters it that her skin was
+not without the rich quality of cream too thick to pour, when her arms
+fairly dimpled and billowed of this creaminess, and above her rather
+small ankles her made-to-order red-satin shoes bulged over of it, the
+low-cut bosom of her red and sequin dress was a terrific expanse of it,
+her hands small cushions of it, her throat quivery, and her walk a
+waddle with it. All but her face; it was as if the suet-like inundation
+of the flesh had not dared here. The chin was only slightly doubled; the
+cheeks just a shade too plump. Neither was the eye heavy of lid or sunk
+down behind a ridge of cheek. Between her eyes and upper lip, Miss Hoag
+looked her just-turned twenty; beyond them, she was antediluvian,
+deluged, smothered beneath the creamy billows and billows of self.
+
+And yet, sunk there like a flower-seed planted too deeply to push its
+way up to bloom, the twenty-year-old heart of Miss Hoag beat beneath its
+carbonaceous layer upon layer, even skipped a beat at spring's
+palpitating sweetness, dared to dream of love, weep of desire, ache of
+loneliness and loveliness.
+
+Isolated thus by the flesh, the spirit, too, had been caught in
+nature's sebaceous trick upon Miss Hoag. Life had passed her by slimly.
+But Miss Hoag's redundancy was not all literal. A sixth and saving sense
+of humor lay like a coating of tallow protecting the surface of her. For
+nature's vagary, she was pensioned on life's pay-roll at eighteen
+dollars a week.
+
+"Easy money, friends," Miss Hoag would _ad lib_. to the line-up outside
+her railing; "how would some of you like to sit back and draw your wages
+just for the color of your hair or the size of your shoes? You there,
+that sailor boy down there, how'd you like to have a fox-trot with
+Teenie? Something to tell the Jackies about. Come on, Jack Tar, I'm
+light on my feet, but I won't guarantee what I'll be on yours. Step up
+and have a round."
+
+Usually the crowd would turn sheepish and dissolve at this Terpischorean
+threat. In fact, it was Miss Hoag's method of accomplishing just that.
+
+In the August high noon of the Coney Island Freak Palace, which is the
+time and scene of my daring to introduce to you the only
+under-thirty-years, and over-one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds, heroine in
+the history of fiction, the megaphone's catch of the day's first dribble
+of humanity and inhumanity had not yet begun its staring,
+gaping invasion.
+
+A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The
+Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and
+cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the
+neighboring sway of Miss Hoag's palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.
+
+"Ain't it a fright?" she said.
+
+"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in a
+_patois_ of very south Italy.
+
+Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the
+highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and
+to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.
+
+"Hot, honey?"
+
+The Baron, in a toy rocker that easily contained him, turned upon Miss
+Hoag a face so anachronistic that the senses reeled back. An old face,
+as if carved out of a paleolithic cherry-stone; the years furrowed in;
+the eyes as if they had seen, without marveling, the light of creation;
+even the hands, braceleted in what might have been portiere-rings,
+leanly prehensile. When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the
+middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and
+died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of
+a patriot.
+
+Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the
+tailor's art; of form, a paleolithic child.
+
+"Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!"
+
+Miss Hoag billowed into silent laughter. "Little devil! That's six
+you've sponged off me this week, you little whipper-snapper!"
+
+The Baron screwed up into the tightest of grimaces.
+
+"Nice Teenie--nice old Teenie!"
+
+She tossed him a coin from the small saucerful of them on the table
+beside her. He caught it with the simian agility of his tiny hands.
+
+"Nice Teenie! Nice old Teenie!"
+
+A first group had strolled up, indolent and insolent at the spectacle of
+them.
+
+"Photographs! Photographs! Take the folks back home a signed photograph
+of Teenie--only ten cents, one dime. Give the kiddies a treat--signed
+photograph of little Teenie!"
+
+She would solicit thus, canorous of phrase, a fan of her cardboard
+likenesses held out, invitational.
+
+Occasionally there were sales, the coins rattling down into the china
+saucer beside her; oftener a mere bombardment of insolence and
+indolence, occasionally a question.
+
+This day from a motorman, loitering in uniform between runs, "Say,
+skinnay, whatcha weigh?"
+
+Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the
+surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional
+pride--that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the
+beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the _ballerina_ for
+her double joints.
+
+"Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?"
+
+"O Lord!"--receding from the crowd and its trail of laughter. "O Lord!
+Excuse me. Good night!"
+
+A CHILD: Missus, is all of you just one lady?
+
+"Bless your heart, little pettie, they gimme a good measure, didn't
+they? Here's a chocolate drop for the little pettie."
+
+"Come away! Don't take nothing from her!"
+
+"I wouldn't hurt your little girl, lady. I wouldn't harm a pretty hair
+of her head; I love the kiddies."
+
+"Good-by, missus."
+
+"Good-by, little pettie."
+
+A MAN: Say, was you born in captivity--in this line o' work, I mean?
+
+"Law, no, friend! I never seen the light of the show business up to
+eight year ago. There wasn't a member of my family, all dead and put
+away now, weighed more 'n one-fifty. They say it of my mother, she was
+married at ninety pounds and died at a hundred and six."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"I was born and raised on a farm out in Ohio. Bet not far from your part
+of the country, from the looks of you, friend. Buckeye?"
+
+"Not a bad guess at that--Indiana's mine."
+
+"Law! to my way of thinking, there's no part of the Union got anything
+on the Middle States. Knock me around all you want, I always say, but
+let me be buried in the Buckeye State. Photographs? Signed photographs
+at ten cents each. Take one home to the wife, friend, out in Indiana.
+Come, friends, what's a dime? Ten cents!"
+
+The crowd, treacle-slow, and swinging its children shoulder-high, would
+shuffle on, pause next at the falsetto exhortations of the Baron, then
+on to the collapsibilities of the Boneless Wonder, the flexuosities of
+the Snake-charmer, the goose-fleshing, the terrible crunching of Jastrow
+the Granite Jaw. A commotion, this last, not unlike the steam-roller
+leveling of a rock road.
+
+Miss Hoag retired then back to her chair, readjusting the photographs
+to their table display, wielding her fan largely.
+
+"Lord!" she said, across the right railing, "wouldn't this weather fry
+you!"
+
+The Baron wilted to a mock swoon, his little legs stiffening at a
+hypotenuse.
+
+"Ice-cream cone!" he cried. "Ice-cream cone, or I faint!"
+
+"Poor Jastrow! Just listen to him! Honest, that grinding goes right
+through me. He hadn't ought to be showing to-day, after the way they had
+to have the doctor in on him last night. He hadn't ought to be eating
+that nasty glass."
+
+"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"
+
+"Yes, it's awful, Mabel! A fellow snagging up his insides like Jastrow.
+I never knew a glass-eating artist in my life that lived to old age. I
+was showing once with a pair of glass-eating sisters, the Twins Delamar,
+as fine a pair of girls as ever--"
+
+"Sure, the Delamars--I know 'em."
+
+"Remember the specialty they carried, stepping on a piece of plate glass
+and feeding each other with the grounds--"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Well, I sat up for three weeks running, with one of them girls--the
+red-haired one, till she died off of sorosis of the liver--"
+
+"Sure enough--Lizzie Delamar!"
+
+"Lida, the other one, is still carrying the act on street-fair time, but
+it won't surprise me to hear of her next. That's what'll happen to
+Granite Jaw one of these days, too, if he--"
+
+"Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw, ain't cha? M-m-n! Yum-yum! Pretty
+soft!" When the Baron mouthed he became in expression Punchinello with
+his finger alongside his nose, his face tightening and knotting into
+cunning. "Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw! Yum--yum--yum!"
+
+"Little devil! Little devil! I'll catch you and spank you to death."
+
+"Yum! Yum!"
+
+     "It's better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+"Little peewee, you! Jastrow ain't short. Them thick, strong-necked kind
+never look their height. That boy is five feet two, if he's an inch.
+Them stocky ones is the build that make the strong kind. Looka him lift
+up that cannon-ball with just his left hand. B-r-r-r-r! Listen how it
+shakes the place when he lets its fall! Looka! Honest, it makes me sick!
+It's a wonder he don't kill himself."
+
+     "Better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+The day, sun-riddled, stare-riddled, sawdusty, and white with glare,
+slouched into the clanging, banging, electric-pianoed, electrifying
+Babylonia of a Coney Island Saturday night. The erupting lava of a
+pent-up work-a-week, odoriferous of strong foods and wilted clothing,
+poured hotly down that boulevard of the bourgeoise, Ocean Avenue. The
+slow, thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and
+boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of
+machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion
+and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious
+kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific
+gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the
+chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of
+the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash
+of mustard to the frankfurter, the feather tickler in the eye, the
+barker to the ear, and the thick festival-flavored sawdust to the
+throat. By eleven o'clock the Freak Palace was a gelatinous congestion
+of the quickened of heart, of blood, of tongue, and of purse. The crowd
+stared, gaped, squirmed through itself, sweated.
+
+By twelve o'clock, from her benchlike throne that had become a
+straitjacket to the back, a heaviness had set in that seemed to thicken
+Miss Hoag's eyelids, the flush receding before doughiness.
+
+A weary mountain of the cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin
+paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out
+along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as
+ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature's huge joke--a practical
+joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust
+companies, and a china pig about ready to burst.
+
+"Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse," she said across the left rail, but
+her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.
+
+"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in Italian.
+
+The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled
+suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and
+kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an
+eighteen-inch carpenter's saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and
+around her.
+
+Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water,
+draining it. "Thank God," she said, "another day done!" and began
+getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the
+contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around
+with a rubber band.
+
+The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task.
+"This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg," he said.
+
+"It is that," said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small
+memorandum-book.
+
+"You!" cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. "You money-bag tied
+in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St.
+Louis World's Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with
+greenbacks."
+
+"You're crazy with the heat," said Miss Hoag. "What I've got out of this
+business, I've sweated for."
+
+Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. "Worth your
+weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!"
+
+"If you don't behave yourself, you little peewee, I'll leave you to plow
+home through the sand alone. If it wasn't for me playing nurse-girl to
+you, you'd have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave."
+
+"Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?"
+
+The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill
+arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind
+of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last
+of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins
+untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess
+Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly
+wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a
+rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew,
+and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed
+like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great
+sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the
+calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a
+compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest
+compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the
+undershot jaw was plunged forward, the jowls bonily defined.
+
+"Worth her weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Jastrow?
+She's worth her weight in gold."
+
+Passing within reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of
+reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail,
+capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron
+de Ross to a high-flung torch.
+
+"Lay off that noise," said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to
+dangle him head downward. "Lay off, or I'll drown you like a kitten!"
+
+With an agility that could have swung him from bough to bough, the Baron
+de Ross somersaulted astride the rear of Jastrow the Granite Jaw's great
+neck, pounding little futile fists against the bulwark of head.
+
+"Leggo me! Leggo!"
+
+"Gr-r-r-r! I'll step on you and squash you like a caterpillar."
+
+"Don't hurt him, Mr. Jastrow! Don't let him fall off backwards. He is so
+little. Teenie'll catch you if you fall, honey. Teenie's here in back
+of you."
+
+With another double twist, the Baron de Ross somersaulted backward off
+the shoulder of his captor, landing upright in the outstretched skirts
+of Miss Hoag.
+
+"Yah, yah!" he cried, dancing in the net of skirt and waggling his hands
+from his ears. "Yah, yah!"
+
+The Granite Jaw smoothed down the outraged rear of his head, eyes
+rolling and smile terrible.
+
+"Wow!" he said, making a false feint toward him.
+
+The Baron, shrill with hysteria, plunged into a fold of Miss Hoag's
+skirt.
+
+"Don't hurt him, Jastrow. He's so awful little! Don't play rough."
+
+THE BARON (_projecting his face around a fold of skirt_): Worth her
+weight in go-uld--go-uld!
+
+"He's always guying me for my saving ways, Jastrow. I tell him I 'ain't
+got no little twenty-eight-inch wife out in San Francisco sending me
+pin-money. Neither am I the prize little grafter of the world. I tell
+him he's the littlest man and the biggest grafter in this show. Come out
+of there, you little devil! He thinks because I got a few hundred
+dollars laid by I'm a bigger freak than the one I get paid for being."
+
+Jastrow the Granite Jaw flung the crook of his walking-stick against his
+hip, leaning into it, the flanges of his nostrils widening a bit, as
+if scenting.
+
+"You old mountain-top," he said, screwing at the up-curving mustache,
+"who'd have thought you had that pretty a penny saved?"
+
+"I don't look to see myself live and die in the show business, Mr.
+Jastrow."
+
+"Now you said something, Big Tent."
+
+"There's a farm out near Xenia, Ohio, where I lay up in winter, that I'm
+going to own for myself one of these days. I've seen too many in this
+business die right in exhibition, and the show have to chip in to bury
+'em, for me not to save up against a rainy day."
+
+"Lay it on, Big Tent. I like your philosophy."
+
+"That's me every time, Mr. Jastrow. I'm going to die in a little
+story-and-a-half frame house of my own with a cute little pointy roof, a
+potato-patch right up to my back steps, and my own white Leghorns
+crossin' my own country road to get to the other side. Why, I know a Fat
+in this business, Aggie Lament--"
+
+"Sure, me and the Baroness played Mexico City Carnival with Aggie
+Lament. Some heavy!"
+
+"Well, that girl, in her day, was one of the biggest tips to the scale
+this business ever seen. What happens? All of a sudden, just like
+that--pneumonia! Gets up out of bed, eight weeks later, skin and bones
+--down to three hundred and sixty-five pounds and not a penny saved. I
+chipped in what I could to keep her going, but she just down and died
+one night. Job gone. No weight. In the exhibit business, just like any
+other line, you got to have a long head. A Fat's got to look ahead for a
+thin day. Strong for a weak day. That's why I wish, Mr. Jastrow, you'd
+cut out that glass-eating feature of yours."
+
+"How much you got, Airy-Fairy? Lemme double your money for you!"
+
+"She's worth her weight in gold."
+
+"Lemme double it!"
+
+"Like fun I will. A spendthrift like you!"
+
+"Which way you going?"
+
+"We always go home by the beach. Shapiro made it a rule that the Bigs
+and Littles can't ever show themselves on Ocean Avenue."
+
+"Come on, you little flea; I'll ride you up the beach on my shoulder."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, you--you going to walk home with me--and--Baron?"
+
+"Come on was what I said."
+
+He mounted the Baron de Ross to his bulge of shoulder with veriest toss,
+Miss Hoag, in a multi-fold cape that was a merciful shroud to the bulk
+of her, descending from the platform. The place had emptied itself of
+its fantastic congress of nature's pranks, only the grotesque print of
+it remaining. The painted snake-chests closed. The array of gustatory
+swords, each in flannelet slip-cover. The wild man's cage, empty. The
+tiny velocipede of the Baron de Ross, upside down against rust. A hall
+of wonder here. A cave of distorted fancy. The Land of the Cow Jumped
+over the Moon and the Dish Ran away with the Spoon.
+
+Outside, a moon, something bridal in its whiteness, beat down upon a
+kicked-up stretch of beach, the banana-skins, the pop-corn boxes, the
+gambados of erstwhile revelers violently printed into its sands. A
+platinum-colored sea undulated in.
+
+The leaping, bounding outline of Luna Park winked out even as they
+emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist.
+There was a new breeze, spicily cool.
+
+Miss Hoag breathed out, "Ain't this something grand?"
+
+"Giddy-ap!" cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of
+the Granite Jaw's head. "Giddy-ap!"
+
+They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria--as motley a
+threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.
+
+"How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I
+never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession
+always stops there."
+
+"Good as the next," said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.
+
+"I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I
+was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always
+call me 'the Doc' around exhibits. I say--but you just ought to heard
+yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself--"
+
+"They had me crazy with pain."
+
+"You wasn't so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the
+bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at
+Albino, didn't we, Baron?"
+
+THE BARON _(impish in the moonlight)_: He fell for a cotton-top.
+
+"He didn't yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?"
+
+"It's this darn business," said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of
+sand-spray with each stride. "I'm punctured up like a tire."
+
+"I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you'd only cut out the
+glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong
+act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your
+muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it--it's a
+sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You
+ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature."
+
+"Yeh--and cut down my act to half-pay. I'd be full of them
+tricks--wouldn't I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me
+the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I'd
+be a, sweet boob, wouldn't I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need
+money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!"
+
+"What's money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain't human or freak nature to
+digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!"
+
+Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:
+
+"Gr-r-r-r-r!"
+
+"She's sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of 'em."
+
+     "Better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+"Baron, I--I'll spank!" "Worth her weight in gold!"
+
+"Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?" "Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the
+Baron's only tormenting me."
+
+"She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks." "Sure I got a few
+dollars saved, and I ain't ashamed of it. I've had steady work in this
+business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in
+Ohio and made me the offer, but that's no sign I can be in it eight
+years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved."
+
+"Well, whatta you know--a big tent like you?"
+
+"Ain't a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain't I--ain't I
+just like any other--girl--twenty years old--ain't I just
+like--other--girls--underneath all this?"
+
+"Sure, sure!" said Mr. Jastrow. "How much you to the good, little one?"
+
+"I've about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig."
+
+"'Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better
+lemme double your money for you!"
+
+"Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain't you the torment, too?"
+
+"Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as
+your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get
+down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and
+take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good!
+Good night!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol's poison. Mr.
+Jastrow--please--you mustn't!"
+
+"Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say--have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don't take the Baron. The little fellow can't
+stand alcohol. His baroness don't want it. Anyways, it's against the
+rules--please--"
+
+"You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a
+gentleman. 'Leven hundred to the good! Say, I'd see a lady as far as the
+devil on that. Good night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced
+packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over
+veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly
+in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from
+without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted
+pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the
+switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his
+first-floor back.
+
+"Y'all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?"
+
+The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted,
+the turmoil of little lines scattering.
+
+"Aw!" he said. "Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!"
+
+A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag's glance and, suddenly gaining
+rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.
+
+"I'm human, Baron. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm human."
+
+"Now what did I do, Teenie?"
+
+"It--it ain't you, Baron; it--it ain't anybody. It--it's--only I just
+wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways--making our kind. Where
+do we belong--"
+
+"Aw, you're a great Heavy, Teenie--and it's the Bigs and the Littles got
+the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How'd you like to be
+hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How'd you like to let 'em stick
+pins in you all for their ten cents' worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a
+girl's a fool to waste any heartache gettin' stuck on him. That old
+boy's going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How'd
+you like to chew glass because it's big money and then drink it up so
+fast you'd got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor's
+prescription--"
+
+The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag's cheeks, bouncing off to
+the cape.
+
+"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With
+us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten
+million dollars to me--twenty millions? Last night when I went in to
+offer him help--him in the same business and that ought to be used to
+me--right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every
+time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"
+
+"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he--"
+
+'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind
+getting the horrors just to look at me!"
+
+"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating
+you--you're sweet on the Granite Jaw--"
+
+Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the
+silence re-echoed sharply.
+
+"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute
+blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears
+staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"
+
+Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an
+immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white
+water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light
+where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was
+bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her
+mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at
+herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an
+inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing
+it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A
+voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp
+dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge.
+Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the
+business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.
+
+Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the
+voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.
+
+"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's
+sakes--quick--down in his room!"
+
+In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss
+Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.
+
+"Teenie! For God's sakes--quick! He's yellin' for you--"
+
+"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum--coming--coming--coming!"
+
+In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather
+futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling
+above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking
+group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that
+overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.
+
+THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six
+months.
+
+MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!
+
+THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?
+
+THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago
+from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He's in debt already to half
+the exhibit.
+
+THE LANDLADY: He's two weeks in arrears. Not that I'm pestering the poor
+devil now, but Gawd knows I--need--
+
+THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?
+
+MISS HOAG (_turning and stooping_): 'Ain't you got no relations or
+friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act?
+Are they friends of yours? 'Ain't you got no relatives, no--no friends,
+maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who's he? 'Ain't you,
+Jastrow, got no relations?
+
+The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward
+the wall, palm slapping out against it.
+
+"Hell!" said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.
+
+THE DOCTOR (_drawing down his shirt-sleeves_): I'll have an ambulance
+around in twenty minutes.
+
+MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?
+
+THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.
+
+THE LANDLADY (_apron up over her head_): Poor fellow! Poor handsome
+fellow!
+
+MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!
+
+THE DOCTOR (_rather tiredly_): Sorry, madam, but there is no
+alternative.
+
+MISS HOAG: No, no! I'll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?
+
+THE BARON: Yeh. I'll throw in a tenner myself. Don't throw the poor
+devil to charity. We'll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars
+for a nigger wild man, once when--
+
+THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man
+needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it
+is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air,
+fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!
+
+Miss HOAG: That's me, Doc! That's me! I'm going to fix just that for
+him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means
+and a place out in Ohio I can rent 'til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh
+milk! Leghorns! I'll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I
+was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means.
+I'll pull him through, Doctor. I'll pull him through!
+
+THE BARON: Good God! Teenie--you crazy--
+
+FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an
+ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with
+rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering
+of birds--the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape
+moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might
+have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of
+slant, dipped down over the window, giving the facade the expression of
+a coolie under peaked hat.
+
+"Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind
+staggers?"
+
+"I didn't know it was in your eyes, honey. There--that better?"
+
+Silence.
+
+A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow.
+A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of
+white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble
+mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and
+hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the
+figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.
+
+"That better, Jas?" Silence. "Better? That's good! Now for the boy's
+supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up
+fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?"
+
+Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather
+terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow
+rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.
+
+"Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before
+I get ugly."
+
+"Oh, Jastrow honey, don't begin that. Please, Jastrow, don't begin
+that. You been so good all day, honey--"
+
+"Get me a swig," he repeated through set teeth. "You and a boob country
+quack of a doctor ain't going to own my soul. I'll bust up the place
+again. I ain't all dead yet. Get me a swig--quick, too."
+
+"Jas, there ain't none."
+
+"There is!"
+
+"That's just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine.
+That's medicine, Jas; it ain't to be took like drink. You know what the
+doc said last time. He ain't responsible if you disobey. I
+ain't--neither. Please, Jas!"
+
+"I know a thing or two about the deal I'm getting around here. No quack
+boob is going to own my soul."
+
+"Ain't it enough the way you nearly died last time, Jas? Honest, didn't
+that teach you a lesson? Be good, Jas. Don't scare poor old Teenie all
+alone here with you. Looka out there through the door. Ain't it
+something grand? Honest, Jas, I just never get tired looking. See them
+low little hills out there. I always say they look like chiffon this
+time of evening. Don't they? Just looka the whole fields out there, so
+still--like--like a old horse standing up dozing. Smell! Listen to the
+little birds! Ain't we happy out here, me and my boy that's getting
+well so fine?"
+
+Then Jastrow the Granite Jaw began to whimper, half-moans engendered by
+weakness. "Put me out of my misery. Shoot!"
+
+"Jas--Jas--ain't that just an awful way for you to talk? Ain't that
+just terrible to say to your poor old Big Tent?"
+
+She smoothed out his pillow, and drew out his cot on ready casters,
+closer toward the open door.
+
+"See, Jas--honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When
+I was a kid on my pap's farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge,
+instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a
+heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or
+something and look and look and look. There's something about this soft
+kind of scenery that a person that's born in it never gets tired of.
+Why, I've exhibited out in California right under the nose of the
+highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time."
+
+"I'm a lump--that's what I am. Nine months of laying. I'm a lump--on a
+woman, too."
+
+"Why, Jas, Teenie's proud to have you on--on her. 'Ain't we got plans
+for each other after--you get well? Why, half the time I'm just in
+heaven over that. That's why, honey, if only you won't let yourself get
+setbacks! That's all the doctor says is between you and getting well.
+That's all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go
+against the doctor's orders. Last week your eating that steak--that
+drink you stole--ain't you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and
+broke the lock? You--you mustn't ever again, Jas, make me go against
+the doctor."
+
+"I gets crazy. Crazy with laying."
+
+"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make
+first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it.
+Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it
+would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for
+medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those
+months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting
+well, the--the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start
+that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The
+doctor told me, honey--honest, he did--one of them spells--from liquor
+could--could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way
+you are!"
+
+"I'm a lump; that's what I am."
+
+"You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world."
+
+"Sponging off a woman!"
+
+"'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I
+like that!"
+
+"Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!"
+
+"Jas--Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a
+man-nurse out here--honest I am!"
+
+"A swig, Teenie."
+
+"Please, Jas--it's only for bad spells--five drops mixed up in your
+medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells."
+
+"Stingy gut!"
+
+"Looka down there, honey--there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether
+again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up
+the road."
+
+"Stingy gut!"
+
+"You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten
+bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the
+doctor says is best, Jas."
+
+"'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss
+over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to
+having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles."
+
+"Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow
+this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and
+nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money
+he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going
+to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas,
+never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?"
+
+He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand,
+white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.
+
+"Nice old Big Tent!"
+
+"That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells,
+your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you."
+
+"I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly."
+
+"I know, Jas--I know--anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick
+coming--a--tub like me to have--you."
+
+She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own
+gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning
+to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,
+
+"If--if not for one thing, Jas, you know--you know what? I think if a
+person was any happier than me, she--she'd die."
+
+"Let's play I'm Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come
+on; let's kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie--"
+
+"Why don't you ask me, Jas, except for what I'd be the happiest girl?
+Well, it's this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you
+couldn't see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so--so you
+got to look at me!"
+
+"You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at
+you--that's how used a fellow can get to anything. I'm going to square
+it up with you, too."
+
+"You mean it's me will square it with you, Jas--you see if I don't. Why,
+there'll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness
+we're going to have, Jas. I'm going to make this the kinda little home
+you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk
+furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and
+the money beginning to come in. I'm even going to fix up the little
+trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old
+exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit
+us. Just think, Jas--a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it's funny,
+but there's not one thing scares me about all these months on the place
+alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares
+sometimes that we--we're back exhibiting. That's why I want to keep open
+house for them that ain't as lucky as us. Honest, Jas--I--I just can't
+think it's real, not, anyways, till we've paid down six hundred and--the
+fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side 'fore
+comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I--I'll make it
+square with you. You'll never have a sorry day for it!"
+
+"You're all right, Big Tent," said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly,
+lips twitching.
+
+"Ain't you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?"
+
+"A little swig, Teenie--a little one, is all I ask."
+
+"No, no--please, Jastrow; don't begin--just as I had you forgetting."
+
+"It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack
+country boob does. I'm a freak, I am--a prize concession that has to be
+treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different
+man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I'm a
+freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there's nothing like a swig for
+strength."
+
+"Not for you! It's poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what
+they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch
+out--just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to
+have. Wouldn't I give it to you otherwise--wouldn't I?"
+
+"Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!"
+
+"No, no, Jas! No, no, no!"
+
+Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his
+hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.
+
+"Gimme!" he said. "I've done it before and I'll do it now--smash up the
+place! Gimme! You're getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy.
+Gimme--you hear--gimme!"
+
+"Jas--for God's sakes--no--no!"
+
+"Gimme! By God! you hear--gimme!" There was a wrenching movement of his
+body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held
+forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something
+glittering, something steel.
+
+"Now," he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth--"now
+gimme, or by God--"
+
+"Jas--Jas--for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun?
+Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning--over to my trunk for my
+watch-dog? Gimme that gun--Jas! You--you're crazy--Jas!"
+
+"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing
+pointing? Well, gimme quick."
+
+"Jas--"
+
+"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly _I'm ugly!_"
+
+"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed,
+don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow;
+it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going.
+Wait--wait--Teenie's going--"
+
+She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.
+
+"Jas honey, won't you please--"
+
+"Gimme, was what I said--gimme and quick!"
+
+Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he
+drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against
+his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.
+
+She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the
+bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.
+
+"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like
+it."
+
+"Jas--Jas, what have you done?"
+
+"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.
+
+"If--if you wasn't so sick, honey--I don't know what I'd do after such a
+terrible thing like this--you acting like this--so terrible--God! I--I'm
+all trembling."
+
+"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting
+her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"
+
+"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is
+awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell--Sleep--please!"
+
+"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round--he's the one; he's
+the one!"
+
+"Yes--yes, honey. Try to sleep!"
+
+"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream,
+it's Rockefeller."
+
+"Not now--not now--"
+
+"Lemme go to sleep like a king."
+
+"Yes, honey."
+
+"Like a king," I said.
+
+She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her
+dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.
+
+"There, honey. Go to sleep now--like a king."
+
+He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring
+of lamplight.
+
+"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow--oh, wow! If Sid could only see me
+now!"
+
+"He can, honey--he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"
+
+"Slide 'em under--slide 'em under--Rockefeller."
+
+She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over,
+cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.
+
+"Jas!"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard.
+It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey--for God's
+sake--quit!"
+
+Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face
+turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly
+open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so
+much as cloud.
+
+At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of
+those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country
+road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green
+landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door
+following almost immediately.
+
+"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over,
+Doctor--Doctor--it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss
+Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows
+from an uneven wick.
+
+"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"
+
+"What--what--"
+
+"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy
+not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a
+good-natured Fat?"
+
+There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the
+Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and
+ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat
+crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol
+long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a
+cluster of sister baubles.
+
+"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you
+beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"
+
+"Who--Whatta you--want?"
+
+"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The
+Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with
+youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid
+fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight
+bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"
+
+"He--Who--You--"
+
+"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It
+don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is
+he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets
+up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell
+him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."
+
+"I--That's him--Jastrow--there--O my God--that's him laying there,
+miss! Who are you? Sid--I thought--I never knew--Who are you? I
+thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here--
+I--O God!"
+
+There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a
+quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved
+slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands
+crossed atop the parrot.
+
+"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I
+musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show.
+God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in
+Dayton. I--I musta!"
+
+"It come so sudden, miss. It's a wonder I didn't die, too, right on the
+spot. I was standing here and--"
+
+Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief,
+her face lifting to cry.
+
+"He spun me dirt, Will did. If ever a girl was spun dirt, that girl was
+me, but just the same it--it's my husband laying there--it's my husband,
+no matter what dirt he spun me. O God--O--O--"
+
+At half after ten to a powdering of eye-sockets, a touching up with
+lip-stick, a readjustment of three-tiered hat, Miss Sidonia Sabrina took
+leave. There were still streaks showing through her retouched cheeks.
+
+"I left you the collar-and-cuff box with his initials on, dearie, for a
+remembrance. I give it to him the first Christmas after we was married,
+before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire.
+I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel,
+you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it
+now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the
+way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe
+horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in
+drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it,
+dearie, but I been through the mill in my day. But that's all over now,
+him layin' there--my husband. Will was a good Strong in his day--nobody
+can't ever take that away from him. I'm leavin' you the funeral money
+out of what he had under his pillow. It's a godsend to me my husband
+layin' up that few hundred when things ain't so good with me. You was a
+good influence, dearie. I never knew him to save a cent. I'd never have
+thought it. Not a cent from him all these months. My legs for the
+air-work ain't what they used to be. Inflammatory rheumatism, y'know.
+I've got a mind to buy me a farm, too, dearie. Settle down. Say, I got
+to hand it to you, dearie--you're one fine Fat. Baby Ella herself had
+nothin' on you, and I've worked with as fine Fats as there is in the
+business. You're sure one fine Fat, and if there's such a thing as a
+recordin' angel--I got to catch that train, dearie--the chauff's
+honkin'--no grandmother stories goes with my concession. God, to think
+of Will layin' on a cool six hundred! Here's twenty-five for the
+funeral. If it's more, lemme know. Sidonia Sabrina, care Flying-Fish
+Troupe, State Fair, Butler County, Ohio. Good-by, dearie, and God
+bless you!"
+
+Long after the thridding of engine had died down, and the purple quiet
+flowed over the path of twin lamplights, Miss Hoag stood in her
+half-open screen door, gazing after. There were no tears in her eyes;
+indeed, on the contrary, the echo of the chugg-chugging which still lay
+on the air had taken on this rhythm:
+
+     Better to have loved a short man
+     Than never to have loved atall.
+
+     Better to have loved a short man
+     Than never to have loved atall.
+
+
+
+
+THE WRONG PEW
+
+For six midnights of the week, on the roof of the Moncrieff Frolic,
+grape-wreathed and with the ecstatic quivering of the flesh that is
+Asia's, Folly, robed in veils, lifts her carmined lips to be kissed, and
+Bacchus, whose pot-belly has made him unloved of fair women, raises his
+perpetual goblet and drinks that he may not weep.
+
+On the stroke of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible
+joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff
+Follies--twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair
+of whistling Pierrots--burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle
+and rhinestone power.
+
+Saint Genevieve, who loved so to brood over the enigmatic roofs of the
+city, would have here found pause. Within the golden inclosure of the
+Moncrieff Roof, a ceiling canopied in deep waves of burnt-orange velvet
+cunningly concealed, yet disclosed, amber light, the color of wine in
+the pouring. Behind burnt-orange portieres of great length and great
+depth of nap, the Twenty-Four Follies, each tempered like a knife edge,
+stood identically poised for the first clash of Negroid music from a
+Negroid orchestra.
+
+At a box-office built to imitate a sedan chair--Louis Quinze without
+and Louis Slupsky within--Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred
+hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company,
+incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of
+the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien,
+St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering _a la carte_
+from the most _a la mode_ menu in Oh-la-la, New York.
+
+The line grew, eighty emptying theaters fifteen stories below, sending
+each its trickle toward the Midnight Frolic--men too tired to sleep,
+women with slim, syncopated hips, and eyes none too nice. The smell of
+fur and fragrant powder on warm flesh began to rise on a fog of best
+Havana smoke. At the elevators women dropped out of their cloaks and, in
+the bustle of checking, stood by, not unconscious of the damask finish
+to bare shoulders.
+
+When Mr. Herman Loeb detached himself from the human tape-line before
+the box-office, the firm and not easily discomposed lines of his face
+had fallen into loose curves, the lower lip thrust forward and the
+eyebrows upward. Sheep and men in their least admirable moments have
+that same trick of face. He rejoined his companion, two slips of
+cardboard well up in the cup of his palm.
+
+"Good seats, Herman?"
+
+"I ask you, Sam, is it an outrage? Twenty bucks for a table on the
+side!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Is that highway robbery or not, I ask you!"
+
+Mr. Samuel Kahn hitched at his belt, an indication of mental ferment.
+
+"I wouldn't live in this town, not if you gave it to me!"
+
+"It's not the money, Sam. What's twenty dollars more or less on a
+business trip, and New-Year's Eve at that? But it's the principle of the
+thing. I hate to be made a good thing of!"
+
+"Twenty bucks!"
+
+"Yes, and like he was doing me a favor, that Louis Slups kyin the
+box-office who used to take tickets in our Olympic at home. Somebody at
+the last minute let go of his reservation or we couldn't have got
+a table."
+
+"Twenty bucks, and we got to feel honored yet that they let us sit at a
+table to buy a dinner! But say, Herm, it's a great sight, ain't it?"
+
+"There's only one little old New York! Got to hand it to this
+town--they're a gang of cut-throats, but they do things up brown. A
+little of it goes a long ways, but I always say a trip to New York isn't
+complete without a night at the Moncrieff Roof. You sit here, Sam,
+facing the stage."
+
+"No, you! An old bachelor has got the right to sit closer to a girl-show
+than a married man."
+
+They drew up before a small table edging a shining area of reserved
+floor space and only once removed from the burnt-orange curtains.
+
+"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Samuel Kahn, his rather strongly aquiline face lifted
+in profile.
+
+"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Loeb, smiling out of eyes ten years younger.
+
+"What'll you have, Sam?"
+
+"Say, what's the difference? I'll take a cheese sandwich and a glass of
+beer."
+
+"Now cut that! Maybe I squealed about the twenty bucks, but that don't
+make me out a short skate. This isn't Cherokee Garden at home, man. I'm
+going to blow my brother-in-law to New-Year's Eve in my own way, or know
+the reason why not. Here, waiter, a pint of extra dry and a layout of
+sandwiches."
+
+"If you can stand it, I guess I can!"
+
+"It's not on the firm, either, Sam; it's on me!"
+
+"For the price of to-night ma and Etta would hang themselves, ain't it?"
+
+"Say, we only live once. I always tell ma she can't take it with her
+when she goes. Anyways, for the discount we got on those Adler sport
+skirts, we can afford to celebrate."
+
+"Say, Herman, I wish I had a dime for every dollar that is spent up here
+to-night. Look at the women! I guess American men don't make queens out
+of their wives!"
+
+"For every wife who's up here to-night I wouldn't take the trouble to
+collect the dimes," said Mr. Loeb, with cunning distinction.
+
+"I guess that ain't all wrong, neither. It isn't such a pleasure to be
+away from your family New-Year's Eve, but I can assure you I'd rather
+have Etta having her celebration with ma and grandma, and maybe the
+Bambergers over at the house, than up here where even a married woman
+can blush to be."
+
+"Take it from me, old man, a flannel petticoat in the family is worth
+all the ballet skirts on this roof put together."
+
+"I bought ma and Etta each one of them handbags to-day at Lauer's for
+nine dollars. What they don't know about the price won't hurt them. Two
+for nine I'll tell them."
+
+"To this day ma believes that five-hundred-dollar bar pin I brought her
+two years ago from Pittsburgh cost fifty at auction."
+
+"There's Moe Marx from Kansas City just coming in! Spy the blonde he's
+with, will you? I guess Moe is used to that from home, nix! There's a
+firm, Marx-Jastrow, made a mint last year."
+
+"Look!"
+
+The lights had sunk down, the sea of faces receding into fog. The buzz
+died, too, and doors were swung against the steady shuffle of incomers.
+From behind the curtains a chime tonged roundly and in one key.
+One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--eleven
+--twelve!
+
+Then the orange curtains parted and on a gilded dais the width of the
+room, in startling relief against a purple circle the size of a tower
+clock, the Old Year, hoar on his beard and with limbs that shivered in
+an attitude of abdication, held out an hourglass to a pink-legged cherub
+with a gold band in his or her short curls.
+
+A shout went up and a great clanging of forks against frail glass, the
+pop of corks and the quick fizz ensuing. The curtains closed and the
+lights flashed up. Time had just sailed another knot into space, and
+who cared?
+
+At a center table a woman's slipper was already going the rounds. It
+began to sag and wine to ooze through the brocade.
+
+"Well, Hermie, here's a happy New Year to you!"
+
+"And to you, Sam, and many of 'em!"
+
+"To ma and Etta and grandma!"
+
+"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien!"
+
+"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien and that to this time next year we got the
+Men's Clothing Annex."
+
+They drank in solemn libation.
+
+The curtains had parted again. A Pierrot, chalky white, whistled in
+three registers, soprano, bass, and baser. A row of soubrettes rollicked
+in and out again in a flash of bushy skirts.
+
+"Say, look at the third one from this end with the black curls all
+bobbing. I'm for her!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Gone now!"
+
+Mr. Kahn leaned across his singing glass, his eye quickened into a wink.
+
+"Old man, you can pull that woman-hater stuff on the home folks, but it
+takes your brother-in-law to lead you to the live ones. Eh?"
+
+"You dry up," said Mr. Loeb, peering between the halves of a sandwich.
+
+On a glass runway built over the heads of the assembled, a crystal aisle
+for satin feet, the row of soubrettes suddenly appeared, peering over
+the crystal rail, singing down upon the sea of marcelled, bald, and dead
+heads. Men, sheepish of their smiles but with the small heels overhead
+clanging like castanets into their spirits, dared to glance up.
+
+"Gad, Herman! What'll they think up next? Whatta you know about
+that--all those little devils dancing right over our heads!"
+
+"There she is!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The little one in the boy's black-satin suit, with the black curls
+bobbing!"
+
+"Watch out, Herm! You'll die of crick in the neck."
+
+"I don't see any blinkers on you!"
+
+"Hey, old man! Your mouth's open."
+
+"I know. I opened it," said Mr. Loeb, his head back and eyes that were
+suddenly bold staring up at the twinkling aisle.
+
+At a table adjoining, a man reached up, flecking one of the tiny
+black-satin feet with a whirl of his napkin.
+
+Then Mr. Herman Loeb, of St. Louis, committed an act of spontaneous
+combustion. When came the turn of the black satin and the bobbing curls
+to bend over the rail directly above him, he flung wide his arms,
+overturning a wine bottle.
+
+"Jump!" he cried.
+
+Beneath the short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to
+open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and
+quicker than Harlequin's wink the aisle was clean.
+
+"Gad!" said Mr. Loeb, his strong profile thrust forward and a light on
+it.
+
+"That little one with the black curls? Say! You can put her on your
+watch-fob and take her home."
+
+"Wouldn't mind!" said Mr. Loeb.
+
+"You and Moe Marx are like all the women-haters. You don't know it, but
+you're walking in your sleep and the tenth-story window's open."
+
+"We oughtn't to come up here in business clothes," said Mr. Loeb, eying
+his cuff-edges.
+
+A woman sang of love. A chorus, crowned and girdled in inflated toy
+balloons, wreathed in and out among the tables.
+
+"She's not in that crowd."
+
+Men to whom life for the most part was grim enough vied for whose
+cigarette end should prick the painted bubbles. A fusillade ensued;
+explosions on the gold-powdered air--a battle _de luxe!_
+
+Mr. Kahn threw back his head, yawned, and slid a watch from his
+waistcoat pocket.
+
+"W-ell, a little of this goes a long way. If we want to pull out of this
+town day after to-morrow we've got to get down to Cedar Street early in
+the morning on that sweater job lot. It's about time for us to be
+getting across to the hotel."
+
+"Wait!" said Mr. Loeb.
+
+A jingling and a right merry cacophony of sound came fast upon the
+bubble bombardment, and then, to a light runnel of song, the row of
+twenty-four, harnessed in slotted sleigh-bells and with little-girl
+flounced frocks to their very sophisticated pink-silk knees.
+
+The devices of vaudeville are perennial. Rigoletto, who set a court's
+sides aching, danced to bells. The row of twenty-four, pink and white as
+if the cradle had just yielded them up, shivered suddenly into an
+ecstasy of sound, the jerked-up shoulder of one, the tossing curls of
+another, the naughty shrug of a third, eking out a melody.
+
+A laugh rose off the crowd.
+
+"Say, this town'll fall for anything! That act's got barnacles. But the
+little devils look cute, though. Say--say, old man, cut that out! This
+is no place for your mother's son. Say!"
+
+Mr. Loeb was leaning forward across the table, his head well ahead of
+his shoulders. From the third from the end of the row of twenty-four, a
+shoulder shrugging to the musical nonsense of bells was arching none too
+indirectly toward him, and once the black curls bobbed, giving a share
+of tremolo to the melody. But the bob was carefully directed, and Herman
+Loeb returned it in fashion, only more vehemently and with repetition.
+
+"Say, Herman, enough is enough! You'll have her here at the table next.
+It's like Al Suss always says, the reason he woke up one morning and
+found himself married to the first pony in the sextet was because he
+stuck a stamp upside down on a letter to her and found he could be held
+for a proposal in stamp language."
+
+To a great flare of the Negroid music, the row of twenty-four suddenly
+turned turtle, and prone on a strip of rug, heads to audience and faces
+to ceiling, twenty-four pairs of legs, ankleted in bells, kicked up a
+syncopated melody. From a Niagara of lace, insteps quivered an arpeggio.
+A chromatic scale bounced off a row of rapidly pointing toes. The third
+from the end, seized with sudden chill, quivered into grace notes,
+small pink feet kicking violently to the chandelier.
+
+Men red with laughter pounded their plates. The rhythmic convulsion
+passed down the prostrate line, forty-eight little feet twinkled a grand
+finale, and the curtains swung, then opened, remaining so.
+
+The line of twenty-four danced down and across the wide hair-line that
+separates life and stage, butterflies sipping from table to table. The
+cabaret was done. Lights resumed, and the business of food and drink.
+
+Mr. Loeb flung out an arm, pulling awry a carefully averted pink sash.
+
+"Say, little Jingle Bells, you and your friend!"
+
+"Cut it out, Herm! If we want to be down on Cedar Street by--"
+
+"What's your hurry, little one?"
+
+"It ain't mine; it belongs to the management."
+
+"Won't you join us?"
+
+"Herm, that job-lot of sweaters--"
+
+"Oh, come on, little Jingle Bells!"
+
+"My friend, too?"
+
+"Sure your friend."
+
+They teetered, the two of them like animated dolls, arm in arm, and so
+at ease.
+
+"Here, you little Black Curls, sit next to me, and you, Blondey, over
+there by my brother-in-law."
+
+"What'll you have, girls?"
+
+"Anchovies and fine-chopped onions for mine. Tell 'em in the kitchen,
+waiter, I said _fine_, and if the gentlemen are going to order wine,
+bring me a plate of oyster crackers first to take off the edge of my
+emptiness."
+
+"Sure, another bottle of wine, waiter."
+
+"Hermie, we--"
+
+"And you, little Jingle Bells, same as Blondey's order?"
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Say, you know what?"
+
+"No. What?"
+
+"I fell for those bouncing black curls of yours before I was in the
+place five minutes."
+
+At that there was an incredible flow of baby talk.
+
+"Gemmemen ike ikkie gurl wiz naughty-naughty black curl-curlies?"
+
+"You bet your life I do," said Mr. Loeb, unashamed of comprehension.
+
+Mr. Kahn flashed another look at his watch.
+
+"Say, don't you know, you girls oughtn't to keep us boys up so late.
+Ain't there no wear out to you?"
+
+The yellow curls to his right bounced sharply.
+
+"He asks if there's a wear out to us, Cleone? I wish it to you this
+minute, Baldy, that you had the muscles in the back of my legs. I guess
+you think it's choice for us girls to come out on the floor after
+the show!"
+
+"Sylvette!"
+
+"Yah, it's my New-Year's resolution to tell the truth for thirty minutes
+if I'm bounced for it. If you got to know it, it's a ten-per-cent.
+rake-off for us girls on every bottle of golden vichy you boys blow
+us to."
+
+"Honest, Sylvette, you're wearing scrambled eggs instead of brains
+to-night. Why don't you cry a few brinies for the gemmemen while
+you're at it!"
+
+That so quickened Mr. Loeb's risibilities that he dropped his hand over
+Miss Cleone St. Claire's, completely covering yet not touching it.
+
+"You're a scream, kiddo! Gee! I like you!"
+
+She drank with her chin flung up and her throat very white.
+
+"Bubbles! Bubbles! God bless all my troubles!"
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" said Mr. Kahn, smiling at her.
+
+"The gemmemen from out of town?"
+
+"St. Louis."
+
+"I had a friend out there--Joe Kelsannie, of Albuquerque. Remember him,
+Sylvette?"
+
+"Do I!"
+
+"I'm going out there myself some day if the going's good, and get me a
+cowboy west of Newark."
+
+Mr. Loeb leaned forward, smiling into her quick-fire eyes.
+
+"I'll take you!"
+
+"Stick her on your watch-fob, Herman."
+
+"No, sirree, I'll take her life size."
+
+"Watch out, Hermie; remember the upside-down postage stamp!"
+
+"Want to go, Jingle Bells?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"But I'm on the level, little one. No kidding. Day after to-morrow. St.
+Louis--with me!"
+
+Miss Cleone St. Claire drew herself up, the doll look receding somewhat
+from her gaze.
+
+"Say, bo, you got me wrong. I'm one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine
+thousand chorus girls you could introduce your sister to. Aren't
+I, Syl?"
+
+"You let that kid alone," said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not
+part of her role. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's
+time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face
+had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a
+sunburst of fine lines showing through the powder like stencil designs.
+
+"Come on, Herm. It's getting late, and if we want to be down on Cedar--"
+
+"You think I'm kidding this little black-eyed chum of yours, don't you,
+Blondey?"
+
+"Sure not! You want 'er to grace the head of your table and wear the
+family heirlooms!"
+
+"Well, Sam, you're my brother-in-law--married to my own sister and
+living under the same roof with me--am I a habitual lady-fusser, or do
+they call me Hermie the Hermit at home?"
+
+"Never knew him to talk ten straight words to a skirt before, girls,"
+said Mr. Kahn through a yawn; "and if you don't believe it, go out and
+ask Louis Slupsky, who used to play chinies with him."
+
+"Say, you," said Miss De Long, edging slightly, "you're about as funny
+as a machine-gun, you are! If you got a private life, why ain't you back
+in St. Louis a night like this, showing her and the kids a good time?"
+
+She was frankly tired, her eyelids darkening.
+
+"I wish to Heaven I was," said Mr. Kahn, suddenly. "Take it from me,
+girl, it was nothing but a business hang-over kept me. Come, Herm,
+if we--"
+
+"You think I'm kidding little Jingle Bells, don't you?"
+
+Miss St. Claire sat back against her chair; her black eyes had quieted.
+"If you ain't kidding you must be crazy with the heat or dr--"
+
+"Look at my glass. Have I touched it?"
+
+"The man's raving, Syl! Wants to marry me and take me back to St. Louis,
+Thursday."
+
+"Cut the comedy and come! Herm, it's getting on to three in the
+morning."
+
+"This little girl keeps thinking I'm kidding, Blondey. I always knew if
+I ever fell for matrimony it would be just like this. Right off the
+reel. No funny business. Just bing! Bang! Done!"
+
+"Catch me while I swoon--but he sounds on the level, Cleone."
+
+"Well, what if he is? Of all the nerve! Whatta you know about me? How do
+you know I haven't got three kids and a crippled husband at home? How do
+you know--?"
+
+"I know, little Jingle Bells! Why, I was as sure of you, the minute I
+clapped eyes on you, as if we'd been raised next door to each other. I
+can see right down in your little life like it was this glass of wine."
+
+Miss St. Claire threw out her arms in a beautiful and sleepy gesture.
+
+"Well, boys, this is a nice little party, but I got to get up at three
+o'clock to-morrow afternoon, and I need the sleep. Oh, how I love my
+morning sleep!" She drew back, her bare outflung arm pushing her from
+the table. "If you'll call me and my room-mate a taxi--"
+
+"No, you don't, Jingle Bells!"
+
+He placed a hand that trembled slightly on the sleeved part of her arm.
+She opened wider her very wide black eyes.
+
+"Are you bats?" she said.
+
+"I'm going to marry you and take you home with me, if I have to carry
+you off like a partridge."
+
+"Cleone, I tell you the man means it!"
+
+"You're right, Blondey. I never meant anything more in my life."
+
+A sudden shortness of manner crept over Mr. Kahn.
+
+"Man, you're drunk!" he cried, springing to his feet.
+
+"See my glass!"
+
+"Then you're crazy!"
+
+"Sit down, old Baldy. Why's he crazy? That little room-mate of mine is
+as straight a little girl as--"
+
+"Why, I tell you he's crazy! That man's the head of a big business. He
+can't kick up any nonsense like this. Come on, Herm, cut the comedy.
+It's time we were getting across to our hotel. Look at the crowd
+thinning, and what's left is getting rough. Come!"
+
+"If you don't know how to behave yourself, Sam, in the presence of these
+ladies, maybe you better go back to the hotel alone. I'm going to see
+these young ladies to their door, and before we go me and this little
+girl are going to understand each other."
+
+Mr. Kahn sat down again in some stupefaction.
+
+"Well, of all the nerve! Who are you? Whatta you think I am? Syl, what's
+his game?"
+
+Miss De Long thrust forward her tired and thinning face; her eyes had a
+mica gleam.
+
+"Cleone, he wants to marry you. A decent man with a decent face from a
+decent town has taken a shine to you and wants to marry you. M-a-r-r-y!
+Do you get it, girl?"
+
+"How do you know he's decent? I don't know no more about him than he
+knows about me. I--"
+
+"'Ain't you got no hunch on life, girl? Look at him! That's how I know
+he's decent. So would you if you'd been in this business as long as me.
+Can't you tell a real honest-to-God man when you see one? A business
+man at that!"
+
+"You got me right, Blondey. Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, Ladies' Wear, St.
+Louis. Here's my card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and
+I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis
+Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather
+pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in
+business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are
+you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, as Mrs.--?"
+
+"Herm! You're cr--"
+
+"Syl--what'll I--do?"
+
+"An on-the-level guy, Cleone. Marry! Do you hear? M-a-r-r-y! Say, and it
+couldn't happen to me!"
+
+"Herman, man, I tell you you're off your head. Think once of your
+home--ma, Etta, grandma--with a _goy_ girl that--"
+
+"Easy there, Baldy, you're adding up wrong. You and her both celebrates
+the same Sundays. If anybody should ask you for Sylvette de Long's birth
+certificate, look it up under the P's. Birdie Pozner. It's the same with
+my friend. Cleone, tell the gemmemen your real name! Well, I'll tell it
+for you. Sadie Mosher, sister to the great Felix Mosher who played heavy
+down at Shefsky's theater for twenty years. _Goy!_ Say, Sammie, it's too
+bad a nut from the bug-house bought the Brooklyn Bridge to-day or I'd
+try to sell it to you."
+
+"Little Jingle Bells, if I put you in a taxi now and shoot up those
+credentials, will you marry me to-morrow at noon?"
+
+"I--oh, I dunno."
+
+"Marry, he says to you, girl. Think of the minus number of times girls
+like us get that little word whispered to 'em. Think of the short
+season. Moncrieff's grouch. The back muscles of your legs! Marry, he
+says to you, girl! Marry!"
+
+"To-morrow at noon, little one?"
+
+"I--I sleep till three."
+
+"And it couldn't 'a' been me!"
+
+"Little Jingle Bells?"
+
+"Why, y-yes, I--I'm on."
+
+At three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in a magistrate's office,
+beneath a framed engraving of a judicial court in wigged session, Herman
+Schulien Loeb and Sadie Helen Mosher became as one. A bar of scant
+metropolitan sunshine, miraculously let in by a cleft between two
+skyscrapers, lay at the feet of the bride.
+
+Slightly arear of them: Mr. Louis Slupsky; Mr. Samuel Kahn, with a
+tinge the color of apoplexy in his face; and Miss Sylvette de Long, her
+face thrust forward as if she heard melody. The voice of the magistrate
+rose like a bird in slow flight, then settled to a brief drone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+East is East and West is West, and St. Louis is neither. It lies like a
+mediator, the westerly hand of the east end of the country stretching
+across the sullenest part of the Mississippi to clasp the easterly hand
+of the west end of the country.
+
+Indians have at one time or another left their chirography upon the face
+of St. Louis. But all that is effaced now under the hot lava of
+Americanism that is covering the major cities in more or less even
+layers. Now it stands atop its Indian mounds, a metropolis of almost a
+million souls, a twenty-story office-building upon the site of an old
+trading-post, and a subway threatening the city's inners. There is a
+highly restricted residence district given over to homes of the most
+stucco period of the Italian Renaissance, and an art-museum, as high on
+the brow of a hill as the Athenians loved to build. St. Louis has not
+yet a Champs-Elysees or a Fifth Avenue. And of warm evenings it takes
+its walks without hats. Neither is the cafe or the cabaret its
+evening solace.
+
+It dines, even in its renaissance section, placidly _chez soi;_ the
+family activities of the day here thrown into a common pool of
+discussion.
+
+On Washington Boulevard, probably sixty dollars a foot removed from the
+renaissance section, architecture suddenly turns an indifferent shoulder
+to period, Queen Anne rubbing sloping roof with neighbor's concrete
+sleeping-porch of the hygienic period. Only the building-line is
+maintained, the houses sitting comfortably back and a well-hosed strip
+of sidewalk, bordered in hardy maples, running clear and white out to De
+Balaviere Avenue, where the _art-nouveau_ apartment-house begins to
+invade. In winter bare branches meet in deadlock over this walk. On the
+smooth macadamized road of Washington Boulevard automobiles try out
+their speed limit.
+
+One such wintry day, with the early dusk already invading, Mrs. Herman
+Loeb, with red circles round her very black eyes, and her unrouged face
+rather blotched, sat in one of the second-floor-front rooms of a double
+buff-brick house on Washington Boulevard, hunched up in a red-velvet
+chair, chin cupped in palm, and gazing, through perfectly adjusted
+Honiton lace curtains, at the steady line of home-to-dinner motor-cars.
+
+Warmth lay in that room, and a conservative mahogany elegance--a great
+mahogany double bed, immaculately covered in white, with a large
+monogram heavily hand-embroidered in its center; a mahogany swell-front
+dresser, with a Honiton lace cover and a precise outlay of monogramed
+silver. Over it a gilt-framed French engraving with "Maternal Love" writ
+in elegant script beneath. A two-toned red rug ate in footsteps.
+
+Mrs. Loeb let her head fall back against the chair and closed her eyes.
+In her dark-stuff dress with its sheer-white collar, she was part of
+the note of the room, except that her small bosom rose and fell too
+rapidly. A pungent odor of cookery began to invade; the street lamps of
+Washington Boulevard to pop out. The door from the hallway opened, but
+at the entrance of her mother-in-law Mrs. Loeb did not rise, only folded
+one foot closer under her.
+
+"You, Sadie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Herman home yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Smell? I fixed him red cabbage to-night."
+
+"Yes, I smell."
+
+"How she sits here in the dark. Thank goodness, Sadie, electricity we
+don't have to economize on."
+
+She pushed a wall key, a center chandelier of frosted electric bulbs
+springing into radiance. In its immediate glare Mrs. Loeb regarded her
+daughter-in-law, inert there beside the window.
+
+"Get your embroidery, Sadie, and come down by me and Etta till the men
+get home to supper. I want her to show you that cut-work stitch she's
+putting in her lunch napkins."
+
+"Ugh!"
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb approached with the forward peer of the nearsighted.
+Time and maternity had had their whacks at her figure, her stoutness
+enhanced by a bothersome shelf of bust, but her face--the same virile
+profile of her son's and with the graying hair parted tightly from
+it--guiltless of lines, except now, regarding her daughter-in-law, a
+horizontal crease came into her brow.
+
+"You want to go sit a while by grandma, then?"
+
+"No. Gee! can't--can't a girl just sit up in her room quiet? I'm all
+right."
+
+"I didn't say, Sadie, you wasn't all right. Only a young girl with
+everything to be thankful for don't need to sit up in her room like it
+was a funeral, with her mother and sister and grandma in the
+same house."
+
+On the mahogany arms of her chair Mrs. Herman Loeb's small hand closed
+in a tight fist over her damp wad of handkerchief,
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Sadie, you been crying again."
+
+"What if I have?"
+
+"A fine answer from a girl to her mother."
+
+"I--you--you drive me to it--your questions--"
+
+"I shouldn't have the interest of my own son's wife at heart!"
+
+"Can't a girl get--get blue?"
+
+"Blue?"
+
+"Yes, blue."
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb reached out her hand with its wide marriage band
+slightly indented in flesh; the back of that hand was speckled with
+large, lightish freckles and trembled slightly.
+
+"Sadie, ain't there just no way we can make you feel happy in St. Louis?
+Last night through the door to my room I couldn't help hear again you
+and Herman with a scene. Take your feet down off the plush, Sadie."
+
+"Oh yes, you heard, all right."
+
+"'Ain't you got a good home here, Sadie? Everything in the world a girl
+could wish for! A husband as good as gold, like his poor dead father
+before him. 'Ain't we done everything, me and my Etta, to make you feel
+how--how glad we are to have you for our Hermie's wife?"
+
+"Oh, I know, I know."
+
+"What maybe we felt in the beginning--well, wasn't it natural, an only
+son and coming such a surprise--all that's over now. Why, it's a
+pleasure to see how grandma she loves you."
+
+"I--I'm all right, I tell you."
+
+"Didn't we even fix it you should go in a flat on Waterman Avenue
+housekeeping for yourself, if you wanted it?"
+
+"Yes, and tie myself down to this dump yet. Not much!"
+
+"Well, I only hope, Sadie Loeb, you never got in your life to live in a
+worse dump. I know this much, I have tried to do my part. Did I sign
+over this house to you and Herman for a wedding present, giving only to
+my own daughter the row of Grand Avenue stores?"
+
+"I never said you didn't."
+
+"Have you got the responsibility even to run your own house, with me and
+Etta carrying it on like always?"
+
+"Am I complaining?"
+
+"Do I ask of you one thing, Sadie, except maybe that you learn a little
+housekeeping and watch how I order from the butcher, things that every
+wife should know if she needs it or not? In the whole year you been my
+daughter, Sadie, have I asked of you more than you should maybe help the
+up-stairs girl a little mornings, and do a little embroidery for your
+linen-chest, and that maybe, instead of sleeping so late till noon every
+morning, you should get up and have breakfast with your husband?"
+
+"If you begin going over all that again I--I'll just yell!"
+
+"With anybody pouting in the house I just 'ain't got heart to do
+nothing. I don't see, Sadie, that you had such fine connections in the
+East that you shouldn't be satisfied here."
+
+"You just leave my friends in the East out of it. If you wanna know it,
+they're a darn sight better than the wads of respectability I see
+waddlin' in here to swap Kaffee Klatsches with you!"
+
+"Just let me tell you, Sadie Loeb, you can be proud such ladies call on
+you. A girl what don't think no more of her husband's business
+connections than not to come down-stairs when Mrs. Nathan Bamberger
+calls! Maybe our friends out here got being good wifes and good
+housekeepers on the brain more as high kicking in New York; but just the
+same Mrs. Nathan Bamberger, what can buy and sell you three times over,
+ain't ashamed to go in her Lindell Avenue kitchen, when her husband or
+her son likes red cabbage, what you can't hire cooked, or once in a
+while a miltz."
+
+"Say, if I've heard that once, I've--"
+
+"Then, too, Sadie, since we're talking--it's a little thing--I haven't
+liked to talk about it, but I--I got the first time I should hear the
+word _ma_ on your lips. You think it's so nice that a daughter-in-law
+should always call me 'Say,' like a bed-post?"
+
+"I--I can't, Mrs. Loeb--it--it just won't come--mother."
+
+"Don't tell me you don't know any better! A girl what can be so nice
+with poor old blind grandma, like you been, can be nice with her
+mother-in-law and sister-in-law, too, if she wants to be. I didn't want
+I should ever have to talk to you like this, Sadie, but sometimes a--a
+person she just busts out."
+
+And then Mrs. Herman Loeb leaped forward in her chair, her small tight
+fist pounding each word:
+
+"Then let me go! Whatta you holding me here for? Let me go back,
+Mrs.--mother! Let me go! I don't deny it, you're too good for me round
+here. I don't fit! Let me go back to the old room and--my old room-mate
+where--where I belong with my--my crowd. You tell what you just said to
+Herm! Get him to let me go back with him on his trip to-morrow night.
+Please, Mrs.--mother--please!"
+
+"You mean to New York with him on his business trip for a visit?"
+
+"Call it that if you want to, only let me go! You--you can tell them
+later that--that I ain't coming back. I--I've begged him so! I don't
+belong here. You just said as much yourself. I don't belong here. Let me
+go, Mrs. Loeb. Let me go! You tell him, Mrs. Loeb, to let me go."
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb suddenly sat down, and the color flowed out of her
+face.
+
+"That I should live to see this day! My Herman's wife wants to leave
+him! Oh, my son, my son! What did you do to yourself! A di--a separation
+in the Loeb family! I knew last night when I heard through the door and
+how worried my poor boy has looked for months, that it didn't mean no
+good. Since her first month here I've seen it coming. I did my
+part to--"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Loeb, and I done my part!"
+
+"Oh--oh--oh, and how that boy of mine has catered to her! Humored her
+every whim to keep her contented! I always say it's the nix-nux wives
+get the most attentions and thanks from their husbands. I--"
+
+"I done my part. I've tried as much as you to make myself fit in out
+here. I--I just ain't your kind, Mrs. Loeb. Yours and--Etta's. I--I
+can't be saving and economical when I see there's plenty to spend. I--I
+was raised with my brother down in Shefsky's theater, where nobody cares
+about monogramed guest towels and about getting up before noon if they
+don't want to. The evenings here kill me! Kill me! I hate pinochle! I
+gotta have life, Mrs. Loeb. I hate Kaffee Klatsches with a lot of--I--I
+tell you I got different blood in my veins, Mrs. Loeb, I--"
+
+"No, no, Sadie Mosher Loeb, that kind of talk don't go. You got just the
+same _shabbos_ like us. Saturday is your--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I'm in the right church, all right, Mrs. Loeb, but I'm in
+the wrong pew. Mrs. Loeb, please can't you understand I'm in the
+wrong pew!"
+
+And all her carefully confined curls, springing their pins, she fell
+forward a shivering mass.
+
+In that surcharged moment and brisky exuding a wintry out-of-doors, Mr.
+Herman Loeb entered and stood for a moment in the open doorway, in the
+act of removing his greatcoat.
+
+"Herman, my son! Oh, my son!"
+
+"What's wrong, ma? Sadie!"
+
+"It's come, Herman, like I always predicted to Etta it would. Your wife,
+my poor boy, she wants to leave you. This should happen to a Loeb yet--a
+separation in the family! My poor boy! My poor boy!"
+
+"Why, ma, what--what's Sadie been telling you?"
+
+At that Mrs. Herman Loeb raised her streaming face, her eyes all rid of
+their roguery and stretched in despair.
+
+"I didn't want to let out to her, Herman. I wanted to make a quiet
+get-away, you know I did. But she nagged me! She nagged me!"
+
+"Ma, you shouldn't--"
+
+"She heard us last night and Heaven knows how many nights before that.
+She's wise. She knows. She knows it's been a year of prison here for--"
+
+"Oh, my poor boy! Prison! A girl like her finds herself married into one
+of the most genteel families in St. Louis, a girl what never in her life
+was used to even decent sheets to sleep on!"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and
+them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and
+such a mess!"
+
+"Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and
+go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or
+a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you?
+Ma! Sadie!"
+
+"My poor boy! My poor boy!"
+
+"I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm,
+is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let
+me go, Herm, for--for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and
+it ain't your mother or your sister and---and it ain't you--it ain't any
+one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here!
+There ain't none!"
+
+"I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up
+the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York,
+where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri--"
+
+"No, no, he knows I don't want that!"
+
+"If she did, ma, we'd go!"
+
+"Herm knows it was all a mistake with me. I didn't know my own mind. I
+wanna go back along where I came from and where I belong! It ain't like
+I was the kind of a girl with another man in the case--"
+
+"We should thank her, Hermie, that there ain't more scandal mixed up in
+it yet!"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"My poor boy, what could have had his pick from the first girls in
+St.--"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+There was an edge to Mr. Loeb's voice that had the bite of steel. He
+tossed his greatcoat to the snowy bed, walking between the bed-end and
+the mantel, round to the crouched figure of his wife.
+
+"There, there, Sadie!" he said in his throat, and, stooping over her: "I
+give in! I give in!"
+
+Her head flew up.
+
+"Herm!"
+
+"My son!"
+
+"No, no, ma, it's no use trying to put anything but a jingle-bell
+harness on poor little Jingle Bells. She don't understand us any more
+than we--we can understand her!"
+
+"That's it, Herm; that's why I say if you'll only let me go!"
+
+"Oh, my God! A separation in the Loeb family? My poor dead husband! My
+daughter Etta, president of the Ladies' Auxiliary! Grandma--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, ma! You want grandma to hear?"
+
+"My son, the cleanest, finest--"
+
+"Ma!" There were lines in his face as if a knot at his heart were
+tightening them. "You mustn't blame her, ma; and, Sadie, you mustn't
+feel this way toward my mother. Nobody's to blame. I've been thinking
+this thing over more than you think, Sadie, and I--I give in. She's a
+poor little thing, ma, that's been trapped into something she can't
+fit into."
+
+"Yes, Herm, that's it."
+
+"It's natural. My fault, too. I carried her off like a partridge. Don't
+cry, little Jingle Bells! To-morrow night we leave for New York, and
+when I come back you're going to stay on with--"
+
+"Sylvette says--"
+
+"With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't!
+'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"
+
+With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking
+herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the
+open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap
+of a cane.
+
+Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end.
+
+"Nothing is the matter, grandma."
+
+"Come and get me, Herman."
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon
+Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane
+quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even
+some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust.
+
+"Bertha?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Here, grandma, by the window is your chair."
+
+He lowered her to the red-velvet arm-chair, placing her cane gently
+alongside.
+
+"So!"
+
+She moved her sightless face from one to the other, interrogating each
+presence.
+
+"Sadie?"
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+"How you holler, children! Everything ain't right?"
+
+"Yes, grandma. Ma and Sadie and me been making plans. To-morrow night
+Sadie goes with me to New York on my trip. A little pleasure trip."
+
+The little face, littler with each year, broke into smile.
+
+"So, little Sadie-sha, you got good times, not? A good husband and good
+times? New York! To New York she goes, Bertha?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Schulien fell to crooning slightly, redigesting with the senility
+of years.
+
+"To New York! Nowadays young wives got it good. How long you stay,
+Hermie?"
+
+"It's just my Pittsburgh-New York trip, grandma."
+
+"Sadie, come here by grandma."
+
+She approached with the tears drying on her face, her bosom heaving in
+suppressed jerks.
+
+"Yes, grandma." And patted the little clawlike hand, and the bit of
+white hair beneath the fluted cap, and a bit of old lace fastened with
+an old ivory cameo and covering the old throat.
+
+"You got good times, not?"
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+"And you'm a good girl, Sadie. Eh? Eh?"
+
+"Y-yes, grandma."
+
+"When you come back from New York, you bring grandma a fine present,
+not?"
+
+"Yes, yes, grandma."
+
+"A quilted under jacket wholesale, for when grandma rides out in the
+wheel-chair."
+
+"Y-yes, grandma."
+
+To the saturnine, New York of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a
+thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one
+such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept
+over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his
+enveloping hand over that of his wife,
+
+"Well, Sadie, you take good care of yourself, girl. No matter how we
+decide to--to end this thing, remember you're my wife--yet."
+
+"Yes, Herman," said Mrs. Loeb, through a gulp.
+
+"Don't stint, and remember how easily you get cold from draughts."
+
+"I won't. I will."
+
+"If you find yourself too crowded in that room with your friend, get a
+better one farther away from the theaters, where it isn't so
+noisy--maybe by yourself."
+
+"I'll see."
+
+"You won't be afraid to go back to that room now, with Sylvette still at
+the show?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"If I was you--now mind, I'm only suggesting it--but if I was you I
+wouldn't be in such a hurry about getting back in that roof show, Sadie.
+Maybe in a few days something better may show up or--or you'll change
+your mind or something."
+
+"I gotta get back to work to keep from thinking. Anyway, I don't want
+to be sponging on you any longer than I can help."
+
+"You're my wife, aren't you?"
+
+She sat, a small cold huddle in the center of the cab seat, toward him
+her quivering face flashing out as street lamps bounced past. They were
+nearing the great marble facade of the Seventh Avenue Terminal.
+
+"Herman, I--I hate to see everything bust up like this--you--you such a
+prince and all--but like Syl says, I--I guess all fools ain't dead yet!"
+
+"You've had time to work this thing out for yourself now, Sadie, but
+like I was saying before, anybody can play stubborn, but--but it's a
+wise person who ain't ashamed to change his mind. Eh, Sadie? Eh?"
+
+They were sliding down a runway and drew up now alongside a curb. A
+redcap, wild for fee, swung open the cab door, immediately confiscating
+all luggage.
+
+"No, no, not that! You carry that box, Herm. It's the padded underjacket
+for grandma. Tell her I--I sent it to her, Herm--with--with love."
+
+"Yes, Sadie."
+
+She was frankly crying now, edging her way through the crowd, running in
+little quick steps to match her pace to his.
+
+At the trainside, during the business of ticket inspection, she stood
+by, her palm pat against her mouth and tears galumphing down. With a
+face that stood out whitely in the gaseous fog, Mr. Loeb fumbled for
+the red slip of his berth reservation.
+
+"Well, Sadie girl, three minutes more and--"
+
+"Oh--oh, Herm!"
+
+"If you feel as bad as that, it's not too late, Sadie. I--you--it takes
+a wise little girlie to change her mind. Eh? Eh?"
+
+"No--no, Herm, I--"
+
+He clenched her arm suddenly and tightly.
+
+"If you want to come, girl, for God's sake now's your time. Sadie honey,
+you want to?"
+
+She shook him off through gasps.
+
+"No, no. Herm, I--I can't stand it--it's only that I feel so bad at
+seeing you--No--no--not--not now."
+
+The all-aboard call rang out like a shout in a cave.
+
+He was fumbling at his luggage for the small pasteboard box, haste
+fuddling his movements.
+
+"I'll be in Pittsburgh to-morrow till seven, honey. Sleep over it, and
+if you change your mind, catch the eleven-forty-five St. Louis flyer out
+of here to-morrow morning, and that train'll pick me up at
+Pittsburgh--eleven forty-five."
+
+"Oh, I--"
+
+"You be the one to bring this box home, with your own little hands, to
+poor grandma, honey, and--and if you don't change your mind, why--why,
+you can send it. You be the one to bring it to her, honey. Remember,
+it's a wise girlie knows when to change her mind!"
+
+"Oh, Hermie--Hermie!"
+
+"All--aboard!"
+
+With her hands clasped and her uncovered face twisted, she watched the
+snakelike train crawl into oblivion.
+
+When she re-entered the taxicab she was half swooning of tears.
+
+"Don't cry, baby," said the emboldened chauffeur, placing the small
+pasteboard box up beside her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the great old-fashioned room in Fortieth Street--of two beds and two
+decades ago--she finally in complete exhaustion slid into her white iron
+cot against the wall, winding an alarm-clock and placing it on the floor
+beside her.
+
+Long before Miss Sylvette de Long, with her eyelids very dark, tiptoed
+in, and, rubbing the calves of her legs in alcohol, undressed in the
+dark, she was asleep, her mouth still moist and quivering like
+a child's.
+
+At nine-thirty and with dirty daylight cluttering up the cluttered room,
+the alarm-clock, full of heinous vigor, bored like an awl into
+the morning.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Humoresque, by Fannie Hurst
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMORESQUE ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Humoresque, by Fannie Hurst
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Humoresque
+       A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It
+
+Author: Fannie Hurst
+
+Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9864]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 25, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMORESQUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Charlie Kirschner
+and the PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HE CAPERED THROUGH THE MELODY OF DVORÀK'S, WHICH IS AS
+IRONIC AS A GRINNING MASK]
+
+
+
+                               HUMORESQUE
+
+                          A LAUGH ON LIFE WITH
+                            A TEAR BEHIND IT
+
+                             By FANNIE HURST
+
+                                  1920
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+HUMORESQUE
+OATS FOR THE WOMAN
+A PETAL ON THE CURRENT
+WHITE GOODS
+"HEADS"
+A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD
+EVEN AS YOU AND I
+THE WRONG PEW
+
+
+
+
+HUMORESQUE
+
+On either side of the Bowery, which cuts through like a drain to catch
+its sewage, Every Man's Land, a reeking march of humanity and humidity,
+steams with the excrement of seventeen languages, flung in _patois_ from
+tenement windows, fire escapes, curbs, stoops, and cellars whose walls
+are terrible and spongy with fungi.
+
+By that impregnable chemistry of race whereby the red blood of the
+Mongolian and the red blood of the Caucasian become as oil and water in
+the mingling, Mulberry Street, bounded by sixteen languages, runs its
+intact Latin length of pushcarts, clotheslines, naked babies, drying
+vermicelli; black-eyed women in rhinestone combs and perennially big
+with child; whole families of buttonhole-makers, who first saw the
+blue-and-gold light of Sorrento, bent at home work round a single gas
+flare; pomaded barbers of a thousand Neapolitan amours. And then, just
+as suddenly, almost without osmosis and by the mere stepping down from
+the curb, Mulberry becomes Mott Street, hung in grillwork balconies, the
+moldy smell of poverty touched up with incense. Orientals whose feet
+shuffle and whose faces are carved out of satinwood. Forbidden women,
+their white, drugged faces behind upper windows. Yellow children,
+incongruous enough in Western clothing. A draughty areaway with an
+oblique of gaslight and a black well of descending staircase.
+Show-windows of jade and tea and Chinese porcelains.
+
+More streets emanating out from Mott like a handful of crooked rheumatic
+fingers, then suddenly the Bowery again, cowering beneath Elevated
+trains, where men burned down to the butt end of soiled lives pass in
+and out and out and in of the knee-high swinging doors, a veiny-nosed,
+acid-eaten race in themselves.
+
+Allen Street, too, still more easterly, and half as wide, is straddled
+its entire width by the steely, long-legged skeleton of Elevated
+traffic, so that its third-floor windows no sooner shudder into silence
+from the rushing shock of one train than they are shaken into chatter by
+the passage of another. Indeed, third-floor dwellers of Allen Street,
+reaching out, can almost touch the serrated edges of the Elevated
+structure, and in summer the smell of its hot rails becomes an actual
+taste in the mouth. Passengers, in turn, look in upon this horizontal of
+life as they whiz by. Once, in fact, the blurry figure of what might
+have been a woman leaned out, as she passed, to toss into one Abrahm
+Kantor's apartment a short-stemmed pink carnation. It hit softly on
+little Leon Kantor's crib, brushing him fragrantly across the mouth and
+causing him to pucker up.
+
+Beneath, where even in August noonday, the sun cannot find its way by a
+chink, and babies lie stark naked in the cavernous shade, Allen Street
+presents a sort of submarine and greenish gloom, as if its humanity were
+actually moving through a sea of aqueous shadows, faces rather bleached
+and shrunk from sunlessness as water can bleach and shrink. And then,
+like a shimmering background of orange-finned and copper-flanked marine
+life, the brass-shops of Allen Street, whole rows of them, burn
+flamelessly and without benefit of fuel.
+
+To enter Abrahm Kantor's--Brasses, was three steps down, so that his
+casement show-window, at best filmed over with the constant rain of dust
+ground down from the rails above, was obscure enough, but crammed with
+copied loot of khedive and of czar. The seven-branch candlestick so
+biblical and supplicating of arms. An urn, shaped like Rebecca's, of
+brass, all beaten over with little pocks. Things--cups, trays, knockers,
+ikons, gargoyles, bowls, and teapots. A symphony of bells in graduated
+sizes. Jardinières with fat sides. A pot-bellied samovar. A
+swinging-lamp for the dead, star-shaped. Against the door, an octave of
+tubular chimes, prisms of voiceless harmony and of heatless light.
+
+Opening this door, they rang gently, like melody heard through water and
+behind glass. Another bell rang, too, in tilted singsong from a pulley
+operating somewhere in the catacomb rear of this lambent vale of things
+and things and things. In turn, this pulley set in toll still another
+bell, two flights up in Abrahm Kantor's tenement, which overlooked the
+front of whizzing rails and a rear wilderness of gibbet-looking
+clothes-lines, dangling perpetual specters of flapping union suits in a
+mid-air flaky with soot.
+
+Often at lunch, or even the evening meal, this bell would ring in on
+Abrahm Kantor's digestive well-being, and while he hurried down, napkin
+often bib-fashion still about his neck, and into the smouldering lanes
+of copper, would leave an eloquent void at the head of his
+well-surrounded table.
+
+This bell was ringing now, jingling in upon the slumber of a still newer
+Kantor, snuggling peacefully enough within the ammoniac depths of a
+cradle recently evacuated by Leon, heretofore impinged upon you.
+
+On her knees before an oven that billowed forth hotly into her face,
+Mrs. Kantor, fairly fat and not yet forty, and at the immemorial task of
+plumbing a delicately swelling layer-cake with broom-straw, raised her
+face, reddened and faintly moist.
+
+"Isadore, run down and say your papa is out until six. If it's a
+customer, remember the first asking-price is the two middle figures on
+the tag, and the last asking-price is the two outside figures. See once,
+with your papa out to buy your little brother his birthday present, and
+your mother in a cake, if you can't make a sale for first price."
+
+Isadore Kantor, aged eleven and hunched with a younger Kantor over an
+oilcloth-covered table, hunched himself still deeper in a barter for a
+large crystal marble with a candy stripe down its center.
+
+"Izzie, did you hear me?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Go down this minute--do you hear? Rudolph, stop always letting your
+big brother get the best of you in marbles. Iz-zie!"
+
+"In a minute."
+
+"Don't let me have to ask you again, Isadore Kantor!"
+
+"Aw, ma, I got some 'rithmetic to do. Let Esther go!"
+
+"Always Esther! Your sister stays right in the front room with her
+spelling."
+
+"Aw, ma, I got spelling, too."
+
+"Every time I ask that boy he should do me one thing, right away he gets
+lessons! With me, that lessons-talk don't go no more. Every time you get
+put down in school, I'm surprised there's a place left lower where they
+can put you. Working-papers for such a boy like you!"
+
+"I'll woik--"
+
+"How I worried myself! Violin lessons yet--thirty cents a lesson out of
+your papa's pants while he slept! That's how I wanted to have in the
+family a profession--maybe a musician on the violin! Lessons for you out
+of money I had to lie to your papa about! Honest, when I think of it--my
+own husband--it's a wonder I don't potch you just for remembering it.
+Rudolph, will you stop licking that cake-pan? It's saved for your little
+brother Leon. Ain't you ashamed even on your little brother's birthday
+to steal from him?"
+
+"Ma, gimme the spoon?"
+
+"I'll give you the spoon, Isadore Kantor, where you don't want it. If
+you don't hurry down, the way that bell is ringing, not one bite do you
+get out of your little brother's birthday cake tonight!"
+
+"I'm goin', ain't I?"
+
+"Always on my children's birthdays a meanness sets into this house!
+Rudolph, will you put down that bowl! Izzie--for the last time I ask
+you--for the last time--"
+
+Erect now, Mrs. Kantor lifted an expressive hand, letting it hover.
+
+"I'm goin', ma; for golly sakes, I'm goin'!" said her recalcitrant one,
+shuffling off toward the staircase, shuffling, shuffling.
+
+Then Mrs. Kantor resumed her plumbing, and through the little apartment,
+its middle and only bedroom of three beds and a crib lighted vicariously
+by the front room and kitchen, began to wind the warm, the golden-brown
+fragrance of cake in the rising.
+
+By six o'clock the shades were drawn against the dirty dusk of Allen
+Street and the oilcloth-covered table dragged out center and spread by
+Esther Kantor, nine in years, in the sturdy little legs bulging over
+shoe-tops, in the pink cheeks that sagged slightly of plumpness, and in
+the utter roundness of face and gaze, but mysteriously older in the
+little-mother lore of crib and knee-dandling ditties and in the ropy
+length and thickness of the two brown plaits down her back.
+
+There was an eloquence to that waiting, laid-out table, the print of the
+family already gathered about it; the dynastic high chair, throne of
+each succeeding Kantor; an armchair drawn up before the paternal
+mustache-cup; the ordinary kitchen chair of Mannie Kantor, who spilled
+things, an oilcloth sort of bib dangling from its back; the little chair
+of Leon Kantor, cushioned in an old family album that raised his chin
+above the table. Even in cutlery the Kantor family was not lacking in
+variety. Surrounding a centerpiece of thick Russian lace were Russian
+spoons washed in washed-off gilt; forks of one, two, and three tines;
+steel knives with black handles; a hartshorn carving-knife. Thick-lipped
+china in stacks before the armchair. A round four-pound loaf of black
+bread waiting to be torn, and tonight, on the festive mat of cotton
+lace, a cake of pinkly gleaming icing, encircled with five pink
+little candles.
+
+At slightly after six Abrahm Kantor returned, leading by a resisting
+wrist Leon Kantor, his stemlike little legs, hit midship, as it were, by
+not sufficiently cut-down trousers and so narrow and birdlike of face
+that his eyes quite obliterated the remaining map of his features, like
+those of a still wet nestling. All except his ears. They poised at the
+sides of Leon's shaved head of black bristles, as if butterflies had
+just lighted there, whispering, with very spread wings, their message,
+and presently would fly off again. By some sort of muscular contraction
+he could wiggle these ears at will, and would do so for a penny or a
+whistle, and upon one occasion for his brother Rudolph's dead rat, so
+devised as to dangle from string and window before the unhappy
+passer-by. They were quivering now, these ears, but because the entire
+little face was twitching back tears and gulp of sobs.
+
+"Abrahm--Leon--what is it?" Her hands and her forearms instantly out
+from the business of kneading something meaty and floury, Mrs. Kantor
+rushed forward, her glance quick from one to the other of them. "Abrahm,
+what's wrong?"
+
+"I'll feedle him! I'll feedle him!"
+
+The little pulling wrist still in clutch, Mr. Kantor regarded his wife,
+the lower half of his face, well covered with reddish bristles,
+undershot, his free hand and even his eyes violently lifted. To those
+who see in a man a perpetual kinship to that animal kingdom of which he
+is supreme, there was something undeniably anthropoidal about Abrahm
+Kantor, a certain simian width between the eyes and long, rather agile
+hands with hairy backs.
+
+"Hush it!" cried Mr. Kantor, his free hand raised in threat of descent,
+and cowering his small son to still more undersized proportions. "Hush
+it or, by golly! I'll--"
+
+"Abrahm--Abrahm--what is it?"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor gave vent in acridity of word and feature.
+
+"_Schlemmil!_" he cried. "_Momser! Ganef! Nebich!_" by which, in smiting
+mother tongue, he branded his offspring with attributes of apostate and
+ne'er-do-well, of idiot and thief.
+
+"Abrahm!"
+
+"Schlemmil!" repeated Mr. Kantor, swinging Leon so that he described a
+large semicircle that landed him into the meaty and waiting embrace of
+his mother. "Take him! You should be proud of such a little _momser_ for
+a son! Take him, and here you got back his birthday dollar. A feedle!
+Honest--when I think on it--a feedle!"
+
+Such a rush of outrage seemed fairly to strangle Mr. Kantor that he
+stood, hand still upraised, choking and inarticulate above the now
+frankly howling huddle of his son.
+
+"Abrahm, you should just once touch this child! How he trembles!
+Leon--mamma's baby--what is it? Is this how you come back when papa
+takes you out to buy your birthday present? Ain't you ashamed?"
+
+Mouth distended to a large and blackly hollow O, Leon, between
+terrifying spells of breath-holding, continued to howl.
+
+"All the way to Naftel's toy-store I drag him. A birthday present for a
+dollar his mother wants he should have, all right, a birthday present! I
+give you my word till I'm ashamed for Naftel, every toy in his shelves
+is pulled down. Such a cow--that shakes with his head--"
+
+"No--no--no!" This from young Leon, beating at his mother's skirts.
+
+Again the upraised but never quite descending hand of his father.
+
+"By golly! I'll 'no--no' you!"
+
+"Abrahm--go 'way! Baby, what did papa do?"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor broke into an actual tarantella of rage, his hands palms
+up and dancing.
+
+"'What did papa do?' she asks. She's got easy asking. 'What did papa
+do?' The whole shop, I tell you. A sheep with a baa inside when you
+squeeze on him--games--a horn so he can holler my head off--such a knife
+like Izzie's with a scissors in it. 'Leon,' I said, ashamed for Naftel,
+'that's a fine knife like Izzie's so you can cut up with. All right,
+then'--when I see how he hollers--'such a box full of soldiers to have
+war with.' 'Dollar seventy-five,' says Naftel. 'All right, then,' I
+says, when I seen how he keeps hollering. 'Give you a dollar fifteen for
+'em.' I should make myself small for fifteen cents more. 'Dollar
+fifteen,' I says--anything so he should shut up with his hollering for
+what he seen in the window."
+
+"He seen something in the window he wanted, Abrahm?"
+
+"Didn't I tell you? A feedle! A four-dollar feedle! A moosicer, so we
+should have another feedler in the family for some thirty-cents
+lessons."
+
+"Abrahm--you mean--he--our Leon--wanted a violin?"
+
+"'Wanted,' she says. I could potch him again this minute for how he
+wanted it! _Du_--you little bum you--_chammer_--_momser_--I'll
+feedle you!"
+
+Across Mrs. Kantor's face, as she knelt there in the shapeless
+cotton-stuff uniform of poverty, through the very tenement of her body,
+a light had flashed up into her eyes. She drew her son closer, crushing
+his puny cheek up against hers, cupping his bristly little head in her
+by no means immaculate palms.
+
+"He wanted a violin! It's come, Abrahm! The dream of all my life--my
+prayers--it's come! I knew it must be one of my children if I waited
+long enough--and prayed enough. A musician! He wants a violin! He cried
+for a violin! My baby! Why, darlink, mamma'll sell her clothes off her
+back to get you a violin. He's a musician, Abrahm! I should have known
+it the way he's fooling always around the chimes and the bells in
+the store!"
+
+Then Mr. Kantor took to rocking his head between his palms.
+
+"Oi--oi! The mother is crazier as her son. A moosician! A _fresser_, you
+mean. Such an eater, it's a wonder he ain't twice too big instead of
+twice too little for his age."
+
+"That's a sign, Abrahm; geniuses, they all eat big. For all we know,
+he's a genius. I swear to you, Abrahm, all the months before he was born
+I prayed for it. Each one before they came, I prayed it should be the
+one. I thought that time the way our Isadore ran after the organ-grinder
+he would be the one. How could I know it was the monkey he wanted? When
+Isadore wouldn't take to it I prayed my next one, and then my next one,
+should have the talent. I've prayed for it, Abrahm. If he wants a
+violin, please, he should have it."
+
+"Not with my money."
+
+"With mine! I've got enough saved, Abrahm. Them three extra dollars
+right here inside my own waist. Just that much for that cape down on
+Grand Street. I wouldn't have it now, the way they say the wind blows
+up them--"
+
+"I tell you the woman's crazy--"
+
+"I feel it! I know he's got talent! I know my children so well. A--a
+father don't understand. I'm so next to them. It's like I can tell
+always everything that will happen to them--it's like a pain--somewheres
+here--like in back of my heart."
+
+"A pain in the heart she gets."
+
+"For my own children I'm always a prophet, I tell you! You think I
+didn't know that--that terrible night after the pogrom after we got out
+of Kief to across the border! You remember, Abrahm, how I predicted it
+to you then--how our Mannie would be born too soon and--and not right
+from my suffering! Did it happen on the ship to America just the way I
+said it would? Did it happen just exactly how I predicted our Izzie
+would break his leg that time playing on the fire-escape? I tell you,
+Abrahm, I get a real pain here under my heart that tells me what comes
+to my children. Didn't I tell you how Esther would be the first in her
+confirmation-class and our baby Boris would be redheaded? At only five
+years, our Leon all by himself cries for a fiddle--get it for him,
+Abrahm--get it for him!"
+
+"I tell you, Sarah, I got a crazy woman for a wife! It ain't enough we
+celebrate eight birthdays a year with one-dollar presents each time and
+copper goods every day higher. It ain't enough that right to-morrow I
+got a fifty-dollar note over me from Sol Ginsberg; a four-dollar present
+she wants for a child that don't even know the name of a feedle."
+
+"Leon, baby, stop hollering. Papa will go back and get the fiddle for
+you now before supper. See, mamma's got money here in her waist--"
+
+"Papa will go back for the feedle _not_--three dollars she's saved for
+herself he can holler out of her for a feedle!"
+
+"Abrahm, he's screaming so he--he'll have a fit."
+
+"He should have two fits."
+
+"Darlink--"
+
+"I tell you the way you spoil your children it will some day come back
+on us."
+
+"It's his birthday night, Abrahm--five years since his little head
+first lay on the pillow next to me."
+
+"All right--all right--drive me crazy because he's got a birthday."
+
+"Leon baby--if you don't stop hollering you'll make yourself sick.
+Abrahm, I never saw him like this--he's green--"
+
+"I'll green him. Where is that old feedle from Isadore--that
+seventy-five-cents one?"
+
+"I never thought of that! You broke it that time you got mad at
+Isadore's lessons. I'll run down. Maybe it's with the junk behind the
+store. I never thought of that fiddle. Leon darlink--wait! Mamma'll run
+down and look. Wait, Leon, till mamma finds you a fiddle."
+
+The raucous screams stopped then, suddenly, and on their very lustiest
+crest, leaving an echoing gash across silence. On willing feet of haste
+Mrs. Kantor wound down backward the high, ladder-like staircase that led
+to the brass-shop.
+
+Meanwhile to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour had assembled the
+house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the tenement
+which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing, delirium,
+delirium tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression into the motley
+din of things. There were Isadore, already astride his chair, leaning
+well into center table, for first vociferous tear at the four-pound
+loaf; Esther, old at chores, settling an infant into the high chair,
+careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib.
+
+"Papa, Izzie's eating first again."
+
+"Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up, or you'll get
+a potch you won't soon forget."
+
+"Say, pop--"
+
+"Don't 'say, pop' me! I don't want no street-bum freshness from you!"
+
+"I mean, papa, there was an up-town swell in, and she bought one of them
+seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price."
+
+"_Schlemmil! Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the sink.
+"Didn't I always tell you it's the first price, times two, when you see
+up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough a
+slummer must pay for her nosiness?"
+
+There entered then, on poor, shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor, so marred in
+the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul
+had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the down
+upon his face and in growth unretarded by any great nervosity of system,
+his vacuity of face was not that of childhood, but rather as if his
+light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so terribly
+and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells closed
+against himself.
+
+At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down
+his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough
+to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly.
+
+"Giddy-app!" he cried. "Giddy-app!"
+
+And then Mannie, true to habit, would scamper and scamper.
+
+Up out of the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor,
+disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm,
+triumphant, a violin of one string and a broken back.
+
+"See, Leon--what mamma got! A violin! A fiddle! Look! The bow, too, I
+found. It ain't much, baby, but it's a fiddle."
+
+"Aw, ma--that's my old violin. Gimme. I want it. Where'd you find--"
+
+"Hush up, Izzie! This ain't yours no more. See, Leon, what mamma brought
+you. A violin!"
+
+"Now, you little _chammer_, you got a feedle, and if you ever let me
+hear you holler again for a feedle, by golly! if I don't--"
+
+From his corner, Leon Kantor reached out, taking the instrument and
+fitting it beneath his chin, the bow immediately feeling, surely and
+lightly, for string.
+
+"Look, Abrahm, he knows how to hold it! What did I tell you? A child
+that never in his life seen a fiddle, except a beggar's on the street!"
+
+Little Esther suddenly cantered down-floor, clapping her chubby hands.
+
+"Lookie--lookie--Leon!"
+
+The baby ceased clattering his spoon against the wooden bib. A silence
+seemed to shape itself.
+
+So black and so bristly of head, his little clawlike hands hovering over
+the bow, Leon Kantor withdrew a note, strangely round and given up
+almost sobbingly from the single string. A note of warm twining quality,
+like a baby's finger.
+
+"Leon--darlink!"
+
+Fumbling for string and for notes the instrument could not yield up to
+him, the birdlike mouth began once more to open widely and terribly into
+the orificial O.
+
+It was then Abrahm Kantor came down with a large hollow resonance of
+palm against that aperture, lifting his small son and depositing him
+plop upon the family album.
+
+"Take that! By golly! one more whimper out of you and if I don't make
+you black-and-blue, birthday or no birthday! Dish up, Sarah, quick, or
+I'll give him something to cry about."
+
+The five pink candles had been lighted, burning pointedly and with
+slender little smoke wisps. Regarding them owlishly, the tears dried on
+Leon's face, his little tongue licking up at them.
+
+"Look how solemn he is, like he was thinking of something a million
+miles away except how lucky he is he should have a pink birthday-cake.
+Uh--uh--uh! Don't you begin to holler again. Here, I'm putting the
+feedle next to you. Uh--uh--uh!"
+
+To a meal plentifully ladled out directly from stove to table, the
+Kantor family drew up, dipping first into the rich black soup of the
+occasion. All except Mrs. Kantor.
+
+"Esther, you dish up. I'm going somewhere. I'll be back in a minute."
+
+"Where you going, Sarah? Won't it keep until--"
+
+But even in the face of query, Sarah Kantor was two flights down and
+well through the lambent aisles of the copper-shop. Outside, she broke
+into run, along two blocks of the indescribable bazaar atmosphere of
+Grand Street, then one block to the right.
+
+Before Mattel's show-window, a jet of bright gas burned into a
+jibberwock land of toys. There was that in Sarah Kantor's face that was
+actually lyrical as, fumbling at the bosom of her dress, she entered.
+
+To Leon Kantor, by who knows what symphonic scheme of things, life was a
+chromatic scale, yielding up to him, through throbbing, living nerves of
+sheep-gut, the sheerest semitones of man's emotions.
+
+When he tucked his Stradivarius beneath his chin the book of life seemed
+suddenly translated to him in melody. Even Sarah Kantor, who still
+brewed for him, on a small portable stove carried from city to city and
+surreptitiously unpacked in hotel suites, the blackest of soups, and,
+despite his protestation, would incase his ears of nights in an old
+home-made device against their flightiness, would oftentimes bleed
+inwardly at this sense of his isolation.
+
+There was a realm into which he went alone, leaving her as detached as
+the merest ticket purchaser at the box-office.
+
+At seventeen Leon Kantor had played before the crowned heads of Europe,
+the aching heads of American capital, and even the shaved head of a
+South Sea prince. There was a layout of anecdotal gifts, from the molar
+tooth of the South Sea prince set in a South Sea pearl to a
+blue-enameled snuff-box incrusted with the rearing-lion coat-of-arms of
+a very royal house.
+
+At eighteen came the purchase of a king's Stradivarius for a king's
+ransom, and acclaimed by Sunday supplements to repose of nights in an
+ivory cradle.
+
+At nineteen, under careful auspices of press agent, the ten singing
+digits of the son of Abrahm Kantor were insured at ten thousand dollars
+the finger.
+
+At twenty he had emerged surely and safely from the perilous quicksands
+which have sucked down whole Lilliputian worlds of infant prodigies.
+
+At twenty-one, when Leon Kantor played a Sunday-night concert, there was
+a human queue curling entirely around the square block of the
+operahouse, waiting its one, two, even three and four hours for the
+privilege of standing room only.
+
+Usually these were Leon Kantor's own people pouring up from the lowly
+lands of the East Side to the white lands of Broadway, parched for
+music, these burning brethren of his--old men in that line, frequently
+carrying their own little folding camp-chairs, not against weariness of
+the spirit, but of the flesh; youth with Slavic eyes and cheek-bones.
+These were the six-deep human phalanx which would presently slant down
+at him from tiers of steepest balconies and stand frankly emotional and
+jammed in the unreserved space behind the railing which shut them off
+from the three-dollar seats of the reserved.
+
+At a very special one of these concerts, dedicated to the meager purses
+of just these, and held in New York's super opera-house, the
+Amphitheater, a great bowl of humanity, the metaphor made perfect by
+tiers of seats placed upon the stage, rose from orchestra to dome. A
+gigantic cup of a Colosseum lined in stacks and stacks of faces. From
+the door of his dressing-room, leaning out, Leon Kantor could see a
+great segment of it, buzzing down into adjustment, orchestra twitting
+and tuning into it.
+
+In the bare little room, illuminated by a sheaf of roses, just arrived,
+Mrs. Kantor drew him back by the elbow.
+
+"Leon, you're in a draught."
+
+The amazing years had dealt kindly with Mrs. Kantor. Stouter, softer,
+apparently even taller, she was full of small new authorities that could
+shut out cranks, newspaper reporters, and autograph fiends. A
+fitted-over-corsets black taffeta and a high comb in the graying hair
+had done their best with her. Pride, too, had left its flush upon her
+cheeks, like two round spots of fever.
+
+"Leon, it's thirty minutes till your first number. Close that door. Do
+you want to let your papa and his excitement in on you?"
+
+The son of Sarah Kantor obeyed, leaning his short, rather narrow form in
+silhouette against the closed door. In spite of slimly dark evening
+clothes worked out by an astute manager to the last detail in boyish
+effects, there was that about him which defied long-haired precedent.
+Slimly and straightly he had shot up into an unmannered, a short, even a
+bristly-haired young manhood, disqualifying by a close shave for the
+older school of hirsute virtuosity.
+
+But his nerves did not spare him. On concert nights they seemed to
+emerge almost to the surface of him and shriek their exposure.
+
+"Just feel my hands, ma. Like ice."
+
+She dived down into her large silk what-not of a reticule.
+
+"I've got your fleece-lined gloves here, son."
+
+"No--no! For God's sake--not those things! No!"
+
+He was back at the door again, opening it to a slit, peering through.
+
+"They're bringing more seats on the stage. If they crowd me in I won't
+go on. I can't play if I hear them breathe. Hi--out there--no more
+chairs! Pa! Hancock--"
+
+"Leon, Leon, ain't you ashamed to get so worked up? Close that door.
+Have you got a manager who is paid just to see to your comfort? When
+papa comes, I'll have him go out and tell Hancock you don't want chairs
+so close to you. Leon, will you mind mamma and sit down?"
+
+"It's a bigger house than the royal concert in Madrid, ma. Why, I never
+saw anything like it! It's a stampede. God! this is real--this is what
+gets me, playing for my own! I should have given a concert like this
+three years ago. I'll do it every year now. I'd rather play before them
+than all the crowned heads on earth. It's the biggest night of my life.
+They're rioting out there, ma--rioting to get in."
+
+"Leon, Leon, won't you sit down, if mamma begs you to?"
+
+He sat then, strumming with all ten fingers upon his knees.
+
+"Try to get quiet, son. Count--like you always do. One--two--three--"
+
+"Please, ma--for God's sake--please--please!"
+
+"Look--such beautiful roses! From Sol Ginsberg, an old friend of papa's
+he used to buy brasses from eighteen years ago. Six years he's been away
+with his daughter in Munich. Such a beautiful mezzo they say, engaged
+already for Metropolitan next season."
+
+"I hate it, ma, if they breathe on my neck."
+
+"Leon darlink, did mamma promise to fix it? Have I ever let you play a
+concert when you wouldn't be comfortable?"
+
+His long, slim hands suddenly prehensile and cutting a streak of upward
+gesture, Leon Kantor rose to his feet, face whitening.
+
+"Do it now! Now, I tell you. I won't have them breathe on me. Do you
+hear me? Now! Now! Now!"
+
+Risen also, her face soft and tremulous for him, Mrs. Kantor put out a
+gentle, a sedative hand upon his sleeve.
+
+"Son," she said, with an edge of authority even behind her smile, "don't
+holler at me!"
+
+He grasped her hand with his two and, immediately quiet, lay a close
+string of kisses along it.
+
+"Mamma," he said, kissing again and again into the palm, "mamma--mamma."
+
+"I know, son; it's nerves!"
+
+"They eat me, ma. Feel--I'm like ice! I didn't mean it; you know I
+didn't mean it!"
+
+"My baby," she said, "my wonderful boy, it's like I can never get used
+to the wonder of having you. The greatest one of them all should be
+mine--a plain woman's like mine!"
+
+He teased her, eager to conciliate and to ride down his own state of
+quivering.
+
+"Now, ma--now--now--don't forget Rimsky!"
+
+"Rimsky! A man three times your age who was playing concerts before you
+was born! Is that a comparison? From your clippings-books I can show
+Rimsky who the world considers the greatest violinist. Rimsky he
+rubs into me!"
+
+"All right, then, the press-clippings, but did Elsass, the greatest
+manager of them all, bring me a contract for thirty concerts at two
+thousand a concert? Now I've got you! Now!"
+
+She would not meet his laughter. "Elsass! Believe me, he'll come to you
+yet! My boy should worry if he makes fifty thousand a year more or less.
+Rimsky should have that honor--for so long as he can hold it. But he
+won't hold it long. Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass
+comes after you. Not for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but
+bigger--not for thirty concerts, but for fifty!"
+
+"_Brava! Brava!_ There's a woman for you. More money than she knows
+what to do with, and then not satisfied!"
+
+She was still too tremulous for banter. "'Not satisfied'? Why, Leon, I
+never stop praying my thanks for you!"
+
+"All right, then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek;
+"to-morrow we'll call a _mignon_--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street
+prayer-party."
+
+"Leon, you mustn't make fun."
+
+"Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room!"
+
+"'Girl'! Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon. Always a
+boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I
+suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl. That's how selfish the mother
+of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be."
+
+"All right! Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!"
+
+"Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me
+a child. A boy that never in his life was out after midnight except to
+catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could
+have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it
+any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you? You don't
+believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps always teasing you that you
+should have a--what he calls--affair--a love-affair? Such talk is not
+nice, Leon--an affair!"
+
+"Love-affair poppycock!" said Leon Kantor, lifting his mother's face and
+kissing her on eyes about ready to tear. "Why, I've got something, ma,
+right here in my heart for you that--"
+
+"Leon, be careful your shirt-front!"
+
+"That's so--so what you call 'tender,' for my best sweetheart that
+I--Oh, love-affair--poppycock!"
+
+She would not let her tears come.
+
+"My boy--my wonder-boy!"
+
+"There goes the overture, ma."
+
+"Here, darlink--your glass of water."
+
+"I can't stand it in here; I'm suffocating!"
+
+"Got your mute in your pocket, son?"
+
+"Yes, ma; for God's sake, yes! Yes! Don't keep asking things!"
+
+"Ain't you ashamed, Leon, to be in such an excitement! For every concert
+you get worse."
+
+"The chairs--they'll breathe on nay neck."
+
+"Leon, did mamma promise you those chairs would be moved?"
+
+"Where's Hancock?"
+
+"Say--I'm grateful if he stays out. It took me enough work to get this
+room cleared. You know your papa how he likes to drag in the whole world
+to show you off--always just before you play. The minute he walks in the
+room right away he gets everybody to trembling just from his own
+excitements. I dare him this time he should bring people. No dignity has
+that man got, the way he brings every one."
+
+Even upon her words came a rattling of door, Of door-knob, and a voice
+through the clamor.
+
+"Open--quick--Sarah! Leon!"
+
+A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her
+chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon the shivering door.
+
+"Open--Sarah!"
+
+With a narrowing glance, Mrs. Kantor laid to her lips a forefinger of
+silence.
+
+"Sarah, it's me! Quick, I say!"
+
+Then Leon Kantor sprang up, the old prehensile gesture of curving
+fingers shooting up.
+
+"For God's sake, ma, let him in! I can't stand that infernal battering."
+
+"Abrahm, go away! Leon's got to have quiet before his concert."
+
+"Just a minute, Sarah. Open quick!"
+
+With a spring his son was at the door, unlocking and flinging it back.
+
+"Come in, pa."
+
+The years had weighed heavily upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only. He
+was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity
+that was absolutely oleaginous. It shone roundly in his face, doubling
+of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes
+that behind the gold-rimmed glasses gave sparklingly forth his estate of
+well-being.
+
+"Abrahm, didn't I tell you not to dare to--"
+
+On excited balls of feet that fairly bounced him, Abrahm Kantor burst
+in.
+
+"Leon--mamma--I got out here an old friend--Sol Ginsberg. You remember,
+mamma, from brasses--"
+
+"Abrahm--not now--"
+
+"Go 'way with your 'not now'! I want Leon should meet him. Sol, this is
+him--a little grown up from such a _nebich_ like you remember
+him--_nu_? Sarah, you remember Sol Ginsberg? Say--I should ask you if
+you remember your right hand! Ginsberg & Esel, the firm. This is his
+girl, a five years' contract signed yesterday--five hundred dollars an
+opera for a beginner--six rôles--not bad--_nu_?"
+
+"Abrahm, you must ask Mr. Ginsberg please to excuse Leon until after his
+concert--"
+
+"Shake hands with him, Ginsberg. He's had his hand shook enough in his
+life, and by kings, to shake it once more with an old bouncer like you!"
+
+Mr. Ginsberg, not unlike his colleague in rotundities, held out a short,
+a dimpled hand.
+
+"It's a proud day," he said, "for me to shake the hands from mine old
+friend's son and the finest violinist livink to-day. My little
+daughter--"
+
+"Yes, yes, Gina. Here, shake hands with him. Leon, they say a voice like
+a fountain. Gina Berg--eh, Ginsberg--is how you stage-named her? You
+hear, mamma, how fancy--Gina Berg? We go hear her, eh?"
+
+There was about Miss Gina Berg, whose voice could soar to the
+tirra-lirra of a lark and then deepen to mezzo, something of the actual
+slimness of the poor, maligned Elsa so long buried beneath the buxomness
+of divas. She was like a little flower that in its crannied nook keeps
+dewy longest.
+
+"How do you do, Leon Kantor?"
+
+There was a whir through her English of three acquired languages.
+
+"How do _you_ do?"
+
+"We--father and I--traveled once all the way from Brussels to Dresden to
+hear you. It was worth it. I shall never forget how you played the
+'Humoresque.' It made me laugh and cry."
+
+"You like Brussels?"
+
+She laid her little hand to her heart, half closing her eyes.
+
+"I will never be so happy again as with the sweet little people of
+Brussels."
+
+"I, too, love Brussels. I studied there four years with Ahrenfest."
+
+"I know you did. My teacher, Lyndahl, in Berlin, was his
+brother-in-law."
+
+"You have studied with Lyndahl?"
+
+"He is my master."
+
+"I--Will I some time hear you sing?"
+
+"I am not yet great. When I am foremost like you, yes."
+
+"Gina--Gina Berg; that is a beautiful name to make famous."
+
+"You see how it is done? Gins--berg. Gina Berg."
+
+"Clev--er!"
+
+They stood then smiling across a chasm of the diffidence of youth, she
+fumbling at the great fur pelt out of which her face flowered so dewily.
+
+"I--Well--we--we--are in the fourth box--I guess we had better be
+going--Fourth box, left."
+
+He wanted to find words, but for consciousness of self, could not.
+
+"It's a wonderful house out there waiting for you, Leon Kantor, and
+you--you're wonderful, too!"
+
+"The--flowers--thanks!"
+
+"My father, he sent them. Come, father--quick!"
+
+Suddenly there was a tight tensity seemed to crowd up the little room.
+
+"Abrahm--quick--get Hancock. That first row of chairs--has got to be
+moved. There he is, in the wings. See that the piano ain't dragged down
+too far! Leon, got your mute in your pocket? Please, Mr. Ginsberg--you
+must excuse--Here, Leon, is your glass of water; drink it, I say. Shut
+that door out there, boy, so there ain't a draught in the wings. Here,
+Leon, your violin. Got your neckerchief? Listen how they're shouting!
+It's for you--Leon--darlink--Go!"
+
+The center of that vast human bowl which had shouted itself out, slim,
+boylike, and in his supreme isolation, Leon Kantor drew bow and a first
+thin, pellucid, and perfect note into a silence breathless to
+receive it.
+
+Throughout the arduous flexuosities of the Mendelssohn E minor concerto,
+singing, winding from tonal to tonal climax, and out of the slow
+movement which is like a tourniquet twisting the heart into the spirited
+_allegro molto vivace_, it was as if beneath Leon Kantor's fingers the
+strings were living vein-cords, youth, vitality, and the very foam of
+exuberance racing through them.
+
+That was the power of him. The vichy and the sparkle of youth, so that,
+playing, the melody poured round him like wine and went down seething
+and singing into the hearts of his hearers.
+
+Later, and because these were his people and because they were dark and
+Slavic with his Slavic darkness, he played, as if his very blood were
+weeping, the "Kol Nidre," which is the prayer of his race for
+atonement.
+
+And then the super-amphitheater, filled with those whose emotions lie
+next to the surface and whose pores have not been closed over with a
+water-tight veneer, burst into its cheers and its tears.
+
+There were fifteen recalls from the wings, Abrahm Kantor standing
+counting them off on his fingers and trembling to receive the
+Stradivarius. Then, finally, and against the frantic negative pantomime
+of his manager, a scherzo, played so lacily that it swept the house in
+lightest laughter.
+
+When Leon Kantor finally completed his program they were loath to let
+him go, crowding down the aisles upon him, applauding up, down, around
+him until the great disheveled house was like the roaring of a sea, and
+he would laugh and throw out his arm in widespread helplessness, and
+always his manager in the background gesticulating against too much of
+his precious product for the money, ushers already slamming up chairs,
+his father's arms out for the Stradivarius, and, deepest in the gloom of
+the wings, Sarah Kantor, in a rocker especially dragged out for her, and
+from the depths of the black-silk reticule, darning his socks.
+
+"Bravo--bravo! Give us the 'Humoresque'--Chopin Nocturne--Polonaise
+--'Humoresque.' Bravo--bravo!"
+
+And even as they stood, hatted and coated, importuning and pressing in
+upon him, and with a wisp of a smile to the fourth left box, Leon Kantor
+played them the "Humoresque" of Dvorák, skedaddling, plucking,
+quirking--that laugh on life with a tear behind it. Then suddenly,
+because he could escape no other way, rushed straight back for his
+dressing-room, bursting in upon a flood of family already there: Isadore
+Kantor, blue-shaved, aquiline, and already graying at the temples; his
+five-year-old son, Leon; a soft little pouter-pigeon of a wife, too,
+enormous of bust, in glittering ear-drops and a wrist watch of diamonds
+half buried in chubby wrist; Miss Esther Kantor, pink and pretty;
+Rudolph; Boris, not yet done with growing-pains.
+
+At the door Miss Kantor met her brother, her eyes as sweetly moist as
+her kiss.
+
+"Leon darling, you surpassed even yourself!"
+
+"Quit crowding, children. Let him sit down. Here, Leon, let mamma give
+you a fresh collar. Look how the child's perspired. Pull down that
+window, Boris. Rudolph, don't let no one in. I give you my word if
+to-night wasn't as near as I ever came to seeing a house go crazy. Not
+even that time in Milan, darlink, when they broke down the doors, was it
+like to-night--"
+
+"Ought to seen, ma, the row of police outside--"
+
+"Hush up, Roody! Don't you see your brother is trying to get his
+breath?"
+
+From Mrs. Isadore Kantor: "You should have seen the balconies, mother.
+Isadore and I went up just to see the jam."
+
+"Six thousand dollars in the house to-night, if there was a cent," said
+Isadore Kantor.
+
+"Hand me my violin, please, Esther. I must have scratched it, the way
+they pushed."
+
+"No, son, you didn't. I've already rubbed it up. Sit quiet, darlink!"
+
+He was limply white, as if the vitality had flowed out of him.
+
+"God! wasn't it--tremendous?"
+
+"Six thousand, if there was a cent," repeated Isadore Kantor. "More than
+Rimsky ever played to in his life!"
+
+"Oh, Izzie, you make me sick, always counting--counting!"
+
+"Your sister's right, Isadore. You got nothing to complain of if there
+was only six hundred in the house. A boy whose fiddle has made already
+enough to set you up in such a fine business, his brother Boris in such
+a fine college, automobiles--style--and now because Vladimir Rimsky,
+three times his age, gets signed up with Elsass for a few thousand more
+a year, right away the family gets a long face--"
+
+"Ma, please! Isadore didn't mean it that way!"
+
+"Pa's knocking, ma! Shall I let him in?"
+
+"Let him in, Roody. I'd like to know what good it will do to try to keep
+him out."
+
+In an actual rain of perspiration, his tie slid well under one ear,
+Abrahm Kantor burst in, mouthing the words before his acute state of
+strangulation would let them out.
+
+"Elsass--it's Elsass outside! He--wants--to sign--Leon--fifty
+concerts--coast to coast--two thousand--next season! He's got the
+papers--already drawn up--the pen outside waiting--"
+
+"Abrahm!"
+
+"Pa!"
+
+In the silence that followed, Isadore Kantor, a poppiness of stare and
+a violent redness set in, suddenly turned to his five-year-old son,
+sticky with lollipop, and came down soundly and with smack against the
+infantile, the slightly outstanding and unsuspecting ear.
+
+"_Momser!_" he cried. "_Chammer! Lump! Ganef_! You hear that? Two
+thousand! Two thousand! Didn't I tell you--didn't I tell you to
+practise?"
+
+Even as Leon Kantor put pen to this princely document, Franz Ferdinand
+of Serbia, the assassin's bullet cold, lay dead in state, and let slip
+were the dogs of war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the next years, men, forty deep, were to die in piles; hayricks of
+fields to become human hayricks of battle-fields; Belgium disemboweled,
+her very entrails dragging, to find all the civilized world her
+champion, and between the poppies of Flanders, crosses, thousand upon
+thousand of them, to mark the places where the youth of her allies fell,
+avenging outrage. Seas, even when calmest, were to become terrible, and
+men's heart-beats, a bit sluggish with the fatty degeneration of a
+sluggard peace, to quicken and then to throb with the rat-a-tat-tat, the
+rat-a-tat-tat of the most peremptory, the most reverberating call to
+arms in the history of the world.
+
+In June, 1917, Leon Kantor, answering that rat-a-tat-tat, enlisted.
+
+In November, honed by the interim of training to even a new leanness,
+and sailing-orders heavy and light in his heart, Lieutenant Kantor, on
+two days' home-leave, took leave of home, which can be crudest when it
+is tenderest.
+
+Standing there in the expensive, the formal, the enormous French parlor
+of his up-town apartment de luxe, from not one of whose chairs would his
+mother's feet touch floor, a wall of living flesh, mortared in blood,
+was throbbing and hedging him in.
+
+He would pace up and down the long room, heavy with the faces of those
+who mourn, with a laugh too ready, too facetious, in his fear for them.
+
+"Well, well, what is this, anyway, a wake? Where's the coffin? Who's
+dead?"
+
+His sister-in-law shot out her plump, watch-encrusted wrist. "Don't,
+Leon!" she cried. "Such talk is a sin! It might come true."
+
+"Rosie-posy-butter-ball," he said, pausing beside her chair to pinch her
+deeply soft cheek. "Cry-baby-roly-poly, you can't shove me off in a
+wooden kimono that way."
+
+From his place before the white-and-gold mantel, staring steadfastly at
+the floor tiling, Isadore Kantor turned suddenly, a bit whiter and older
+at the temples.
+
+"I don't get your comedy, Leon."
+
+"'Wooden kimono'--Leon?"
+
+"That's the way the fellows at camp joke about coffins, ma. I didn't
+mean anything but fun! Great Scott! Can't any one take a joke!"
+
+"O God! O God!" His mother fell to swaying softly, hugging herself
+against shivering.
+
+"Did you sign over power of attorney to pa, Leon?"
+
+"All fixed, Izzie."
+
+"I'm so afraid, son, you don't take with you enough money in your
+pockets. You know how you lose it. If only you would let mamma sew that
+little bag inside your uniform, with a little place for bills and a
+little place for the asafoetida!"
+
+"Now, please, ma--please! If I needed more, wouldn't I take it? Wouldn't
+I be a pretty joke among the fellows, tied up in that smelling stuff!
+Orders are orders, ma, I know what to take and what not to take."
+
+"Please, Leon, don't get mad at me, but if you will let me put in your
+suit-case just one little box of that salve, for your finger-tips, so
+they don't crack--"
+
+Pausing as he paced to lay cheek to her hair, he patted her. "Three
+boxes, if you want. Now, how's that?"
+
+"And you won't take it out so soon as my back is turned?"
+
+"Cross my heart."
+
+His touch seemed to set her trembling again, all her illy concealed
+emotions rushing up. "I can't stand it! Can't! Can't! Take my life--take
+my blood, but don't take my boy--don't take my boy--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, is that the way you're going to begin all over again,
+after your promise?"
+
+She clung to him, heaving against the rising storm of sobs. "I can't
+help it--can't! Cut out my heart from me, but let me keep my boy--my
+wonderboy--"
+
+"Oughtn't she be ashamed of herself? Just listen to her, Esther! What
+will we do with her? Talks like she had a guarantee I wasn't coming
+back. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if by spring I wasn't tuning up again
+for a coast-to-coast tour--"
+
+"Spring! That talk don't fool me. Without my boy, the springs in my life
+are over--"
+
+"Why, ma, you talk like every soldier who goes to war was killed!
+There's only the smallest percentage of them die in battle--"
+
+"'Spring,' he says; 'spring'! Crossing the seas from me! To live through
+months with that sea between us--my boy maybe shot--my--"
+
+"Mamma, please!"
+
+"I can't help it, Leon; I'm not one of those fine mothers that can be so
+brave. Cut out my heart, but leave my boy! My wonder-boy--my child I
+prayed for!"
+
+"There's other mothers, ma, with sons!"
+
+"Yes, but not wonder-sons! A genius like you could so easy get excused,
+Leon. Give it up. Genius it should be the last to be sent to--the
+slaughter-pen. Leon darlink--don't go!"
+
+"Ma, ma--you don't mean what you're saying. You wouldn't want me to
+reason that way! You wouldn't want me to hide behind my--violin."
+
+"I would! Would! You should wait for the draft. With my Roody and even
+my baby Boris enlisted, ain't it enough for one mother? Since they got
+to be in camp, all right, I say, let them be there, if my heart breaks
+for it, but not my wonder-child! You can get exemption, Leon, right away
+for the asking. Stay with me, Leon! Don't go away! The people at home
+got to be kept happy with music. That's being a soldier, too, playing
+their troubles away. Stay with me, Leon! Don't go leave
+me--don't--don't--"
+
+He suffered her to lie, tear-drenched, back into his arms, holding her
+close in his compassion for her, his own face twisting.
+
+"God! ma, this--this is awful! Please--you make us ashamed--all of us! I
+don't know what to say. Esther, come quiet her--for God's sake
+quiet her!"
+
+From her place in that sobbing circle Esther Kantor crossed to kneel
+beside her mother.
+
+"Mamma darling, you're killing yourself. What if every family went on
+this way? You want papa to come in and find us all crying? Is this the
+way you want Leon to spend his last hour with us--"
+
+"Oh, God--God!"
+
+"I mean his last hour until he comes back, darling. Didn't you just hear
+him say, darling, it may be by spring?"
+
+"'Spring'--'spring'--never no more springs for me--"
+
+"Just think, darling, how proud we should be! Our Leon, who could so
+easily have been excused, not even to wait for the draft."
+
+"It's not too late yet--please--Leon--"
+
+"Our Roody and Boris both in camp, too, training to serve their country.
+Why, mamma, we ought to be crying for happiness. As Leon says, surely
+the Kantor family, who fled out of Russia to escape massacre, should
+know how terrible slavery can be. That's why we must help our boys,
+mamma, in their fight to make the world free! Right, Leon?" trying to
+smile with her red-rimmed eyes.
+
+"We've got no fight with no one! Not a child of mine was ever raised to
+so much as lift a finger against no one. We've got no fight with
+no one!"
+
+"We have got a fight with some one! With autocracy! Only this time it
+happens to be Hunnish autocracy. You should know it, mamma--oh, you
+should know it deeper down in you than any of us, the fight our family
+right here has got with autocracy! We should be the first to want to
+avenge Belgium!"
+
+"Leon's right, mamma darling, the way you and papa were beaten out of
+your country--"
+
+"There's not a day in your life you don't curse it without knowing it!
+Every time we three boys look at your son and our brother Mannie, born
+an--an imbecile--because of autocracy, we know what we're fighting for.
+We know. You know, too. Look at him over there, even before he was born,
+ruined by autocracy! Know what I'm fighting for? Why, this whole family
+knows! What's music, what's art, what's life itself in a world without
+freedom? Every time, ma, you get to thinking we've got a fight with no
+one, all you have to do is look at our poor Mannie. He's the answer.
+He's the answer."
+
+In a foaming sort of silence, Mannie Kantor smiled softly from his chair
+beneath the pink-and-gold shade of the piano-lamp. The heterogeneous
+sounds of women weeping had ceased. Straight in her chair, her great
+shelf of bust heaving, sat Rosa Kantor, suddenly dry of eye; Isadore
+Kantor head up. Erect now, and out from the embrace of her daughter,
+Sarah looked up at her son.
+
+"What time do you leave, Leon?" she asked, actually firm of lip.
+
+"Any minute, ma. Getting late."
+
+This time she pulled her lips to a smile, waggling her forefinger.
+
+"Don't let them little devils of French girls fall in love with my dude
+in his uniform."
+
+Her pretense at pleasantry was almost more than he could bear.
+
+"Hear! Hear! Our mother thinks I'm a regular lady-killer! Hear that,
+Esther?" pinching her cheek.
+
+"You are, Leon--only--only, you don't know it!"
+
+"Don't you bring down too many beaux while I'm gone, either, Miss
+Kantor!"
+
+"I--won't, Leon."
+
+_Sotto voce_ to her: "Remember, Esther, while I'm gone, the royalties
+from the discaphone records are yours. I want you to have them for
+pin-money and--maybe a dowry?"
+
+She turned from him. "Don't, Leon--don't--"
+
+"I like him! Nice fellow, but too slow! Why, if I were in his shoes I'd
+have popped long ago."
+
+She smiled with her lashes dewy.
+
+There entered then, in a violet-scented little whirl, Miss Gina Berg,
+rosy with the sting of a winter's night, and, as usual, swathed in the
+high-napped furs.
+
+"Gina!"
+
+She was for greeting every one, a wafted kiss to Mrs. Kantor, and then,
+arms wide, a great bunch of violets in one outstretched hand, her glance
+straight, sure, and sparkling for Leon Kantor.
+
+"Surprise--everybody--surprise!"
+
+"Why, Gina--we read--we thought you were singing in Philadelphia
+to-night!"
+
+"So did I, Esther darling, until a little bird whispered to me that
+Lieutenant Kantor was home on farewell leave."
+
+He advanced to her down the great length of room, lowering his head over
+her hand, his puttee-clad legs clicking together. "You mean, Miss
+Gina--Gina--you didn't sing?"
+
+"Of course I didn't! Hasn't every prima donna a larynx to hide behind?"
+She lifted off her fur cap, spilling curls.
+
+"Well, I--I'll be hanged!" said Lieutenant Kantor, his eyes lakes of her
+reflected loveliness.
+
+She let her hand linger in his. "Leon--you--really going? How--terrible!
+How--how--wonderful!"
+
+"How wonderful'--your coming!"
+
+"I--You think it was not nice of me--to come?"
+
+"I think it was the nicest thing that ever happened in the world."
+
+"All the way here in the train I kept saying, 'Crazy--crazy--running to
+tell Leon--Lieutenant--Kantor good-by--when you haven't even seen him
+three times in three years--'"
+
+"But each--each of those three times we--we've remembered, Gina."
+
+"But that's how I feel toward all the boys, Leon--our fighting
+boys--just like flying to them to kiss them each one good-by."
+
+"Come over, Gina. You'll be a treat to our mother. I--Well, I'm hanged!
+All the way from Philadelphia!"
+
+There was even a sparkle to talk, then, and a letup of pressure. After a
+while Sarah Kantor looked up at her son, tremulous, but smiling.
+
+"Well, son, you going to play--for your old mother before--you go? It'll
+be many a month--spring--maybe longer, before I hear my boy again
+except on the discaphone."
+
+He shot a quick glance to his sister. "Why, I--I don't know. I--I'd love
+it, ma, if--if you think, Esther, I'd better."
+
+"You don't need to be afraid of me, darlink. There's nothing can give me
+the strength to bear--what's before me like--like my boy's music.
+That's my life, his music."
+
+"Why, yes; if mamma is sure she feels that way, play for us, Leon."
+
+He was already at the instrument, where it lay, swathed, atop the grand
+piano. "What'll it be, folks?"
+
+"Something to make ma laugh, Leon--something light, something funny."
+
+"'Humoresque,'" he said, with a quick glance for Miss Berg.
+
+"'Humoresque,'" she said, smiling back at him.
+
+He capered through, cutting and playful of bow, the melody of Dvorák's,
+which is as ironic as a grinning mask.
+
+Finished, he smiled at his parent, her face still untearful.
+
+"How's that?"
+
+She nodded. "It's like life, son, that piece. Crying to hide its
+laughing and laughing to hide its crying."
+
+"Play that new piece, Leon--the one you set to music. You know. The
+words by that young boy in the war who wrote such grand poetry before he
+was killed. The one that always makes poor Mannie laugh. Play it for
+him, Leon."
+
+Her plump little unlined face innocent of fault, Mrs. Isadore Kantor
+ventured her request, her smile tired with tears.
+
+"No, no--Rosa--not now! Ma wouldn't want that!"
+
+"I do, son; I do! Even Mannie should have his share of good-by."
+
+To Gina Berg: "They want me to play that little arrangement of mine from
+Allan Seegar's poem. 'I Have a Rendezvous....'"
+
+"It--it's beautiful, Leon. I was to have sung it on my program
+to-night--only, I'm afraid you had better not--here--now--"
+
+"Please, Leon! Nothing you play can ever make me as sad as it makes me
+glad. Mannie should have, too, his good-by."
+
+"All right, then, ma, if--if you're sure you want it. Will you sing it,
+Gina?"
+
+She had risen. "Why, yes, Leon."
+
+She sang it then, quite purely, her hands clasped simply together and
+her glance mistily off, the beautiful, the heroic, the lyrical prophecy
+of a soldier-poet and a poet-soldier:
+
+     "But I've a rendezvous with Death
+      On some scarred slope of battered hill,
+      When spring comes round again this year
+      And the first meadow-flowers appear."
+
+In the silence that followed, a sob burst out, stifled, from Esther
+Kantor, this time her mother holding her in arms that were strong.
+
+"That, Leon, is the most beautiful of all your compositions. What does
+it mean, son, that word, 'rondy-voo'?"
+
+"Why, I--I don't exactly know. A rendezvous--it's a sort of meeting, an
+engagement, isn't it, Miss Gina? Gina? You're up on languages. As if I
+had an appointment to meet you some place--at the opera-house, for
+instance."
+
+"That's it, Leon--an engagement."
+
+"Have I an engagement with you, Gina?"
+
+She let her lids droop. "Oh, how--how I hope you have, Leon."
+
+"When?"
+
+"In the spring?"
+
+"That's it--in the spring."
+
+Then they smiled, these two, who had never felt more than the merest
+butterfly wings of love brushing them, light as lashes. No word between
+them, only an unfinished sweetness, waiting to be linked up.
+
+Suddenly there burst in Abrahm Kantor, in a carefully rehearsed gale of
+bluster.
+
+"Quick, Leon! I got the car down-stairs. Just fifteen minutes to make
+the ferry. Quick! The sooner we get him over there the sooner we get him
+back! I'm right, mamma? Now, now! No waterworks! Get your brother's
+suit-case, Isadore. Now, now! No nonsense! Quick--quick--"
+
+With a deftly manoeuvered round of good-bys, a grip-laden dash for the
+door, a throbbing moment of turning back when it seemed as though Sarah
+Kantor's arms could not unlock their deadlock of him, Leon Kantor was
+out and gone, the group of faces point-etched into the silence
+behind him.
+
+The poor, mute face of Mannie, laughing softly. Rosa Kantor crying into
+her hands. Esther, grief-crumpled, but rich in the enormous hope of
+youth. The sweet Gina, to whom the waiting months had already begun
+their reality.
+
+Not so Sarah Kantor. In a bedroom adjoining, its high-ceilinged vastness
+as cold as a cathedral to her lowness of stature, sobs dry and terrible
+were rumbling up from her, only to dash against lips tightly
+restraining them.
+
+On her knees beside a chest of drawers, and unwrapping it from
+swaddling-clothes, she withdrew what at best had been a sorry sort
+of fiddle.
+
+Cracked of back and solitary of string, it was as if her trembling arms,
+raising it above her head, would make of themselves and her swaying body
+the tripod of an altar.
+
+The old twisting and prophetic pain was behind her heart. Like the
+painted billows of music that the old Italian masters loved to do,
+there wound and wreathed about her clouds of song:
+
+     But I've a rendezvous with Death
+     On some scarred slope of battered hill,
+     When spring comes round again this year
+     And the first meadow-flowers appear.
+
+
+
+
+OATS FOR THE WOMAN
+
+That women who toil not neither do they spin might know the feel of
+fabrics so cunningly devised that they lay to the flesh like the inner
+petals of buds, three hundred and fifty men, women, and children
+contrived, between strikes, to make the show-rooms of the Kessler
+Costume Company, Incorporated, a sort of mauve and mirrored Delphi where
+buyers from twenty states came to invoke forecast of the mood of skirts,
+the caprice of sleeves, and the rumored flip to the train. Before these
+flips and moods, a gigantic industry held semi-annual pause, destinies
+of lace-factories trembling before a threatened season of strictly
+tailor-mades, velvet-looms slowing at the shush of taffeta. When woman
+would be sleazy, petticoat manufacturers went overnight into an oblivion
+from which there might or might not be returning. The willow plume waved
+its day, making and unmaking merchants.
+
+Destiny loves thus to spring from acorn beginnings. Helen smiled, and
+Troy fell. Roast pork, and I doubt not then and there the apple sauce,
+became a national institution because a small boy burnt his fingers.
+
+That is why, out from the frail love of women for the flesh and its
+humors, and because for the webby cling of chiffon too often no price is
+too high, the Kessler Costume Company employed, on the factory side of
+the door, the three hundred and fifty sewers and cutters, not one of
+whose monthly wage could half buy the real-lace fichu or the
+painted-chiffon frock of his own handiwork.
+
+On the show-room side of the door, painted mauve within and not without,
+_mannequins_, so pink finger-tipped, so tilted of instep, and so bred in
+the thrust to the silhouette, trailed these sleazy products of thick
+ringers across mauve-colored carpet and before the appraising eyes of
+twenty states.
+
+Often as not, smoke rose in that room from the black cigar of the Omaha
+Store, Omaha, or Ladies' Wear, Cleveland. In season, and particularly
+during the frenzied dog-days of August, when the fate of the new
+waist-line or his daring treatment of cloth of silver hung yet in the
+balance, and the spirit of Detroit must be browbeaten by the dictum of
+the sleeveless thing in evening frocks, Leon Kessler himself smoked a
+day-long chain of cigarettes, lighting one off the other.
+
+In the model-room, a long, narrow slit, roaringly ventilated by a
+whirling machine, lined in frocks suspended from hangers, and just wide
+enough for two very perfect thirty-sixes to stand abreast, August fell
+heavily. So heavily that occasionally a cloak-model, her lot to show
+next December's conceit in theater wraps, fainted on the show-dais; or a
+cloth-of-gold evening gown, donned for the twentieth time that
+sweltering day, would suddenly, with its model, crumple, a glittering
+huddle, to the floor.
+
+Upon Miss Hattie Becker, who within the narrow slit had endured eight of
+these Augusts with only two casual faints and a swoon or two nipped in
+the bud, this ninth August came in so furiously that, sliding out of her
+sixth showing of a cloth-of-silver and blue-fox opera wrap, a shivering
+that amounted practically to chill took hold of her.
+
+"Br-r-r!" she said, full of all men's awe at the carbon-dioxide paradox.
+"I'm so hot I'm cold!"
+
+Miss Clarice Delehanty slid out of a shower of tulle-of-gold
+dancing-frock and into an Avenue gown of rough serge. The tail of a very
+arched eyebrow threatened, and then ran down in a black rill.
+
+     "If Niagara Falls was claret lemonade,
+      You'd see me beat it to a watery grave."
+
+"That'll be enough canary-talk out of you, Clare. Hand me my shirt-waist
+there off the hook."
+
+"Didn't Kess say we had to show Keokuk the line before lunch?"
+
+"If the King of England was buying ermine sport coats this morning, I
+wouldn't show 'em before I had a cold cut and a long drink in me. Hurry!
+Hand me my waist, Clare, before the girls come in from showing the
+bridesmaid line."
+
+Miss Delehanty flung the garment down the narrow length of the room.
+
+"Minneapolis don't know it, but after this showing he's going to blow me
+to the frappiest little lunch on the Waldorf roof."
+
+Miss Becker buttoned her flimsy blouse with three pearl beads down its
+front, wiping constantly at a constantly dampening brow.
+
+"You'd shove over the Goddess of Liberty if you thought she had her foot
+on a meal ticket."
+
+"Yes; and if I busted her, you could build a new one on the lunch money
+you've saved in your time."
+
+"Waldorf! You've got a fine chance with Minneapolis. You mean the
+Automat, and two spoons for the ice-cream."
+
+Miss Delehanty adjusted a highly eccentric hat, a small green velvet,
+outrageously tilted off the rear of its _bandeau_, and a wide black
+streamer flowing down over one shoulder. It was the match to the
+explosive effect of the _trotteur_ gown. She was Fashion's humoresque,
+except that Fashion has no sense of humor. Very presently Minneapolis
+would appraise her at two hundred and seventy-five as is. Miss Delehanty
+herself came cheaper.
+
+"Say, Hattie, don't let being an old man's darling go to your head. The
+grandchildren may issue an injunction."
+
+A flare of crimson rushed immediately over Miss Becker's face, spreading
+down into her neck.
+
+"You let him alone! He's a darn sight better than anything I've seen you
+girls picking for yourselves. You never met a man in your life whose
+name wasn't Johnnie. You couldn't land a John in a million years."
+
+Miss Delehanty raised her face from over a shoe-buckle. A stare began to
+set in, as obviously innocent as a small boy's between spitballs.
+
+"Well, who said anything about old St. Louis, I'd like to know?"
+
+"You did, and you leave him alone! What do you know about a real man?
+You'd pass up a Ford ride to sit still in a pasteboard limousine
+every time!"
+
+"Well, of all things! Did I say anything?"
+
+"Yes, you did!"
+
+"Why, for my part, he can show you a good time eight nights in the week
+and Sundays, too."
+
+"He 'ain't got grandchildren--if you want to know it."
+
+"Did I say he had?"
+
+"Yes, you did!"
+
+"Why, I don't blame any girl for showing grandpa a good time."
+
+"You could consider yourself darn lucky, Clarice Delehanty, if one half
+as good ever--"
+
+"Ask the girls if I don't always say old St. Louis is all to the good.
+Three or four years ago, right after his wife died, I said to Ada,
+I said--"
+
+A head showed suddenly through the lining side of the mauve portières,
+blue-eyed, blue-shaved, and with a triple ripple of black hair
+trained backward.
+
+"Hurry along there with fifty-seven, Delehanty! Heyman's got to see the
+line and catch that six-two Chicago flier."
+
+Miss Delehanty fell into pose, her profile turned back over one
+shoulder.
+
+"Tell him to chew a clove; it's good for breathless haste," she said,
+disappearing through portières into the show-room.
+
+Miss Becker thrust herself from a hastily-found-out aperture, patting,
+with final touch, her belt into place.
+
+"Have I been asking you for five years, Kess, to knock before you poke
+your head in on us girls?"
+
+Mr. Leon Kessler appeared then fully between the curtains, letting them
+drape heavily behind him. Gotham garbs her poets and her brokers, her
+employers and employees, in the national pin-stripes and sack coat.
+Except for a few pins stuck upright in his coat lapel, Mr. Kessler might
+have been his banker or his salesman. Typical New-Yorker is the pseudo,
+half enviously bestowed upon his kind by _hinter_ America. It signifies
+a bi-weekly manicure, femininely administered; a hotel lobbyist who can
+outstare a seatless guest; the sang-froid to add up a dinner check;
+spats. When Mr. Kessler tipped, it did not clink; it rustled. In
+theater, at each interval between acts, he piled out over ladies' knees
+and returned chewing a mint. He journeyed twice a year to a famous
+Southern spa, and there won or lost his expenses. He regarded Miss
+Becker, peering at her around the fluff of a suspended frock of
+pink tulle.
+
+"What's the idea, Becker? Keokuk wants to see you in the wrap line."
+
+Miss Becker swallowed hard, jamming down and pinning into a small
+taffy-colored turban, her hair, the exact shade of it, escaping in
+scallops. Carefully powdered-out lines of her face seemed to emerge
+suddenly through the conserved creaminess of her skin. Thirty-four, in
+its unguarded moments, will out. Miss Becker had almost detained
+twenty's waistline and twenty-two's ardent thrust of face. It was only
+the indentures of time that had begun to tell slightly--indentures that
+powder could not putty out. There was a slight bagginess of throat where
+the years love to eat in first, and out from the eyes a spray of fine
+lines. It was these lines that came out now indubitably.
+
+"If you want me to lay down on you, Kess, for sure, just ask me to show
+the line again before lunch. I'm about ready to keel. And you can't put
+me off again. I'm ready, and you got to come now."
+
+He dug so deeply into his pockets that his sleeves crawled up.
+
+"Say, look here. I've got my business to attend to, and, when my trade's
+in town, my trade comes first. See? Take off and show Keokuk a few
+numbers. I want him to see that chinchilla drape."
+
+She reached out, closing her hand over his arm.
+
+"I'll show him the whole line, Kess, when we're back from lunch. I got
+to talk to you, I tell you. You put me off yesterday and the day before,
+and this--this is the last."
+
+"The last what?"
+
+"Please, Kess, if you only run over to Rinehardt's with me. I got to
+tell you something. Something about me and--and--"
+
+He regarded her in some perplexity. "Tell it to me here. Now!"
+
+"I can't. The girls'll be swarming in any minute. I can't get you
+anywheres but lunch. It's the first thirty minutes of your time I've
+asked in five years, Kess--is that little enough? Let Cissie show
+Keokuk the blouses till we get back. It's something, Kess, I can't put
+off. Kess, please!"
+
+Her face was so close to him and so eager that he turned to back out.
+
+"Wait for me at the Thirty-first Street entrance," he said, "and I'll
+shoot you across to Rinehardt's."
+
+She caught up her small silk hand-bag and ran out toward the elevators.
+Down in Thirty-first Street a wave of heat met, almost overpowering her.
+New York, enervated from sleepless nights on fire-escapes and in
+bedrooms opening on areaways, moved through it at half-speed, hugging
+the narrow shade of buildings. Infant mortality climbed with the
+thermometer. In Fifth Avenue, cool, high bedrooms were boarded and
+empty. In First Avenue, babies lay naked on the floor, snuffing out for
+want of oxygen.
+
+Across that man-made Grand Cañon men leap sometimes, but seldom. Mothers
+whose babies lie naked on the floor look out across it, damning.
+
+Out into this flaying heat Miss Becker stepped gingerly, almost
+immediately rejoined by Mr. Leon Kessler, crowningly touched with the
+correct thing in straw sailors.
+
+"Get a move on," he said, guiding her across the soft asphalt.
+
+In Rinehardt's, one of a thousand such _Rathskeller_ retreats designed
+for a city that loves to dine in fifteen languages, the noonday cortège
+of summer widowers had not yet arrived. Waiters moved through the dim,
+pink-lit gloom, dressing their tables temptingly cool and white,
+dipping ice out from silver buckets into thin tumblers.
+
+They seated themselves beneath a ceiling fan, Miss Becker's
+taffy-colored scallops stirring in the scurry of air.
+
+"Lordy!" she said, closing her eyes and pressing her finger-tips against
+them, "I wish I could lease this spot for the summer!"
+
+He pushed a menu-card toward her. "What'll you have? There's plenty
+under the 'ready to serve.'"
+
+She peeled out of her white-silk gloves.
+
+"Some cold cuts and a long ice-tea."
+
+He ordered after her and more at length, then lighted a cigarette.
+
+"Well?" he said, waving out a match.
+
+She leaned forward, already designing with her fork on the table-cloth.
+
+"Kess, can you guess?"
+
+"Come on with it!"
+
+"Have you--noticed anything?"
+
+"Say, I'd have a sweet time keeping up with you girls!"
+
+She looked at him now evenly between the eyes.
+
+"You kept up with me pretty close for three years, didn't you?"
+
+"Say, you knew what you were doing!"
+
+"I--I'm not so sure of that by a long shot. I--I was fed up with the
+most devilish kind of promises there are. The kind you was too smart to
+put in words or--or in writing. You--you only looked 'em."
+
+"I suppose you was kidnapped one dark and stormy night while the
+villain pursued you, eh? Is that it?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use--rehashing! After that time at Atlantic City
+and--and then the--flat, it--it just seemed the way I felt about you
+then--that nothing you wanted could be wrong. I guess I knew what I was
+doing all right, or, if I didn't, I ought to have. I was rotten--or I
+couldn't have done it, I guess. Only, deep inside of me I was waiting
+and banking on you like--like poor little Cissie is now. And you knew
+it; you knew it all them three years."
+
+"Say, did you get me over here to--"
+
+"I only hope to God when you're done with Cissie you'll--"
+
+"You let me take care of my own affairs. If it comes right down to it,
+there's a few things I could tell you, girl, that ain't so easy to
+listen to. Let's get off the subject while the going's good."
+
+"Oh, anybody that plays as safe as you--"
+
+He raised his voice, shoving back his chair. "Well, if you want me to
+clear out of this place quicker than you can bat your eye, you just--"
+
+"No, no, Kess! 'Sh-h-h-h!"
+
+"If there ever was a girl in my place had a square deal, that girl's
+been you."
+
+"'Square deal!' Because after I held on and--ate out my heart for three
+years, you didn't--take away my job, too? Somebody ought to pin a
+Carnegie medal on you!"
+
+"You've held down a twenty-dollar-a-week job season in and season out,
+when there've been times it didn't even pay for the ink it took to
+write you on the pay-roll."
+
+"There's nothing I ever got out of you I didn't earn three times over."
+
+"A younger figure than yours is getting to be wouldn't hurt the line
+any, you know. It's because I make it a rule not to throw off the old
+girls when their waist-lines begin to spread that makes you so grateful,
+is it? There's not a firm in town keeps on a girl after she begins to
+heavy up. If you got to know why I took you off the dress line and put
+you in the wraps, it's because I seen you widening into a thirty-eight,
+and a darn poor one at that. I can sell two wraps off Cissie to one off
+you. You're getting hippy, girl, and, since you started the subject, you
+can be darn glad you know where your next week's salary's coming from."
+
+She was reddening so furiously that even her earlobes, their tips
+escaping beneath the turban, were tinged.
+
+"Maybe I--I'm getting hippy, Kess; but it'll take more than anything you
+can ever do for me to make up for--"
+
+"Gad!" he said, flipping an ash in some disgust, "I wish I had a
+ten-cent piece for every one since!"
+
+"Oh," she cried, her throat jerking, "you eat what you just said! You
+eat it, because you know it ain't so!"
+
+"Now look here," he said, straightening up suddenly, "I don't know what
+your game is, but if you're here to stir up the old dust that's been
+laid for five years--"
+
+"No, no, Kess! It's only that--what I got to tell you--I--it makes a
+difference, I--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"There's nothing in these years since, I swear to God, or in the years
+before, that I got to be ashamed of!"
+
+"All right! All right!"
+
+"If ever a girl came all of a sudden to her senses, it was me. If ever a
+girl has lived a quiet life, picking herself up and brushing the dust
+off, it's been me. Oh, I don't say I 'ain't been entertained by the
+trade--I didn't dodge my job--but it's been a straight kind of a
+time--straight!"
+
+"I'm not asking for an alibi, Becker. What's the idea?"
+
+"Kess," she said, leaning forward, with tears popping out in her eyes,
+"I.W. Goldstone has asked me to marry him."
+
+He laid down his roll in the act of buttering it, gazing across at her
+with his knife upright in his hand.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Night before last, Kess, in the poppy-room at Shalif's."
+
+"Are you crazy?"
+
+"It's the God's truth, Kess. He's begging me for an answer by to-night,
+before he goes back home."
+
+"I.W. Goldstone, of Goldstone & Auer, ladies' wear?"
+
+She nodded, her hand to her throat.
+
+"Well, I'll be strung up!"
+
+"He--he says, Kess, it's been on his mind for a year and a half, ever
+since his spring trip a year ago. He wants to take me back with him,
+Kess, home."
+
+"Whew!" said Mr. Kessler, wiping his brow and the back of his collar.
+
+"You're no more surprised than me, Kess. I--I nearly fell off the
+Christmas tree."
+
+"Good Lord! Why, his wife--he had her in the store it seems yesterday!"
+
+"She's been dead four years and seven months, Kess."
+
+"Old I.W. and you!"
+
+"He's only fifty-two, Kess; I'm thirty-four."
+
+"I.W. Goldstone!"
+
+"I know it. I can't realize it, neither."
+
+"Why, he's worth two hundred thousand, if he's worth a cent!"
+
+"I know it, Kess."
+
+"The old man's stringing you, girl. His kind stop, look, and listen."
+
+"He's not stringing me! I tell you he's begging me to marry him and go
+back home with him. He's even told his--daughter about me."
+
+"Good Lord--little Effie! I was out there once when she was a kid.
+Stopped off on my way to Hot Springs. They live in a kind of
+park--Forest Park Street or something or other. Why, I've done business
+with Goldstone & Auer for fifteen years, and my father before me!
+Good Lord!"
+
+"What'll I do, Kess?"
+
+"So that's the size of the fish you went out and landed!"
+
+"I didn't! I didn't! He's been asking me out the last three trips, and
+post-cards in between, but I never thought nothing of it."
+
+"Why, he can't get away with this!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"They won't stand for it out in that Middle West town. He's the head of
+a big business. He's got a grown daughter."
+
+"He's got her fixed, Kess--settled on her."
+
+"Hattie Becker, Mrs. I.W. Goldstone! Gad! can you beat it? Can't you
+just see me, when I come out to St. Louis pretty soon, having dinner out
+at Mrs. I.W. Goldstone's house? Say, am I seeing things?"
+
+"What'll I do, Kess? What'll I do?"
+
+"I tell you that you can't get away with it, girl. The old man's getting
+childish; they'll have to have him restrained. Why, the woman he was
+married to for twenty years, Lenie Goldstone, never even seen a
+skirt-dance. I remember once he brought her to New York and then
+wouldn't let her see a cabaret show. He won't even buy sleeveless models
+for his French room."
+
+"I tell you, Kess, he'll take me to Jersey to-morrow and marry me, if I
+give the word."
+
+"Not a chance!"
+
+"I tell you yes. That's why I got to see you. I got to tell him
+to-night, Kess. He--goes back to-morrow."
+
+He regarded her slowly, watching her throat where it throbbed.
+
+"Well, what are you going to do?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+"Where do you stand with him? Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?"
+
+"He--he don't ask questions, Kess. I--I'm his ideal, he says, of
+the--kind of--woman can take up for him where his wife left off. He says
+we're alike in everything but looks, and that a man who was happy in
+marriage like him can't be happy outside of it. He--he's sized up pretty
+well the way I live, and--and--he knows I don't expect too much out of
+life no more. Just a quiet kind of team-work, he puts it--pulling
+together fifty-fifty, and somebody's hand to hold on to when old fellow
+Time hits you a whack in the knees from behind. But he ain't old when he
+talks that way, Kess; he--he's beautiful to me."
+
+"Does he wear a mask when he makes love?"
+
+"He's got a fine face."
+
+"So that's the way you're playing it, is it? Love-stuff?"
+
+"Oh, I've had all the love-stuff knocked out of me. Three years of
+eating out my heart is about all the love-stuff I can handle for a
+while. He don't want that in a woman. I don't want it in him. He's just
+a plain, good man I never in my life could dream of having. A good home
+in a good town where life ain't like a red-eyed devil ready to hit in
+deep between the shoulder-blades. I know why he says he can see his wife
+in me. He knows I'm the kind was cut out for that kind of life--home and
+kitchen and my own parsley in my own back yard. He knows, if he marries
+me, carpet slippers seven nights in the week is my speed. I never want
+to see a 'roof,' or a music-show, or a cabaret again to the day I die.
+He knows I'll fit in home like a goldfish in its bowl. Life made a
+mistake with me, and it's going to square itself. It's fate, Kess;
+that's what it is--fate!"
+
+She clapped her hands to her face, sobbing down into them.
+
+He glanced about him in quick and nervous concern.
+
+"Pull yourself together there, Becker; we're in a public place."
+
+"If only I could go to him and tell him."
+
+"Well, you can't."
+
+"It's not you that keeps me. Only, I know that with his kind of man and
+at his age, a woman is--is one thing or another and that ends it. With a
+grown daughter, he wouldn't--couldn't--he's too set in his ways to know
+how it was with me--and--what'll I do, Kess?"
+
+"Say, I'm not going to stand in your light, if that's what's eating you.
+If you can get away with it, I don't wish you nothing but well. Looks to
+me like all right, if you want to make the try. I'll even come and break
+bread with you when I go out to see my Middle West trade pretty soon.
+That's the kind of a hairpin I am."
+
+"It's like I keep saying to myself, Kess. If--if he'd ask me anything,
+it--it would be different. He--he says he never felt so satisfied that a
+woman had the right stuff in her. And I have! There's nothing in the
+world can take that away from me. I can give him what he wants. I know I
+can. Why, the way I'll make up to that little girl out there and love
+her to death! I ask so little, Kess--just a decent life and rest--peace.
+I'm tired. I want to let myself get fat. I'm built that way, to get fat.
+It was nothing but diet gave me the anaemia last summer. He says he
+wants me to plump out. Perfect thirty-six don't mean nothing in his life
+except for the trade. No more rooming-houses with the kitchenette in the
+bath-room. A kitchen, he says, Kess, half the size of the show-room,
+with a butler's pantry. He likes to play pinochle at night, he says,
+next to the sitting-room fire. He tried to learn me the rules of the
+game the other night in the poppy-room. It's easy. His first wife was
+death on flowers. She used to train roses over their back fence. He
+loved to see her there. He wants me to like to grow them. He wants to
+take me back to a home of my own and peace, where life can't look to a
+girl like a devil with horns. He wants to take me home. What'll I do,
+Kess? Please, please, what'll I do?"
+
+He was rather inarticulate, but reached out to pat her arm. "Go--to
+it--girl, and--God bless you!"
+
+        *       *      *       *       *
+
+Forest Park Boulevard comes in sootily, smokestacks, gas-tanks, and
+large areas of scarred vacant lots boding ill enough for its destiny.
+But after a while, where Taylor Avenue bisects, it begins to retrieve
+itself. Here it is parked down its center, a narrow strip set out in
+shrubs, and on either side, traffic, thus divided, flows evenly up and
+down a macadamized roadway. In summer the shrubs thicken, half
+concealing one side of Forest Park Boulevard from its other. Houses
+suddenly take on detached and architectural importance, often as not a
+gravel driveway dividing lawns, and out farther still, where the street
+eventually flows into Forest Park, the Italian Renaissance invades,
+somebody's rococo money's worth.
+
+I.W. Goldstone's home, so near the park that, in spring, the smell of
+lilacs and gasolene hovers over it, pretends not to period or dynasty.
+Well detached, and so far back from the sidewalk that interlocking trees
+conceal its second-story windows, an alcove was frankly a bulge on its
+red-brick exterior. Where the third-floor bath-room, an afterthought,
+led off the hallway, it jutted out, a shingled protuberance on the left
+end of the house. A tower swelled out of its front end, and all year
+round geraniums and boxed climbing vines bloomed in its three stories.
+
+Across a generous ledge of veranda, more vines grew quite furiously,
+reaching their height and then growing down upon themselves. Behind
+those vines, and so cunningly concealed by them that not even the white
+wrapper could flash through to the passerby, Mrs. I.W. Goldstone, in a
+chair that would rock rhythmically with her, loved to sit in the first
+dusk of evening, pleasantly idle. A hose twirling on the lawn spun up
+the smell of green, abetted by similar whirlings down the wide vista of
+adjoining lawns. Occasionally, a prideful and shirt-sleeved landed
+proprietor wielded his own hose, flushing the parched sidewalk or
+shooting spray against hot bricks that drank in thirstily.
+
+As Mrs. Goldstone rocked she smiled, tilting herself backward off the
+balls of her feet. The years had cropped out in her suddenly,
+surprisingly, and with a great deal of geniality. The taffy cast to her
+hair had backslid to ashes of roses. Uncorseted and in the white
+wrapper, she was quite frankly widespread, her hips fitting in tight
+between the chair-arms, and her knees wide.
+
+A screen door snapped sharply shut on its spring, Mr. I.W. Goldstone
+emerging. There was a great rotundity to his silhouette, the generous
+outward curve to his waist-line giving to his figure a swayback
+erectness, the legs receding rather short and thin from the bay of
+waistcoat.
+
+"Hattie?"
+
+"Here I am, I.W."
+
+"I looped up the sweet-peas."
+
+"Good!"
+
+He sat down beside her, wide-kneed, too, the smooth top of his head and
+his shirt sleeves spots in the darkness.
+
+"Get dressed a little, Hattie, and I'll get out the car and ride you out
+to Forest Park Highlands."
+
+She slowed, but did not cease to rock.
+
+"It's so grand at home this evening, I.W. I'm too comfortable to even
+dress myself."
+
+He felt for her hand in the gloom; she put it out to him.
+
+"You huck home too much, Hattie."
+
+"I guess I do, honey; but it's like I can never get enough of it. The
+first year I was a home body, and the second and third year I'm two
+of 'em."
+
+"That's something you'll never hear me complain of in a woman. There's
+a world of good in the woman who loves her home."
+
+"It's not that, I.W. It's because I--I never dreamed that there
+was anything like this coming to me. To live around in rooms, year
+in and year out, in the lonesomest town in the world, and then, all
+of a sudden, a home of your own and a hubby of your own and a daughter
+of your own, why--I dunno--sometimes when I think of them days it's
+like life was a big red devil with horns and a tail that I'd got away
+from. Why, if it was to get me again, I--I dunno, honey, I
+dunno--I--just--dunno."
+
+"You're a good woman, Hattie, and you deserve all that's coming to you.
+I wish it was more."
+
+"And you're a good man--they don't come no better."
+
+"I'm satisfied with my bargain."
+
+"And me with mine, honey, if--if you don't mind the talk."
+
+"S-ay, this town would talk if you cut its tongue out."
+
+"You're my nice old hubby!"
+
+"If I ever was a little uneasy it was in the beginning, Hattie--the
+girl--those things don't always turn out."
+
+"It's her as much as me, I.W. She's the sweetest little thing."
+
+"Never seen the like the way you took hold, though. I'll bet there's not
+one woman in a hundred could have worked it out easier."
+
+"That's right--kid me to death."
+
+"'Kid,' she says, the minute I tell her the truth."
+
+"Put on your cap, I.W.; it's getting damp."
+
+He felt under the chair-cushions, drawing out and adjusting a black
+skull-cap.
+
+"Want to go to the picture-show awhile, Hattie?"
+
+"No. When Lizzie's done the dishes, I want to set some dough."
+
+"Let's walk, then, a little. I ate too much supper."
+
+"Just in the side yard, I.W. It's a shame the way I don't dress
+evenings."
+
+"S-ay, in your own home, shouldn't you have your own comfort? You can
+take it from me, Hattie, no matter what Effie tells you, you're twice
+the looking woman with some skin on your bones. I want my wife when she
+sits down to table she should not look blue-faced when the gravy is
+passed. Maybe it's not the style, but if it suits your old man, we
+should worry who else it suits."
+
+"It's not right, I.W., but I love it--this feeling at home for--for
+good." She rose out of the low mound she had made in the chair, tucking
+up the white wrapper at both sides. "Come; let's walk in the side yard."
+
+A narrow strip of asphalt ran across the housefrontage, turning in a
+generous elbow and then back the depth of the lot. They paced it quietly
+in the gloom, arm in arm, and their voices under darkness.
+
+"Next month is my New York trip. All of a sudden Effie begs I should
+take her. We'll all go. What you say, Hattie? It'll do us good."
+
+"You take the kid, I.W. Lizzie needs watching. Yesterday I had to make
+her do the whole butler's pantry over. She just naturally ain't clean."
+
+"You got such luck with your roses, Hattie; it's wonderful!"
+
+They were beneath a climbing bush of them that ran along, glorifying a
+wooden fence.
+
+She pulled a fan of them to her face. "M-m-m-m!"
+
+"I must spray for worms to-morrow," he said.
+
+They resumed their soft walking in the gloom. "Where's Effie?"
+
+"Telephoning."
+
+"I ask you, is it a shame a child should hang on to the telephone an
+hour at a time? Fifty minutes since she was interrupted from supper
+she's been there."
+
+"What's the harm in a young girl telephoning, I.W.? All young folks
+like to gad over the wire."
+
+"What can a girl have to say over the telephone for fifty minutes?
+Altogether in my life I never talked that long into the telephone."
+
+"Let the child alone, I.W."
+
+"Who can she get to listen to her for fifty minutes?"
+
+"Birdie Harberger usually calls up at this time."
+
+"Always at supper-time! Never in my life has that child sat down at the
+table it don't ring in our faces. The next time what it happens you can
+take sides with her all you want, not one step does she move till she's
+finished with her supper."
+
+"As easy with her as you are, I.W., just as unreasonable you can get."
+
+"On the stairs-landing for an hour a child should giggle into the
+telephone! I'm ashamed for the operators. You take sides with her yet."
+
+"I don't, I.W.; only--"
+
+"You do!"
+
+A patch of light from an upper window sprang then across their path.
+
+"She's in her room now, I.W.!" cried Mrs. Goldstone. "She hasn't been
+telephoning all this time at all. Now, crosspatch!"
+
+"You know much! Can't you see she just lit up? Effie!"
+
+A voice came down to them, clear and with a quality to it like the ring
+of thin glass.
+
+"Coming, pop!"
+
+The light flashed out again, and in a length of time that could only
+have meant three steps at a bound she was around the elbow of the
+asphalt walk, a coat dangling off one arm, her summery skirts flying
+backward and her head ardently forward.
+
+"You'll never guess!"
+
+She flung herself between the two of them, linking into each of their
+elbows.
+
+"By my watch, Effie, fifty minutes! If it happens again that you get
+rung up supper-time, I--"
+
+"It was Leon Kessler, pop; he didn't leave on the six-two. Can you beat
+it? Down at the station he got to thinking of me and turned back. Oh, my
+golly! how the boys love me!"
+
+She was jumping now on the tips of her toes, her black curls bouncing.
+
+"You don't tell me!" said Mr. Goldstone. "To-day in the store he says
+he must be back in New York by Monday morning."
+
+She thrust her face outward, its pink-and-white vividness very close to
+his.
+
+"Is my daddy's daughter going out in a seventy horse-power to Delmar
+Garden? She is!"
+
+"Them New York boys spend too much money on the girls when they come.
+They spoil them for the home young men."
+
+"Can I help it if he couldn't tear himself away?"
+
+"S-ay, don't fool yourself! I said to him to-day he should stay over
+Sunday. After the bill of goods I bought from him this morning, and the
+way he only comes out to see his trade once in five or six years, he
+should stay and mix with them a little longer. That fellow knows good
+business."
+
+She turned her face with a fling of curls to the right of her, linking
+closer into the soft arm there.
+
+"Listen to him, Mamma Hat! Let's shove a brick house over on him."
+
+When Mrs. Goldstone finally spoke there was a depth to her voice that
+seemed to create sudden quiet.
+
+"Effie, Effie, why didn't you let him go?"
+
+"Let him? Did I tie any strings to him? I said good-by to him in the
+store this afternoon. Can I help it that the boys love me? Why didn't I
+let him go, she says!"
+
+Her father pinched her slyly at that. "_Echta_ fresh kid," he said.
+
+To her right, the hand at her arm clung closer.
+
+"Effie, you--you're so young, honey. Leon Kessler's an old-timer--"
+
+"I hate kids. Give me a _man_ every time. I like them when they've got
+enough sense to--"
+
+"Why didn't you let him go, Effie? Ain't I right, I.W.? Ain't I right?"
+
+"S-ay, what's the difference if he likes to show her a good time? If I
+was a young man, I wouldn't pass her up myself."
+
+"But, I.W., she's--so young!"
+
+"Who's young? I'm nineteen, going on--"
+
+"You've been running with him all the three days he's been here, honey.
+What's the use getting yourself talked about?"
+
+"Well, any girl in town would be glad to get herself talked about if
+Leon Kessler was rushing her."
+
+"Effie, I won't let you--I won't--"
+
+Miss Goldstone unhinged her arm, jerking it free in anger.
+
+"Well, I like that!"
+
+"Effie, I--"
+
+"You ain't my boss!"
+
+"Effie!"
+
+"But, papa, she--"
+
+There was a booming in Mr. Goldstone's voice and a suddenly projected
+vibrancy.
+
+"You apologize to your mother--this minute! You talk to your mother the
+way you know she's to be talked to!"
+
+"I.W., she didn't--"
+
+"You hear me!"
+
+"I.W.! Don't holler at her; she--"
+
+"She ain't your boss? Well, she just is your boss! You take back them
+words and say you're sorry! You apologize to your mother!" Immediate
+sobs were rumbling up through Miss Goldstone.
+
+"Well, she--I--I didn't do anything. She's down on him. She--"
+
+"Oh, Effie, would I say anything if it wasn't for your own good?"
+
+"You--you were down on him from the start!"
+
+"Effie darling, you must be mad! Would I say anything if it wasn't for
+our girl's good to--"
+
+"I--oh, Mamma Hat, I'm sorry, darling! I never meant a word. I didn't! I
+didn't, darling!"
+
+They embraced there in the shrouding darkness, the tears flowing.
+
+"Oh, Effie--Effie!"
+
+"I didn't mean one word I said, darling! I just get nasty like that
+before I know it. I didn't mean it!"
+
+"My own Effie!"
+
+"My darling Mamma Hat!"
+
+In the shadow of a flowering shrub Mr. Goldstone stood by, mopping. Mrs.
+Goldstone took the small face between her hands, peering down into it.
+
+"Effie, Effie, don't let--"
+
+Just beyond the enclosing hedge, a motor-car drew up, honking, at the
+curb, two far-flung paths of light whitening the street and a disused
+iron negro-boy hitching-post. Miss Goldstone reared back.
+
+"That's him!"
+
+"Effie!"
+
+"Let me go, dearie; let me go!"
+
+"But, Effie--"
+
+"Say, Hattie, I don't want to butt in, but it don't hurt the child
+should go riding a little while out by Delmar Garden--a man that can
+handle a car like Leon Kessler. Anyways, it don't pay to hurt the firm's
+feelings."
+
+There was a constant honking now at the curb, and violent throbbing of
+engine.
+
+"But, I.W.--"
+
+"Popsie darling, I'll be back early. Mamma Hat, please!"
+
+"Your mother says yes, baby. Tell Kess he should come for Sunday dinner
+to-morrow."
+
+She was a white streak across the grass, her nervous feet flying. Almost
+instantly the honk of a horn came streaming back, faint, fainter.
+
+Left standing there, Goldstone was instantly solicitous of his wife,
+feeling along her arm up under the loose sleeve.
+
+"It don't pay, Hattie, to hurt Kessler's feelings, and, anyhow, what's
+the difference just so we know who she's running with? It's like this
+house was a honey-pot and the boys flies."
+
+She turned to him now with her voice full of husk, and even in the dark
+her face bleached and shrunken from its plumpness.
+
+"You oughtn't to let her! You--hadn't the right! She's too young and
+too--sweet for a man like him. You oughtn't to let her!"
+
+He stepped out in front of her, taking her by the elbows and holding
+them close down against her sides.
+
+"Why, Hattie, that child's own mother that loved her like an angel
+couldn't worry no more foolishly about her than you do. Gad! I think you
+wimmin love it! It was the same kind of worrying shortened her mother's
+life. Always about nothing, too. 'Lenie,' I used to say to her, just to
+quiet her, 'it was worry killed a Maltese cat; don't let it kill you.'
+That child is all right, Hattie. What if he does like her pretty well?
+Worse could happen."
+
+"No, it couldn't! No!"
+
+"Why not? He 'ain't seen her since a child, and all of a sudden he comes
+West and finds in front of him an eye-opener."
+
+"He's twice her age--more!"
+
+"The way girls demand things nowadays, a man has got to be twice her age
+before he can provide for her. Leon Kessler is big rich."
+
+"He--he's fast."
+
+"Show me the one that 'ain't sowed his wild oats. Them's the kind that
+settle down quickest into good husbands."
+
+"He--"
+
+"S-ay, it 'ain't happened yet. I'm the last one to wish my girl off my
+hands. I only say not a boy in this town could give it to her so good.
+Fifteen years I've done business with that firm, and with his father
+before him. A-1 house! S-ay, I should worry that he ain't a
+Sunday-school boy. Show me the one that is. Your old man in his young
+days wasn't such a low flier, neither, if anybody should ask you." He
+made a whirring noise in his throat at that, pinching her cold cheek.
+She was walking rapidly now toward the house. "Well, since our daughter
+goes out riding in a six-thousand-dollar car, to show that we're sports,
+lets her father and mother take themselves out for a ride in their
+six-hundred-dollar car. I drive you out as far as Yiddle's farm for some
+sweet butter, eh?"
+
+"No, no; I'm cold. It's getting damp."
+
+"S-ay, you can't hurt my feelings. On a cool night like this, a
+brand-new sleeping-porch ain't the worst spot in the world."
+
+They were on the veranda, the hall light falling dimly out and over
+them.
+
+"She's so young--"
+
+"Now, now, Hattie; worry killed a Maltese cat. Come to bed."
+
+"You go. I want to wait up."
+
+"Hattie, you want to make of yourself the laughingstock of the
+neighborhood. A grown-up girl goes out riding with a man like Leon
+Kessler, and you wants to wait up and catch your death of cold. If we
+had more daughters, I wouldn't have no more wife; I'd have a shadow from
+worry. Come!"
+
+"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
+
+He regarded her in some concern.
+
+"Why, Hattie, if there's anything in the world to worry about, wouldn't
+I be the first? Ain't you well?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then come. I'll get a pitcher of ice-water to take up-stairs."
+
+"I'll be up in a minute."
+
+"I don't want, Hattie, you should wait up for that child and take your
+death of cold. Because I sleep like a log when I once hit the bed,
+don't you play no tricks on me."
+
+"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
+
+He moved into the house and, after a while, to the clinking of ice
+against glass, up the stairs.
+
+"Come, Hattie; and be sure and leave the screen door unhooked for her."
+
+"Yes, I.W."
+
+An hour she sat in the shrouded darkness of the elbow of the veranda.
+Street noises died. The smell of damp came out. Occasionally a motor-car
+sped by, or a passer-by, each step clear on the asphalt. The song of
+crickets grated against the darkness. An infant in the right-side house
+raised a fretful voice once or twice, and then broke into a sustained
+and coughy fit of crying. Lights flashed up in the windows, silhouettes
+moving across drawn shades. Then silence again. The university clock, a
+mile out, chimed twelve, and finally a sonorous one. Mrs. Goldstone lay
+huddled in her chair, vibrant for sound. At two o'clock the long,
+high-power car drew up at the curb again, this time without honking. She
+sat forward, trembling.
+
+There followed a half-hour of voices at the curb, a low voice of
+undeniable tensity, high laughter that shot up in joyous geysers. It was
+a fifteen-minute process from the curb to the first of the porch steps,
+and then Mrs. Goldstone leaned forward, her voice straining to keep
+its pitch.
+
+"Effie!"
+
+The young figure sprang around the porch pillar.
+
+"Mamma Hat! Honey, you didn't wait up for me?"
+
+Mr. Kessler came forward, goggles pushed up above his cap-visor.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged! What did you think--that I was kidnapping the kid?"
+
+"How--how dared you! It's after two, and--"
+
+Miss Goldstone began then to jump again upon her toes, linking her arm
+in his.
+
+"Tell her, Leon! Tell her! Oh, Mamma Hat! Mamma Hat!"
+
+She was suddenly in Mrs. Goldstone's arms, her ardent face burning
+through the white wrapper.
+
+Mr. Kessler removed his cap, flinging it upward again and catching it.
+
+"Tell her, Leon!"
+
+"Well, what would you say, Becker, what would you say if I was to come
+out here and swipe that little darling there?"
+
+"Oh, Leon--kidder!"
+
+"If--what?"
+
+"I said it!"
+
+"Tell her, Kess; tell it out! Oh, mommie, mommie!"
+
+He leaned forward with his hand on the back of the turbulent head of
+curls.
+
+"You little darling, I'm going to put you on my back and carry you off
+to New York."
+
+"Oh, mommie," cried Miss Goldstone, flinging back her head so that her
+face shone up, "he asked me in Delmar Garden! We're going to live in New
+York, darling, and Rockaway in summer. He don't care a rap about the
+New York girls compared to me. We're going to Cuba on our honeymoon. I'm
+engaged, darling! I got engaged to-night!"
+
+"That's the idea, Twinkle-pinkle. I'd carry you off to-night if I
+could!"
+
+"Mommie Hat, ain't you glad?"
+
+"Effie--Effie--"
+
+"Mommie, what is it? What's the matter, darling? What?"
+
+"I--it's just that I got cold, honey, sitting here waiting--the surprise
+and all. Run, honey, and get me a drink. Crack some ice, dearie, and
+then run up-stairs in the third floor back and see if there's some
+brandy up there. Be sure to look for--the brandy. I--I'll be all right."
+
+"My poor, darling, cold mommie!"
+
+She was off on the slim, quick feet, the screen door slamming and
+vibrating.
+
+Then Mrs. Goldstone sprang up.
+
+"You wouldn't dare! Such a baby--you wouldn't dare!"
+
+"Dare what?"
+
+"You can't have the child! You can't!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"What do I mean?"
+
+He advanced a step, his voice and expression lifted in incredulity.
+
+"Say, look here, Becker, are you stark, raving crazy? Is it possible you
+don't know that, in your place, nobody but a crazy woman would open
+her mouth?"
+
+"Maybe; but I don't care. Just leave her alone, Kess, please! That
+little baby can stand nothing but happiness."
+
+"Why, woman, you're crazy with the heat. If you want to know it, I'm
+nuts over that little kid. Gad! never ran across anything so full of zip
+in my life! I'm going to make life one joy ride after another for that
+joy baby. That kid's the showpiece of the world. She's got me so hipped
+I'm crazy, and the worst of it is I like it. You don't need to worry. As
+the boys say, when I settle down, I'm going to settle hard."
+
+"You ain't fit to have her!"
+
+"Say, the kind of life I've lived I ain't ashamed to tell her own
+father. He's a man, and I'm a man, and life's life."
+
+"You--"
+
+"Now look here, Becker. That'll be about all. If you're in your right
+senses, you're going to ring the joy bells louder than any one around
+here. What you got on your chest you can just as well cut your throat as
+tell; so we'll both live happy ever after. There's not one thing in my
+life that any jury wouldn't pass, and--"
+
+"I've seen you drunk."
+
+"Well, what of it? It took three of us to yank old I.W. out from under
+the table at my sister's wedding."
+
+"You--What about you and Cissie and--"
+
+The light run of feet, and almost instantly Miss Goldstone was
+pirouetting in between them.
+
+"Here, dearie! There wasn't anything like brandy up in the third floor.
+I found some cordial in the pantry. Drink it down, dearie; it'll
+warm you."
+
+They hovered together, Miss Goldstone trembling between solicitude and
+her state of intensity.
+
+"Kessie darling, you've got to go now. I want to get mommie up-stairs to
+bed. You got to go, darling, until to-morrow. Oh, why isn't it tomorrow?
+I want everybody to know. Don't let on, Mamma Hat. I'll pop it on popsie
+at breakfast while I'm opening his eggs for him. You come for breakfast,
+Leon. You're in the family now." He lifted her bodily from her feet,
+pressing a necklace of kisses round her throat.
+
+"Good night, Twinkle-pinkle, till to-morrow."
+
+"Good night, darling. I won't sleep a wink, waiting for you."
+
+"Me, neither."
+
+"One more, darling--a French one."
+
+"Two for good measure."
+
+"Sleep tight, beautiful! Good night!"
+
+"Good night, beautifulest!"
+
+She stood poised forward on the topmost step, watching him between
+backward waves of the hand crank, throw his clutch, and steer off. Then
+she turned inward, a sigh trembling between her lips.
+
+"Oh, Mamma Hat, I--"
+
+But Mrs. Goldstone's chair was empty. Into it with a second and more
+tremulous sigh sank Miss Goldstone, her lips lifted in the smile that
+had been kissed.
+
+When Mr. Goldstone slept, every alternate breath started with a rumble
+somewhere down in the depths of him and, drawn up like a chain from a
+well, petered out into a thin whistle before the next descent. Beside
+him, now, on her knees, Mrs. Goldstone shook at his shoulder.
+
+"I.W.! I.W.! Quick! Wake up!"
+
+He let out a shuddering, abysmal breath.
+
+"I.W.! Please!"
+
+He moaned, turning his face from her.
+
+She tugged him around again, now raising his face between her hands from
+the pillow.
+
+"I.W.! Try to wake up! For God's sake, I.W.!" He sprang up in a
+terrified daze, sitting upright in bed.
+
+"My God! Who? What's wrong? Effie! Hattie."
+
+"No, no; don't get excited, I.W. It's me--Hattie!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing, I.W. Nothing to get excited about. Only I got to tell you
+something."
+
+"Where's Effie?"
+
+"She's home."
+
+"What time is it?"
+
+"Three."
+
+"Come back to bed, then; you got the nightmare."
+
+"No, no!"
+
+"You ain't well, Hattie? Let me light up."
+
+"No, no; only, I got to tell you something! I 'ain't been to bed; I been
+waiting up, and--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+"She just came home--engaged!"
+
+"My God! Effie?"
+
+He blinked in the darkness, drawing up his knees to a hump under the
+sheet.
+
+"Engaged--how?"
+
+"I.W., don't you remember? Wake up, honey. To Kess, to Leon Kessler that
+she went automobiling with."
+
+"Our Effie engaged--to Leon Kessler?"
+
+"Yes, I.W.--our little Effie!"
+
+A smile spread over his face slowly, and he clasped his hands in an
+embrace about his knees.
+
+"You don't tell me!"
+
+"Oh, I.W., please--"
+
+"Our little girl. S-ay, how poor Lenie would have loved this happiness!
+Our little girl engaged to get married!"
+
+"I.W., she--"
+
+"We do the right thing by them--eh, Hattie? Furnish them up as many
+rooms as they want. But, s-ay, they don't need help from us. He's a
+lucky boy who gets her, I don't care who he is. Her papa's little Effie,
+a baby--old enough to get engaged!"
+
+"I.W., she's too--young. Don't give him our little Effie; she's too
+young!"
+
+"I married her mother, Hattie, when she wasn't yet eighteen."
+
+"I know, I.W., but not to Leon Kessler. She's such a baby, I.W.
+He--didn't I work for him nine years, I.W.--don't I know what he is!"
+
+"I'm surprised, Hattie, you should hold so against a man his wild oats."
+
+"Then why ain't oats for the man oats for the woman? It's the men that
+sow the wild oats and the women--us women that's got to reap them!"
+
+"S-ay, life is life. Do you want to put your head up against a brick
+wall?"
+
+"A wall that men built!"
+
+"It's always hard, Hattie, for good women like you and like poor Lenie
+was to understand. It's better you don't. You shouldn't even think
+about it."
+
+"But, I.W.--"
+
+"If I didn't know Leon Kessler was no worse than ninety-nine good
+husbands in a hundred, you think I would let him lay a finger on the
+apple of my eye? I don't understand, Hattie; all of a sudden this
+evening, you're so worked up. Instead of happiness, you come like with a
+funeral. Is that why you wake me up out of a sleep? To cry about it?
+Don't think, Hattie, that just as much as you I haven't got the good of
+my child at heart. Out of a sound sleep she wakes me to cry because a
+happiness has come to us. Leon Kessler can have any girl in this town he
+wants. Maybe he wasn't a Sunday-school boy in his day--but say, show me
+one that was."
+
+She drew herself up, grasping him at the shoulders.
+
+"I.W., don't let him have our little Effie!"
+
+"Nonsense!" he said, in some distaste for her voice choked with tears.
+"Cut out this woman foolishness now and come to bed. Is this something
+new you're springing on me? I got no patience with women who indulge
+themselves with nervous breakdowns. I never thought, Hattie, you had
+nothing like that in you."
+
+Her voice was rising now in hysteria, slipping up frequently beyond her
+control.
+
+"If you do, I can't stand it! I can't stand it, I.W.!"
+
+He peered at her in the starlight that came down through the screened-in
+top of the sleeping-porch.
+
+"Why?" he said, suddenly awake, and shortly.
+
+"I worked for him nine years, I.W. I--I know him."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I know him, I.W. She's too good for him."
+
+"How do you know him?"
+
+"I--the girls, I.W. One little girl now, Cissie--I--I hear it all from
+my friend Delehanty--sometimes she--she writes to me. I--the models
+and--the girls and--and the lady buyers--they--they used to gossip in
+the factory and--I--I used to hear about it. I.W., don't! Let go! You
+hurt!" His teeth and his hands were very tight, and he hung now over the
+side of the bed and toward her.
+
+"He--I.W.--he--"
+
+"He what? He what?"
+
+"He--ain't good enough."
+
+"I say he is!"
+
+"But he--I.W.--she--she's such a baby and he--he--. You hurt!"
+
+"Then tell me, he what?"
+
+"I.W., you're hurting me!"
+
+"He what--do you hear?--he what?"
+
+"Don't make me say it! Don't! It--it just happened--with him meaning one
+thing all the time and--me another. I was thrown with that kind of a
+crowd, I.W., all my life. All the girls, they--It don't make me worse
+than it makes him. With me it was once; with him it's--it's--I didn't
+know, I.W. My mother she died that year before, and--I needed the job,
+and I swear to God, I.W., I--kept hoping even if he never put it in
+words he'd fix it. Kill me, if you want to, I.W., but don't throw our
+Effie to him! Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+She was pounding the floor with her bare palms, her face so distorted
+that the mouth drawn tight over the teeth was as wide and empty as a
+mask's, and sobs caught and hiccoughed in her throat.
+
+"I didn't know, I.W.! Don't kill me for what I didn't know!"
+
+She crouched back from his knotted face, and he sprang then out of bed,
+nightshirt flapping about his knees, and his fists and his bulging eyes
+raised to the quiet stars.
+
+"God," he cried, "help me to keep hold of myself! Help me! You--you--"
+
+His voice was so high and so tight in his throat that it stuck, leaving
+him in inarticulate invocation.
+
+"I.W.!"
+
+"My child engaged to--to her mother's--you--you--"
+
+"I.W.! Do you see now? You wouldn't let him have her! You wouldn't,
+I.W.! Tell me you wouldn't!"
+
+"I want him if he touches her to be struck dead! I want him to be struck
+dead!"
+
+"Thank God!" said Mrs. Goldstone, weeping now tears that eased her
+breathing.
+
+Suddenly he leaned toward her, his voice rather quieter, but his
+forefinger waggling out toward the open door.
+
+"You go!" he said, and then in a gathering hurricane of fury, "go!"
+
+"I.W., don't yell! Don't! Don't!"
+
+"Go--while I'm quiet. Go--you hear?"
+
+She edged around him where he stood, in fear of his white, crouched
+attitude.
+
+"I.W.!"
+
+He made a step toward her, and, at the sound in his throat, she ran out
+into the hallway and down the stairs to the porch. In the deep shade of
+the veranda's elbow a small figure lay deep in sleep in the wicker
+rocker, one bare arm up over her head and lips parted.
+
+In a straight chair beside her Mrs. Goldstone sat down. She was
+shuddering with chill and repeating to herself, quite aloud and over and
+over again:
+
+"What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?"
+
+She was suddenly silent then, staring out ahead, her hands clutching the
+chair-arms.
+
+To her inflamed fancy, it was as if, beyond the hedge, the old disused
+hitching-post had become incarnate and, in the form of her naive and
+horned conception, was coming toward her with the whites of his eyes
+bloodshot.
+
+
+
+
+A PETAL ON THE CURRENT
+
+Were I only swifter and more potent of pen, I could convey to you all in
+the stroke of a pestle the H2O, the pigment of the red-cheeked apple,
+the blue of long summer days, and the magnesia of the earth for which
+Stella Schump was the mortal and mortar receptacle.
+
+She was about as exotic as a flowering weed which can spring so strongly
+and so fibrously from slack. And yet such a weed can bleed milk. If
+Stella Schump was about fourteen pounds too plump, too red of cheek, and
+too blandly blue of eye, there was the very milk of human kindness in
+her morning punching up of her mother's pillows and her smoothing down
+of the gray and poorly hair. She could make a bed freshly, whitely, her
+strong young arms manoeuvering under but not even jarring the poor old
+form so often prone there.
+
+There was a fine kind of virile peasantry in the willing hands, white
+enough, but occasionally broken at the nails from eight hours of this
+box in and that box out in a children's shoe department.
+
+Differing by the fourteen pounds, Watteau would have scorned and Rubens
+have adored to paint her.
+
+She was not unconscious of the rather flaxen ripple of her hair, which
+she wore slickly parted and drawn back, scallop by scallop, to a round
+and shining mat of plaits against the back of her head. But neither was
+she unconscious that she thereby enhanced the too high pitch of her
+cheek-bones and the already too generous width between them. It was when
+Stella Schump opened wide her eyes that she transcended the milky
+fleshliness and the fact that, when she walked rapidly, her cheeks
+quivered in slight but gelatinous fashion. Her eyes--they were the color
+of perfect June at that high-noon moment when the spinning of the
+humming-bird can be distilled to sound. Laura and Marguerite and Stella
+Schump had eyes as blue as Cleopatra's, and Sappho's and Medea's must
+have been green.
+
+For reading and occasional headaches, she wore a pair of horn-rimmed
+spectacles prescribed but not specially ground by the optical
+department, cater-corner from the children's shoes. Upon the occasion of
+their first adjustment, Romance, for the first time, had leaned briefly
+into the smooth monotony of Miss Schump's day-by-day, to waft a scented,
+a lace-edged, an elusive kerchief.
+
+"You ought to heard, mamma, that fellow over in the specs, when he gimme
+the test for the glasses."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Tee-hee!--it sounds silly to repeat it."
+
+"You got the Schump eyes, Stella. I always used to say, with his big
+blue ones, your poor father ought to been a girl, too."
+
+"'Say,' he said to me, he said, just like that, 'I know a society who
+will pay you a big fat sum if you'll sign over them eyes for
+post-mortem laboratory work. Believe me, Bettina,' he said, just like
+that, 'those are some goo-goos!'"
+
+"'Goo-goos'?"
+
+"Yes, ma--the way I look out of them."
+
+"See, Stella, if you'd only mix with the young men and not be so
+stiff-like with them. See! Is he the sober, genteel kind who could sit
+out an evening in a self-respectin' girl's front parlor?"
+
+"I--I can't ask a fellow if he didn't ask me, can I? I can't make a
+pusher out of myself."
+
+"A girl don't have to make a pusher out of herself to have beaus; it's
+natural for her to have them in moderation. I don't want my girl shut
+out of her natural pleasures."
+
+"'Believe me, Bettina,' he said, 'those are some goo-goos'--just like
+that, he said it."
+
+"Before I'd let a girl like Cora Kinealy have all the beaus! I bet
+_she'd_ ask him."
+
+"It--it just ain't in me, ma. The other girls do, I know--you ought to
+heard the way Mabel Runyan was kiddin' a fellow in the silks to-day--it
+just ain't in me to."
+
+"Nowadays, young men got to be made to feel welcome."
+
+"I just don't seem to take."
+
+"'I'll be pleased to have you call of a Saturday night, Mr. So-and-so.'
+No one could say there's anything but the genteel in that. Those are
+just the words I used to say to your poor father when he was courtin'."
+
+"If only I--I wouldn't turn all red!"
+
+"I bet Cora Kinealy would have asked him." "I--I'll ask him, ma."
+
+When Stella Schump was adjusting her black sleevelets next morning,
+somewhat obviously oblivious of the optical department across the aisle,
+a blond, oiled head leaned out at her.
+
+"Mornin'. Goo-goo!"
+
+A flush that she could feel rush up and that would not be controlled
+threw her into a state of agitation that was almost abashing to behold.
+
+"Tee-hee!"
+
+"Believe me, Bettina, those are some goo-goos!"
+
+"I'd be pleased to have you--come--to--"
+
+"I told the little wifey last night, 'Angel Face, I've found a pair of
+goo-goos that are a close runner-up to yours.'"
+
+Miss Schump turned to her first customer of the day, the flush receding
+as suddenly as it had come to scorch.
+
+"Copper toes for the little boy? Just be seated, please."
+
+Thus did the odor of romance lay for the merest moment upon the stale
+air of Miss Schump's routine.
+
+Evenings, in the high-ceilinged, long-windowed, and inside-shuttered
+little flat in very West Thirteenth Street, tucked up in the top story
+of one of a row of made-over-into-apartments residences that boasted
+each a little frill of iron balcony and railed-in patch of front lawn,
+they would sit beside an oil-lamp with a flowered china shade, Mrs.
+Schump, gnarled of limb and knotted of joint, ever busy, except on the
+most excruciatingly rheumatic of her days, at a needlework so cruel, so
+fine that for fifteen years of her widowhood it had found instant market
+at a philanthropic Woman's Exchange.
+
+Very often Miss Cora Kinealy, also of the children's shoes, would rock
+away an evening in that halo of lamplight, her hair illuminated to
+copper and her hands shuttling in and out at the business of knitting.
+There were frank personal discussions, no wider in diameter than the
+little circle of light itself.
+
+MISS KINEALY (_slumped in her chair so that her knee rose higher than
+her waist-line_): I always say of Stella, she's one nut too hard for me
+to crack, and I've cracked a good many in my life. Why that girl 'ain't
+got beaus galore--well, I give up!
+
+MRS. SCHUMP (_stooped for an infinitesimal stab of needle_): She don't
+give 'em a chance, Cora. You can't tell me there is not many a nice,
+sober young man wouldn't be glad to sit out a Saturday evening with her.
+She's that bashful she don't give 'em a chance. I tell her it's almost
+as much ruination to a girl to be too retiring as to be too forward. She
+don't seem to have a way with the boys.
+
+MISS SCHUMP (_in a pink, warm-looking flannelette kimono and brushing
+out into fine fluff her flaxen-looking hair, and then, in the name of
+to-morrow's kink, plaiting it into a multitude of small, tight-looking
+braids_): You can talk, mamma. You, too, Cora, with a boy like Archie
+Sensenbrenner and your wedding-day in sight. But what's a girl goin' to
+do if she don't take; if she ain't got an Archie?
+
+Mrs. Schump (_riding her glasses down toward the end of her nose to
+look up sharply over them_): Get one.
+
+"There you go again! Honest, you two make me mad. I can't go out and
+lasso 'em, can I?"
+
+"She doesn't give 'em a chance, Cora; mark my word! The trouble is,
+she's too good for most she sees. They ain't up to her."
+
+"I can't understand it, Mrs. Schump. I always say there ain't a finer
+girl on the floor than Stella. When I see other girls, most of 'em fresh
+little rag-timers that ain't worth powder and shot, bringing down the
+finest kind of fellows, and Stella never asked out or nothing, I always
+say to myself, 'I can't understand it.' Take me--what Arch Sensenbrenner
+ever seen in me, with Stella and her complexion working in the same
+department--"
+
+"You got a way, Cora. There's just something about me don't take with
+the boys. Honest, if I could only see one of you girls alone with a
+fellow once, to see how you do it!"
+
+"Just listen to her, Mrs. Schump, with her eyes and complexion and all!"
+
+"There's not a reason my girl shouldn't have it as good and better than
+the best of them. She's a good girl, Cora. Stella's a good girl to me."
+
+"Aw, mamma--"
+
+"Don't I know it, Mrs. Schump! I always say if ever a girl would make
+some nice-earning, steady fellow a good wife, it's--"
+
+'"Good wife'! That ain't the name! Why, Cora, for ten years that child
+has lifted me on my bad days and carried me and babied me like I was a
+queen. It's nothing for her to rub me two hours straight. Not a day
+before she leaves for work that she don't come to me and--"
+
+"Fellows don't care about that kind of thing. A girl's got to have pep
+and something besides complexion and elbow-grease. I'm too fat."
+
+"She's always sayin' she's too fat. With one pound off, would she
+look as good, Cora? If I hadn't been as plump as a partridge in my
+girl-days--and if I do say it myself, I was as fine a lookin' girl
+as my Stella--do you think Dave Schump would have had eyes for me?
+Not if I was ten times the woman I was for him."
+
+"Sure she ain't too fat, Mrs. Schump. I always tell her it's her
+imagination. I know a girl bigger than she is that's keeping company
+with an expert piano-tuner. Why, I know girls twice her size. Stella's
+got a right good figure, she has."
+
+"Lots of good it does me! I--It's just like my brains to go right to my
+hands, once you put me with a fellow. That time your brother Ed called
+for me for that party at your house--honest, I couldn't open my mouth
+to him."
+
+"Can't understand it! 'Honest,' I says to Ed that time after the party,
+I says to him, 'Ed, why don't you go over and call on Stella Schump and
+take her to a movie or something? She's my idea of a girl, Stella is.'
+Think I could budge him? 'Naw,' was all I could get out of him. Just,
+'Naw.' Honest, I could have shook him. But did he run down to that
+little flirt of a Gert Cobb's the very same night? He did. Honest, like
+I said to Arch, it makes me sick. Is it any wonder the world is filled
+with little flips like Gert Cobb, the way the fellows fall for 'em?"
+
+"I never could be fresh with a boy. Take that time at your party. I bet
+your brother Ed would have liked me better if I'd have got out in the
+middle of the floor with him, like he wanted me to and like Gert did, to
+see who could blow the biggest bunch of suds off his stein. I never
+could be fresh with a fellow."
+
+"That's just the trouble, Mrs. Schump. Stella don't see the difference
+between what's fresh and what's just fun. Is there anything wrong about
+one stein of beer in a jolly crowd? A girl can be nice without being
+goody-good. If there's anything a fellow hates, it's a goody-good. Take
+a fellow like Arch--you think he'd have any time for me if I wasn't a
+good-enough sport to take a glass of beer with him maybe once a week
+when he gets to feeling thirsty? Nothing rough. Everything in
+moderation, I always say. But there's a difference, Mrs. Schump, between
+being rough and being a goody-good."
+
+"There's something in what you say, Cora. I've had her by me so much,
+maybe I've tried to raise her a little over-genteel. There ain't one
+single bad appetite she's got to be afraid of. It's not in her. I used
+to tell her poor father, one glass of beer could make him so crazy loony
+he never had to try how two tasted."
+
+"I'm bashful, and what you goin' to do about it?"
+
+"Say, you and Ed's foreman ought to meet together! Honest, you'd be a
+pair! Ed brought him to the house one night. Finest boy you ever seen.
+Thirty-five a week, steady as you make 'em; and when they put in girls
+to work down at the munitions-plant where him and Ed works, Ed said it
+was all they could do to keep him from throwing up his job from fright.
+Whatta you know? A dandy fellow like him, with a dagger-shaped scar
+clear down his arm from standing by his job that time when the whole
+south end of the plant exploded. A fellow that could save a whole plant
+and two hundred lives afraid to face a few skirts! Crazy to get married.
+Told Ed so. Always harping on his idea of blue eyes and yellow hair, and
+then, when he gets the chance, afraid of a few skirts!"
+
+"That's me every time with fellows. I get to feelin' down inside of me
+something terrible--scary--and all."
+
+"Say, I'll tell you what! I'll get Ed to bring him down to Gert Cobb's
+party next Saturday night, and you come, too."
+
+"I?"
+
+"There's two of a kind for you, Mrs. Schump. A fellow that's more afraid
+of girls than explosions, and a girl that's afraid to blow a little foam
+off a glass of beer! Them two ought to meet. Me and Arch and Ed'll fix
+it up. How's that for a scheme? Now say I ain't your friend! Are
+you game?"
+
+"I don't go out tryin' to meet fellows that way."
+
+"You see, Mrs. Schump, the way she puts a gold fence around herself?"
+
+"Cora's puttin' herself out for you, Stella. There's no harm in a
+Saturday night's party in the company of Cora and some genteel friends."
+
+"Gert Cobb don't know I'm on earth."
+
+"You hear, Mrs. Schump? Is it any wonder she don't get out? All I got to
+do is say the word, and any friend of mine is welcome in Gert
+Cobb's house."
+
+"I'll make you up them five yards of pink mull for it, Stella. It's a
+shame that pretty dress-pattern from your two birthdays ago has never
+had the occasion to be made up. It's nice of Cora to be puttin'
+herself out."
+
+"Look at 'er, like I was asking her to a funeral!"
+
+"There's such a pretty sash I been savin' to make up with that mull,
+Cora. A handsome black-moiré length of ribbon off a beaded basque her
+father gimme our first Christmas married."
+
+"I'll lend her my pink pearls to wear. Honest, I never knew a girl could
+wear pink like Stella."
+
+Miss Schump leaned forward in the lamplight, the myriad of tight little
+braids at angles, but her eyes widening to their astounding blueness.
+
+"Not your--pink beads, Cora?"
+
+"You heard me the first time, didn't you? 'Pink' was what I said."
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Now ain't that nice of Cora?"
+
+"Quick--are you game?"
+
+"Why, yes--Cora."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There is a section of New York which rays out rather crazily from old
+Jefferson Market and Night Court in spokes of small streets that seem
+to run at haphazard angles each to the other--that less sooty part of
+Greenwich not yet invaded by the Middle West in search of bohemia. An
+indescribable smack of Soho here, tired old rows of tired old houses
+going down year by year before the wrecker's ax, the model tenement
+rising insolently before the scar is cold.
+
+It is that part of the Latin Quarter which is literally just that, lying
+slightly to the south and slightly to the west of that odd-fellow's land
+of short-haired women and long-haired men. Free love, free verse, free
+thought, free speech, and freed I.W.W.'s have no place here. For three
+blocks a little Italy runs riot in terms of pastry, spaghetti, and
+plaster-of-Paris shops, and quite as abruptly sobers and becomes Soho
+again. A Greek church squats rather broadly at the intersection of three
+of these streets.
+
+There intervened between Stella Schump's and the six-story model
+tenement adjoining the Greek church which Miss Gertrude Cobb called
+home, a rhomboid of park, municipally fitted with playground apparatus,
+the three-block riot of little Italy, the gloomy barracks of old
+Jefferson Market and Night Court, and a few more blocks of still intact,
+tired old rows of tired old houses.
+
+On a spring night that was as insinuatingly sweet as the crush of a rose
+to the cheek there walked through these lowly streets of lower Manhattan
+Mr. Archie Sensenbrenner, bounded on the north by a checked,
+deep-visored cap; on the south by a very bulldogged and very tan pair of
+number nines; on the east by Miss Cora Kinealy, very much of the
+occasion in a peaked hood faced in eider-down and a gay silk bag of
+slippers dangling; on the west by Miss Stella Schump, a pink scarf
+entwining her head like a Tanagra.
+
+"Honest, Cora, I feel just like I'm intruding."
+
+"'Intrudin'! Would I have invited her if we didn't want her, Arch?"
+
+"Naw."
+
+"'There's always room for one more,' is my motto. I believe it always
+comes home to the girl that don't share her good times. If me and Arch
+couldn't call by for a girl on our way to a party, I'd feel sorry for
+us. Give her your arm, Arch."
+
+"Here! I tried once to, and she wouldn't take it."
+
+Miss Schump hooked a highly diffident hand into Mr. Sensenbrenner's
+sharply jutted elbow.
+
+"You two go on and talk together. I've chewed Arch's right ear off
+already."
+
+"It's a grand evenin'--ain't it, Mr. Sensenbrenner?"
+
+At that from Miss Schump, Miss Kinealy executed a very soprano squeal
+that petered out in a titter of remonstrances.
+
+"Arch Sensenbrenner, if you don't stop pinching me! Honest, my arm's
+black and blue! Honest! What'll Stella think we are? Now cut it out!"
+
+They walked a block in silence, but, beside her, Miss Schump could feel
+them shaking to a duet of suppressed laughter, and the red in her face
+rose higher and a little mustache of the tiniest of perspiration beads
+came out over her lip. The desire to turn back, the sudden ache for the
+quietude of the little halo of lamplight and the swollen finger-joints
+of her mother in and out at work, were almost not to be withstood.
+
+"I--You--you and Mr. Sensenbrenner go on, Cora. I--me not knowin' Gertie
+Cobb and all--I--I--feel I'm intruding. You and him go on. Please!"
+
+Miss Kinealy crossed to her, kindly at once and sobered.
+
+"Now, Stella Schump, you're coming right to this party with me and Arch.
+We can't do more than tell her she's welcome, can we, Arch?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"I promised your mother I'm going to see to it that you get away from
+her apron-strings and out among young folks more, and you're coming
+right to this party with me and Arch. Ain't I right, Arch?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You mustn't feel bad, honey, that Ed couldn't get John Gilly to come
+around and call after you. Ed says he'd never get him to steam up his
+nerve enough to call at a girl's house after her; but ain't it enough
+he's coming to Gert's to-night just to meet you? You ought to heard him
+when Ed got to telling him what kind of a girl you was. 'Gee!' Ed says
+he says. 'Big blue eyes like saucers sounds good to me! Well,' he says,
+Ed says he says, 'if my nerve don't lay down on me, I'll show up there
+with you.' That's something, ain't it, for a fellow like John Gilly to
+do just to meet a girl? Ain't it, Arch, for that fine, big fellow, Ed's
+foreman, you seen up at our house that night? You know the one I mean,
+the one with his arm scalded up from the explosion."
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Honest, if I wasn't already tagged and spoken for, I'd set my cap for
+him myself."
+
+"'Mother, mother, mother, pin a rose on me!'" cried Mr. Sensenbrenner,
+with no great pertinence.
+
+Miss Kinealy threw him a northwest glance. "Ain't he the cut-up,
+Stella?"
+
+"He sure is."
+
+"Br-a-a-y!" said Mr. Sensenbrenner, again none too relevantly.
+
+"Oh, show her the way the zebra in the Park goes on Sunday morning,
+Arch!"
+
+He inserted two fingers, splaying his mouth. "Heigh-ho!
+He-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+"Ain't that lifelike, Stella?"
+
+"It sure is."
+
+"Oh, look! Up there--the third story--see--those are the Cobbs'
+windows, all lit up! Oh, gee! I just can't make my feet behave. Waltz me
+around again, Archie! No; you got to take the first dance with Stella."
+
+"Oh no, Cora; he wants--"
+
+"You hear, Arch?"
+
+"Sure; only, I can't force her if she don't want to."
+
+"Sure she wants to! Hurry! I hear Skinnay Flint's ukulele. Gee! I just
+can't make my feet be-have!"
+
+They entered an institutional, sanitary, and legislation-smelling box of
+foyer and up three flights of fire-proof stairs. At each landing were
+four fire-proof doors, lettered. The Cobbs' door, "H," stood open, an
+epicene medley of voices and laughter floating down the long neck of
+hallway on the syncopated whine of a ukulele.
+
+There was an immediate parting of ways, Mr. Sensenbrenner hanging his
+cap on an already well-filled rack of pegs and making straight for the
+sound of revelry by night.
+
+The girls made foray into a little side pocket of bedroom for the
+changing of shoes, whitening of noses, and various curlicue preambles.
+
+"Stella, your hair looks swell!"
+
+"Ma plaited it up last night with sugar-water."
+
+"Here, just this speck on your lips, just a little to match your
+cheeks!--See--all the girls use it."
+
+"Ugh--no--"
+
+"There, just a stroke. Fine! Say, wasn't Arch killing to-night when he
+called my cheeks naturally curly?"
+
+"You look grand, Cora. Sure you don't want your pink beads?"
+
+"I'll throw 'em down and step on 'em if you take 'em off."
+
+"I just love that changeable silk on you."
+
+"Does the split under the arm show?"
+
+"Notta bit."
+
+"Come on, then!"
+
+"Oh, Cora--"
+
+"Come on!"
+
+In the Cobb front room a frightened exodus of furniture had taken place.
+A leather-and-oak "davenbed" had obviously and literally been dragged to
+the least conspicuous corner. An unpainted center of floor space showed
+that there had been a rug. Camp-chairs had been introduced against all
+available wall space. Only a fan-shaped, three-shelved cabinet of
+knickknacks had been allowed its corner. Diagonal from it, the horn of a
+talking-machine, in shape a large, a violent, a tin morning-glory, was
+directed full against the company.
+
+Not a brilliant scene, except by grace or gracelessness of state of
+mind. But to Stella Schump, neither elected nor electing to walk in
+greater glory, there was that about the Cobb front room thus lighted,
+thus animated, that gave her a sense of function--a crowding around the
+heart. The neck of hallway might have been a strip of purple, awninged.
+
+There were greetings that rose in crescendo and falsetto.
+
+"Cora Kinealy! Hello, Cora! How's every little thing?"
+"Baby-shoes--tra-la-la!" "Oh, you changeable-silk kiddo! Turn green for
+the ladies." "Come on over here, Cora, and make Arch tell fortunes!"
+
+"Gertie, this is my girl friend, Stella, from the shoes, I brought.
+Y'know? I told you about her. Ed's bringing down a gentleman friend
+for her."
+
+Miss Gertie Cobb, so blond, so small, so titillating that she resembled
+nothing so much as one of those Dresden table-candelabra under a pink
+glass-fringed shade with the fringe always atinkle, laughed upward in a
+voice eons too old.
+
+"Make yourself right at home. At our house, it's what you don't see ask
+for. Skin-nay Flint, if you don't stop! Make him quit, Cora; he's been
+ticklin' me something awful with that little old feather duster he
+brought along. Whatta you think this is--Coney Island? E-e-e-e-e-e!"
+
+There ensued a scramble down the length of the room, Miss Cobb with her
+thin, bare little arms flung up over her head, Miss Kinealy tugging and
+then riding in high buffoonery over the bare floor, firmly secured to
+Mr. Flint's coattails.
+
+"Leggo!"
+
+"Quit--ouch--e-e-e-e-e! That's right; give it to him! Cora--go to
+it--e-e-e-e-e--"
+
+Lips lifted to belie a sinkage of heart, Miss Schump, left standing,
+backed finally, sinking down to one of the camp-chairs against the wall.
+The little glittering mustache had come out again, and, sitting there,
+her smile so insistently lifted, the pink pearls at her throat rose and
+fell. The ukulele was whanging again, and a couple or two, locked cheek
+to cheek, were undulating in a low-lidded kind of ecstasy. Finally, Cora
+Kinealy and Archie Sensenbrenner, rather uglily oblivious.
+
+A youth, frantic to outdistance a rival for the dancing-hand of Miss
+Gertie Cobb, stumbled across Miss Schump's carefully crossed ankles.
+
+"'Scuse," he said, without glancing back.
+
+"Certainly," said Miss Schump, through aching tonsils.
+
+There was an encore, the raucous-throated morning-glory taking up where
+the ukulele had left off. Miss Schump sat on, the smile drawn more and
+more resolutely across her face. Occasionally, to indicate a state of
+social ease, she caught an enforced yawn with her hand.
+
+After a while Mrs. Cobb entered, quietly, almost furtively, hands
+wrapped muff fashion in a checked apron, sitting down softly on the
+first of the camp-chairs near the door. She had the dough look of the
+comfortable and the uncorseted fat, her chin adding a scallop as,
+watching, her smile grew.
+
+"It's great to watch the young ones," she said, finally.
+
+Miss Schump moved gratefully, oh, so gratefully, two chairs over.
+
+"It sure is," she said, assuming an attitude of conversation.
+
+"Like I tell Gert, it makes me young again myself."
+
+"It sure does."
+
+"Give it to 'em in the house, I say, and it keeps 'em in off the
+street."
+
+"Your daughter is sure one pretty girl."
+
+"Gert's a good-enough girl, if I could keep her in. I tell 'er of all my
+young ones she's the prettiest and the sassiest. Law, how that girl
+can sass!"
+
+"Like my mother always says to me about sass, sass never gets a girl
+nowheres."
+
+"Indeed it don't! It's lost her more places than my other two, married
+now, ever lost put together. You work in the Criterion?"
+
+"Yes'm. Children's shoes."
+
+"I bet you're not the kind of a girl to change places every week."
+
+"No'm. Criterion is the only place I ever worked at. I started there as
+Cash."
+
+"I bet you give up at home out of your envelop."
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Father?"
+
+"No'm. He was a night watchman and got shot on duty."
+
+"Mother?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Brother?"
+
+"No'm."
+
+"Sister?"
+
+"No'm."
+
+"Only child, huh?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+Then Miss Cobb blew up in a state of breathless haste and bobbing of
+curls.
+
+"Eats, maw--eats! The crowd's thirsty--spittin' cotton. What's the idea?
+My tongue's out. Eats! Quick, for Gawsakes--eats!"
+
+Mrs. Cobb, wide and quivery of hip, retreated precipitately into the
+slit of hallway. Almost immediately there were refreshments, carried in
+on portentous black tin trays by a younger Cobb in pigtails and by Mrs.
+Cobb, swayback from a great outheld array of tumblers and bottles.
+
+A shout went up.
+
+The tray of sandwiches, piled to an apex, scarcely endured one round of
+passing. The fluted tin tops of bottles were pried off. Tumblers
+clicked. There were the sing of suds and foamy overflowings.
+
+Enter Mr. Ed Kinealy, very brown and tight of suit, very black and
+pomaded of hair.
+
+"Oh, Ed!" This from Miss Kinealy between large mouthfuls of sandwich
+and somewhat jerkily from being dandled on Mr. Sensenbrenner's knee,
+"Where's your friend--where's John Gilly?"
+
+"Oh, Ed!" "Naouw, Eh-ud!" "I'll give you a slap on the wrist." "Naouw,
+Ed!" Delivered by those present in a chorus of catcalls and falsetto
+impersonations of Miss Kinealy in plaintive vein.
+
+"Now tell me--where is he, Ed? Shut up every body! Where is he, Ed?"
+
+Mr. Kinealy shot a pair of very striped cuffs.
+
+"That guy had sense. One whiff of this roughhouse and he bolted down
+again, six steps at a jump. He slipped me so easy I was talking to
+myself all the way up-stairs. That guy had sense. Petticoat shush-shush
+can't put nothing over on him."
+
+"Aw, Ed!"
+
+CHORUS: Aw, Eh-ud! Aw, Eh-ud! Naouw--
+
+"And him dated for Stella! Honest, it's a rotten shame!" Suddenly Miss
+Kinealy flashed to her feet, her glance running quick. "Where is she?
+Well, Stella Schump, sitting over there playing chums with yourself!
+Honest, your name ought to be Chump! Whatta you think that is--the amen
+corner? You're a fine bunch of social entertainers, you fellows are!
+Bring her up a chair. Gee! you are! Honest, Gertie Cobb, I wouldn't want
+my cat to be company to you! Bring 'er up a chair, Ed. Here, next to me!
+Honest, it's a rotten shame! Give 'er a sandwich. Open 'er up a bottle.
+Gee! you're a fine crowd of fish, you are!"
+
+There was a general readjustment of circle and scraping of chairs. Miss
+Schump, scarlet, drew up and in, Mr. Kinealy prying off a fluted
+top for her.
+
+"Have this one on me, Stella!" he cried. "Your guy bolted of stage
+fright; but I'm here, and don't you forget it!"
+
+"Aw--tee-hee!" she said, wiping at her upper lip.
+
+"Here!"
+
+She regarded the foam sing down into amber quiet.
+
+"I'm on the water-wagon," she said, essaying to be light of vein,
+crossing her hands and feet and tilting her glance at him.
+
+"Say, here's a girl won't blow the foam off a fellow's glass for fear
+she'll get soapsuds in her eyes!"
+
+"Wash her face with 'em!"
+
+MISS KINEALY: Aw, now, Stella; can't you be a good fellow for once? Do
+it, if it hurts you. Honest, I hate to say it, but you're the limit, you
+are! My God! limber up a little--limber up!
+
+"Here, now--open your mouth and shut your eyes."
+
+"Open it for her, Ed."
+
+"Aw, no; don't force her if she don't want it."
+
+"Gowann, Stella; be human, if it hurts you."
+
+Redly and somewhat painfully, the observed of all observers, Miss Schump
+tilted her head and drank, manfully and shudderingly, to the bitter end
+of the glass.
+
+"Attaboy! Say, tell it to the poodles and the great Danes! That Jane's
+no amachure!"
+
+Eyes stung to tears, pink tip of her tongue quickly circling her lips,
+Miss Schump held out to Mr. Kinealy the empty tumbler.
+
+"Now, there!"
+
+"More?"
+
+"I'm game."
+
+"Don't give 'er a whole glass, Ed."
+
+She drank, again at one whiff.
+
+"That's more like it! Didn't kill you, did it? Now eat that Swiss-cheese
+sandwich and come over next to me and Arch while he tells fortunes."
+
+Miss Schump rose, rather high of head, the moment hers.
+
+Miss Kinealy stretched her hand out into the center of the closing-in
+circle of heads.
+
+"I said palm-reading, Arch, not hand-holding. Leave that part to Ed and
+Gert over there. Now quit squeezing--"
+
+Mr. Sensenbrenner bent low, almost nose to her palm.
+
+"I see," he began, his voice widening to a drawl--"I se-e a fellow about
+my size and complexion entering your life--"
+
+To Miss Schump, her hand on Miss Kinealy's shoulder and her head peering
+over, the voice seemed to trail off somewhere out into infinitudes of
+space, off into bogs of eternity, away and behind some beyond.
+
+"Gee! it's hot in here!" she muttered, no one heeding or hearing. "Sure
+hot. Whew!"
+
+"Going on a long journey, and a fellow about my size and complexion is
+going along with you, and there's money coming--"
+
+"Sure hot!" It was then Miss Schump, with fear of a rather growing and
+sickening sense of dizziness and of the wavy and unstable outline of
+things, slipped quietly and unobtrusively out into the hallway, her
+craving for air not to be gainsaid. The door to the little bedroom stood
+open, her pink scarf uppermost on the cot-edge. She stood for an instant
+in the doorway, regarding and wanting it, but quite as suddenly turned,
+and down the three flights gained the dewy quiet of out-of-doors,
+fighting muzziness.
+
+The street had long since fallen tranquil, the Greek church casting
+immense shadow. The air had immediate and sedative effect upon Miss
+Schump's rather distressing symptoms of unrest, but not quite allaying a
+certain state of mental upheaval. She had the distinct sensation of the
+top of her head lifted off from the eyebrows up. Her state of
+light-headedness took voice.
+
+"Gimme," she said, lifting the pink-mull, ankle-length skirt as if it
+trailed a train and marching off down-street; "now you gimme!"
+
+An entirely new lack of self-consciousness enhanced her state of
+giddiness. A titter seemed to run just a scratch beneath the surface
+of her.
+
+The passing figure of a woman in a black cape and a bulge of bundle
+elicited a burst of laughter which her hand clapped to her mouth
+promptly subdued. Awaiting the passing of a street-car, she was again
+prone to easy laughter.
+
+"Oh, you!" she said, quirking an eye to the motorman, who quirked back.
+
+Crossing the street, she came down rather splashily in a pool of water,
+wetting and staining the light slippers.
+
+"Aw!" she repeated, scolding and stamping down at them. "Aw! Aw! You!"
+
+Across from the gloomy pile of old Jefferson Market, she stood, reading
+up at an illuminated tower-clock, softly, her lips moving.
+
+"Nine--ten--e-lev-hun--"
+
+A dark figure slowed behind her elbow; she turned with a sense of that
+nearness and peered up under the lowering brim of a soft-felt hat.
+
+"Hoddado?"
+
+"Hello!" she answered, slyly.
+
+"Hello!"
+
+She peered closer.
+
+"Got a girl?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Blow suds?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Cora's."
+
+He flung back his coat, revealing a star.
+
+"You're under arrest," he said, laconically. "Solicitin'. Come on; no
+fuss."
+
+Her comprehension was unplumbed.
+
+"O Lord!" she said, pressing inward at her waistline to abet laughter,
+following him voluntarily enough, and her voice rising. "You make me
+laugh. You make me laugh."
+
+"That'll do," he said.
+
+"Whoop la-la!"
+
+"Now, you get noisy and watch me."
+
+He turned in rather abruptly at a side door of the dark-red pile of
+building which boasted the illuminated tower-clock and a jutting ell
+with barred windows.
+
+She drew back.
+
+"No, you don't! Aw, no, you don't! Whatta you think I yam? Cora's! Tell
+it to the poodles and the great Danes!"
+
+He shoved her with scant ceremony beyond the heavy door. She entered in
+one of the uncontrollable gales of laughter, the indoor heat immediately
+inducing the dizziness.
+
+"Whatta you think I yam? Tell it to the poodles and the great Danes!"
+
+Thirty minutes later, in a court-room as smeared of atmosphere as a
+dirty window, a bridge officer, reading from a slip of paper, singsonged
+to the sergeant-at-arms:
+
+"Stella Schump. Officer Charles Costello."
+
+How much more daringly than my poor pen would venture, did life, all of
+a backhanded, flying leap of who knows what centrifugal force, transcend
+for Stella Schump the vague boundaries of the probable.
+
+The milky-fleshed, not highly sensitized, pinkly clean creature of an
+innocence born mostly of ignorance and slow perceptions, who that
+morning had risen sweet from eleven hours of unrestless sleep beside a
+mother whose bed she had never missed to share, suddenly here in
+slatternliness! A draggled night bird caught in the aviary of night
+court, lips a deep vermilion scar of rouge, hair out of scallop and
+dragging at the pins, the too ready laugh dashing itself against what
+must be owned a hiccough.
+
+Something congenital and sleeping subcutaneously beneath the surface of
+her had scratched through. She was herself, strangely italicized.
+
+A judge regarded her not unkindly. There were two of him, she would keep
+thinking, one merging slightly into his prototype.
+
+She stood, gazing up. Around her swam the court-room--rows of faces;
+comings and goings within her railed area. And heat--the dizzying, the
+exciting heat--and the desire to shake off the some one at her elbow.
+That some one was up before her now, in a chair beside the judge, and
+his voice was as far away as Archie Sensenbrenner's.
+
+"And she says to me, she says, your Honor, 'Got a girl?'"
+
+"Were those her exact words to you?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor."
+
+"Proceed."
+
+"And I says to her, I says, 'No,' and then she comes up close and says
+to me, she says, 'Buy me a drink?'"
+
+"Were those her exact words?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor, as near as I can remember."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"And I says to her, 'Where do you want to go?' and she says to me,
+giving me a wink, 'Cora's.'"
+
+"Cora's?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor; the Cora Jones mulatto woman that was cleaned out last
+week."
+
+"She suggested that you accompany her to the house of the Jones woman?"
+
+"Beg pardon, your Honor?"
+
+"She suggested this resort?"
+
+"Yes, your Honor. 'Cora Jones,' she said."
+
+Through the smoke of her bewilderment something irate stirred within
+Miss Schump, a smouldering sense of anger that burst out into a brief
+tongue of flame.
+
+"You! You! You're no amachure! Cora Jones! Cora Kinealy! Go tell it to
+the great Danes! Say it again! Gimme leave! Gimme leave!" The immediate
+peremptoriness of the gavel set her to blinking, but did not silence.
+"'Gimme leave,' was what I said--"
+
+"Come to order in the court!"
+
+"Aw!"
+
+A new presence at her elbow grasped her sharply. She subsided, but still
+muttering.
+
+"Proceed, officer."
+
+"And then, when she starts off with me, I says to her, I says, 'You're
+under arrest,' and brought her over."
+
+"That'll do."
+
+"Does the defendant wish to take the chair?"
+
+From her elbow, "His Honor asks if you want to state your case."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Do you wish to state your case from the witness-chair? Since you did
+not employ counsel, do you wish to state your own case?"
+
+"Nit."
+
+"Look up here, my girl. I am the judge, trying to help you."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Is this your first offense?"
+
+"Well, it's my offense, ain't it?"
+
+"Address the court properly. Are you intoxicated or only slightly
+dizzy?"
+
+"He lied about Cora Kinealy. He lied--that little skunk lied."
+
+"Didn't you ask him to go there with you?"
+
+"Sure; but he's no amachure."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"An amateur?"
+
+"No, this Jane ain't."
+
+"Will you go quietly into the next room with the matron and tell her all
+about it? The court does not want to have to deal too harshly with a
+girl like you. Do you want to engage counsel and have your case go over?
+If there is a chance, I don't want to have to send a girl like
+you away."
+
+"Aw, you--you're a poodle and a great Dane!"
+
+"Ten days," said the judge, rather wearily.
+
+The bridge officer took up the next slip from the pile of them, his
+voice the droning quality of a bee bumbling through sultry air:
+
+"Maizie Smith. Officer Jerry Dinwiddie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Spring and her annual epidemic of aching hearts and aching joints had
+advanced ten days and ten degrees. The season's first straw replacement
+of derby had been noted by press. The city itched in its last days of
+woolens and drank sassafras tea for nine successive mornings. A commuter
+wore the first sweet sprig of lilac. The slightly East Sixties took to
+boarding up house-fronts into bland, eyeless masks. The very East
+Sixties began to smell.
+
+When a strangely larger-eyed, strangely thinner, a whitened and somehow
+a tightened Stella Schump drew up, those ten days later, before the
+little old row with the little old iron balconies, there was already in
+the ridiculous patches of front yards a light-green powdering of grass,
+and from the doorbell of her own threshold there hung quite a little
+spray of roses, waxy white against a frond of fern and a fold of black.
+Deeper within that threshold, at the business of flooding its floor with
+a run of water from a tipped pail and sweeping harshly into it, was the
+vigorous, bony silhouette of Mrs. O'Connor, landlady.
+
+For the second that it took her presence to be felt, Miss Schump stood
+there trembling, all of a sudden more deeply and more rapidly. Then,
+Mrs. O'Connor leaned out, bare arms folded atop her broom.
+
+"So!" she said, a highly imperfect row of lower teeth seeming to jut
+out, and her voice wavy with brogue and vibrant to express all its
+scorn. "So!"
+
+"Mrs. O'Connor--"
+
+"So! Ye've come back in time for the buryin'! Faith, an' it's a foine
+toime for the showin'-up of the chief mourner! Faith now it is!"
+
+"Mrs. O'Connor--"
+
+"Ain't ye ashamed? Ain't ye ashamed before the Lord to face your Maker?"
+
+"Please--please--Mrs. O'Connor--what--what--"
+
+"The pasty-faced lyin' ways of ye! I can see now how ye look what ye
+are! I'd have believed it as soon of my own. It's the still water that
+run deep in ye, is the way your girl friend put it. The hussy under that
+white complexion of yours! Your sainted mither! Oh, ain't ye ashamed in
+the name of the Lord to face your Maker?"
+
+"O God--please what--"
+
+"Your sainted mither! Niver, after that letter from ye the next night
+after her scourin' the city, a whimper more out of her--"
+
+"I wrote--I wrote--they gimme a stamp--I wrote--how--Where is she?"
+
+"A cousin had called ye sudden-like for sickness was how she put it.
+Faith and me niver once a-smellin' the mice, the way she lay there,
+waitin', waitin' day after day, doubled up in the joints and waitin' for
+thim ten days to pass--"
+
+"O God!"
+
+"I found her in bed yisterday, a-clutchin' the letter, or niver to my
+own dyin' would I have known the shameful truth of it. It's screw open
+her poor hands I had to, for the readin' of the letter that had been
+eatin' 'er for all them days of waitin'. Ye hussy! Ye jailbird--and me
+niver thinkin' but what it was the sick cousin! Me niver smellin' the
+mice! Your own girl friend, neither. Ye hussy! Jailbird!"
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+"It's only because she was sainted I'm lettin' ye up in on her. She
+layin' up there, waitin'. Strangers that crossed her poor hands on her
+poor breast and strangers that laid her out. Niver even a priest called
+in on her. She a-layin' up there, waitin'--the Lord have mercy on your
+soul! If ye ain't afraid before the Lord to look on her, come up. It's
+thankin' God I am she can't open her eyes to see ye."
+
+Hands clutching her throat, Miss Schump remained standing there on the
+sun-drenched steps, gazing after the figure receding into the musty
+gloom of the hallway. She wanted to follow, but instead could only stand
+there, repeating and repeating:
+
+"O my God! O my God! God! God! What have I done? What have I done?
+Mamma--mamma--mamma! O my God! What? What--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the pyramidal plot-structure of this story the line of descent is by
+far the sheerer. Short-story correspondence-schools would call it the
+brief downward action leading to dénouement.
+
+With Stella Schump it was almost a straight declivity. There were days
+of the black kind of inertia when to lift the head from its sullen
+inclination to rest chin on chest was not to be endured. There was
+actually something sick in the eyes, little cataracts of gray cloud
+seeming to float across. She would sit hunched and looking out of them
+so long and so unseeingly that her very stare seemed to sleep.
+
+She had removed the stick or two that remained unsold to a little rear
+room high up in a large, damp-smelling lodging-house on West Twentieth
+Street, within view of a shipping-pier. There was a sign inserted in the
+lower front window:
+
+ROOMS. LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING.
+
+INQUIRE WITHIN.
+
+She would sit in that room, so heavy with its odor of mildew, her window
+closed against the long, sweetly warm days, hunched dumbly on the
+cot-edge and staring into the stripe and vine, stripe and vine of the
+wall-paper design, or lie back when the ache along her spine began to
+set in. There were occasional ventures to a corner bake-shop for raisin
+rolls and to the delicatessen next door for a quarter-pound of Bologna
+sausage sliced into slivers while she waited. She would sit on the
+cot-edge munching alternately from sliver to roll, gulping through a
+throat that was continually tight with wanting to cry, yet would not
+relax for that relief.
+
+There was little attempt for employment except when the twenty dollars
+left from the sale of effects and funeral expenses began to dwindle. She
+would wake up nights, sweaty with the nightmare that her room was some
+far-off ward for incorrigibles and that one of the strange, veiny-nosed
+inmates was filching her small leather bag from beneath her pillow.
+
+When her little roll had flattened finally down to five one-dollar bills
+she took to daily and conscientiously buying morning papers and scanning
+want-advertisements as she stood at the news-stand, answering first
+those that were within walking-distance.
+
+She would make a five-block détour of the Criterion rather than pass
+the nearer to it.
+
+Once, returning after a fruitless tour of the smaller department stores,
+and borne along by the six-o'clock tide of Sixth Avenue, her heart
+leaped up at sight of Miss Cora Kinealy, homeward bound on her smart
+tall heels that clicked, arm in arm with Mabel Runyan of the notions.
+Standing there with her folded newspaper hugged to her and the small
+hand-bag dangling, Stella Schump gazed after.
+
+It was not only the lack of references or even of experience that
+conspired against her every effort at employment. It was the lack
+of luster to the eye, an absolutely new tendency to tiptoe, a
+furtive lookout over her shoulder, a halting tongue, that, upon
+the slightest questioning, would stutter for words. Where there were
+application-blanks to be filled in she would pore inkily over them and,
+after a while, slyly crunch hers up in her hand and steal out. She was
+still pinkly and prettily clean, and her hair with its shining mat of
+plaits, high of gloss, but one Saturday half-holiday, rather than break
+into her last bill, she ate a three-cent frankfurter-sausage sandwich
+from off a not quite immaculate push-cart, leaning forward as she bit
+into it to save herself from the ooze of mustard. Again she had the
+sense of Cora Kinealy hurrying along the opposite side of the street on
+the tall heels that clicked. She let fall the bun into the gutter and
+stood there trembling.
+
+She obtained, one later afternoon, at the instance of a window-card, the
+swabbing of the tiled floor of an automobile show-room. She left before
+her first hour was completed, crying, her finger-tips stinging, two
+nails broken.
+
+Finally came that chimera of an hour when she laid down her last coin
+for the raisin rolls. She ate them on the cot-edge. And then, because
+her weekly dollar-and-twenty-five-cent room rent fell due that evening,
+she wrapped two fresh and self-laundered waists, some white but unlacy
+underwear, a mound of window-dried handkerchiefs, a little knitted
+shoulder-shawl so long worn by her mother, her tooth-brush and tube of
+paste, and all her sundry little articles no less indispensable, into a
+white-paper package. There were left a short woolen petticoat, too
+cumbersome to include, the small wooden rocker and lamp with the china
+shade which she had rather unexplainably held out from the dealer's
+inventory. She closed the door softly on them one evening and, parcel in
+hand, tiptoed down the stonily cold halls and out into a street of long,
+thin, high-stooped houses. Outside in the May evening it was as black,
+as softly deep, as plushy as a pansy. She walked swiftly into it as if
+with destination. But after five or six of the long cross-town blocks
+her feet began to lag. She stood for a protracted moment outside a
+drug-store window, watching the mechanical process of a pasteboard man
+stropping his razor; loitered to read the violent three-sheet outside a
+Third Avenue cinematograph. In the aura of white light a figure in a
+sweater and cap nudged up to her.
+
+"Lonesome?"
+
+She moved on.
+
+In Stuyvesant Square were a first few harbingers of summer scattered
+here and there--couples forcing the gladsome season of the dim park
+bench; solitary brooders who can sit so long, so droop-shouldered, and
+so deeply in silence. On one of these benches, beside a slim,
+scant-skirted, light-spatted silhouette, Stella Schump sat finally down.
+It was ten o'clock. There was a sense of panic, which she felt mostly at
+her throat, rising in her. Then she would force herself into a state of
+quiet, hand on bundle, nictitating, as it were--eyes opening, eyes
+closing. The figure beside her slid over a bit, spreading the tiny width
+of skirt as if to reserve the space between them.
+
+"Workin'?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Lord!" she said, indicating Second Avenue with a nod. "The lane's like
+a morgue to-night."
+
+"Cold, ain't it?" said Stella Schump, shivering with night damp.
+
+A figure with a tilted derby came sauntering toward them.
+
+"Lay off my territory. I seen him first."
+
+"Oh--sure--yes--all right."
+
+The place in between them was filled then, the tilted derby well forward
+and revealing a rear bulge of head. There was an indeterminate moment of
+silence broken by the slim-skirted silhouette.
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+Straightening, Miss Schump could hear more.
+
+"No place. Where you goin'?"
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Buy you a drink?"
+
+In the shaft of arc-light Miss Schump could see the little face framed
+in the wan curls lift and crinkle the nose to smile.
+
+"Come on."
+
+She watched them recede down the narrow asphalt of the parkway. At
+eleven o'clock, to lessen her stiffening of joints, she walked twice the
+circumference of the fenced-in inclosure, finally sitting again, this
+time beneath a gaunt oleander that was heavy with bud.
+
+"O God!" she kept repeating, her stress growing. "O God! God! God!"
+
+With the lateness, footfalls were growing more and more audible, the
+gong of a street-car sounding out three blocks down.
+
+"O my God!" And then in rapid succession, closing her eyes and digging
+her finger-nails into her palms: "Mamma! Mamma! Mamma!"
+
+She wanted and wanted to cry, but her throat would not let her, and so
+she sat and sat.
+
+There were still occasional figures moving through the little lanes and
+a couple or two deep in the obscurity of benches. After another while,
+at the remote end of her own bench, a figure sat down, lighting a pipe.
+She watched him pu-pu-pup. At half after eleven she slid along
+the bench.
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+He turned to look down.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Where you goin'?"
+
+"No place."
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Pu-pu-pup."
+
+"I am."
+
+"Pu-pu-pup."
+
+She leaned around, trying to bring her face to front his and to lift her
+nose to a little wrinkly smile.
+
+"Aw, you!"
+
+"Go home and go to bed," he said. "A nice-appearin' girl like you ought
+to be ashamed."
+
+"I--ain't."
+
+"Run along."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You're barkin' up the wrong tree."
+
+She fell silent. A chill raced through her.
+
+"O God!" she began, under her breath. "O God! God!" Then: "Mamma! Mamma!
+Mamma!"
+
+"You _are_ cold," he said, reaching out to pinch her jacket sleeve.
+"That's a warm coat. Where do you live?"
+
+"Lemme alone," she said, staring out before her as if she were seeing
+the stripe and vine, stripe and vine.
+
+"You got the shivers," he said. "Better go home."
+
+"Lemme alone."
+
+"Ain't there no way you girls can learn to behave yourselves?
+Here"--digging down into his pocket--"here."
+
+"No."
+
+"Where you live?"
+
+"I dunno. I dunno."
+
+"You surely know where you live."
+
+She looked up at him in one of the rare moments of opening wide her
+eyes.
+
+"I tell you I dunno."
+
+"What's in there?"
+
+"My--my clothes."
+
+"Let's see."
+
+She plucked at the knot, drawing back for him to lean to see the top
+layer of neatly folded waist.
+
+"Don't," she said, withdrawing it quickly from his touch.
+
+"Why," he said, "you poor little kid! What's got you into this mess?"
+
+At that in his voice, such a quick, a thick, a hot layer of tears sprang
+to her eyes that she could not relax her throat for words.
+
+"What got you in?"
+
+"I--I--I dunno."
+
+"Aw, now, yes, you do know. Try to think--take your time--what got you
+in?"
+
+"I--I--can't--"
+
+"Yes, you can. Go on; I ain't lookin' at you."
+
+He turned off to an angle.
+
+Her first sob burst from her, tearing her throat and ending in a tremolo
+of moans in her throat.
+
+"Now, now," he said, still in profile; "that won't do. Not for a
+sensible little girl like you. Easy--easy--take your time--"
+
+"You see, mister--you see, it was my--my mamma--my beautiful, darling
+mamma--O God!--"
+
+"Yes, yes; it was your mamma--and then what?"
+
+"It was my mamma, my beautiful, darling mamma! What'll I do, mister? I
+can't make it up to her. No way--nohow. She's gone--she's gone--"
+
+"Easy--easy--try to keep easy."
+
+"I used to kiss her hands when they was embroiderin'. I used to grease
+'em for her all night when she screamed with the pain of 'em. I used to
+scream at night, too, when I was doin' my time--her there waitin'--she
+died alone--there waitin'--the letter they gave me the stamp for--I--I
+was crazy with scare when I wrote it--O God!--mamma--mamma--mamma!"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! 'Sh-h-h! Try to keep easy."
+
+"It was this way--O God, how was it?--it was this way--you see, me and
+my mamma and sometimes a friend--Cora Jones--no--no--no--Cora
+Kinealy--we used to sit in the lamplight--no--no--first, I was in the
+shoes--the children's shoes--they used to come in, little kiddies with
+their toes all kicked out wantin' new shoes--cute little baby-shoes that
+I loved to try on 'em. My friend--Cora--my friend--O God!--"
+
+"Now, now, like a good girl--go on."
+
+"My friend Cora--my darling little mamma--I never knew nothing about
+anything except me and my mamma, we--it worried her that I didn't have
+it like--like other girls--I--you see--you see, mister?"
+
+"Yes, yes, I see."
+
+Her voice, so jerked up with sobs, quieted down to a drone finally, to a
+low drone that talked on and on through an hour, through two. There were
+large, shining beads of tears flowing constantly from her cheeks, but
+she wiped at them unceasingly with her handkerchief and talked evenly
+through a new ease in her throat.
+
+"She died, mister," she ended up finally, turning her salt-bitten eyes
+full upon him; "she died of that letter written when I was so full of a
+scared craziness from bein' in--in that place--that terrible, terrible
+place--but she didn't die believin' me bad. I never seen her alive again
+to hear it from her, but there in her--her little coffin I--I seen it in
+her little face, all sunk, she didn't believe it--she didn't die
+thinkin' me bad. Mister, did she? Did she?"
+
+He did not answer, sitting there, drooped forward for so long that
+finally she put out her hand to touch his.
+
+"Did she?"
+
+He did not turn his face, but reached around, inclosing her wrist,
+pressing it, gripping it.
+
+"Did she, mister?"
+
+"No, no," he said, finally, "no, Stella; she didn't die thinkin' you
+bad."
+
+She sighed out, eyes closing, and her quivering lips falling quiet.
+
+"Do you think I'm bad, mister?"
+
+"No, Stella! No! No! No! My God, no!"
+
+"I'm cold."
+
+"Come."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I'm goin' to take you across the street there to the Young Women's
+Shelter Home for to-night. Just across there. See the sign? Don't be
+afraid, Stella. Please don't be afraid."
+
+"I ain't."
+
+He retied the white-paper package, tucking it up under one arm.
+
+"Come, Stella."
+
+She rose, swaying for the merest second. His arm shot out.
+
+"I'm all right," she said, steadying herself, smilingly, shamefacedly,
+but relaxing gratefully enough to the flung support.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Stella," he said. "I'm here. I'm here."
+
+His forearm where the cuff had ridden up bore a scar, as if molten lead
+had run a fiery, a dagger-shaped, an excoriating course.
+
+
+
+
+WHITE GOODS
+
+On a slope a white sprinkling of wood anemones lay spread like a patch
+of linen bleaching in the sun. From a valley a lark cut a swift diagonal
+upward with a coloratura burst of song. A stream slipped its ice and
+took up its murmur where it had left off. A truant squelched his toes in
+the warm mud and let it ooze luxuriantly over and between them.
+
+A mole stirred in its hole, and because spring will find a way, even
+down in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store, which is far below
+the level of the mole, Sadie Barnet, who had never seen a wood anemone
+and never sniffed of thaw or the wet wild smell of violets, felt the
+blood rise in her veins like sap, and across the aisle behind the
+white-goods counter Max Meltzer writhed in his woolens, and Sadie
+Barnet, presiding over a bin of specially priced mill-ends out mid-aisle
+between the white goods and the muslin underwear, leaned toward him, and
+her smile was as vivid as her lips.
+
+"Say, Max, guess why I think you're like a rubber band."
+
+Classic Delphi was never more ready with ambiguous retort.
+
+Behind a stack of Joy-of-the-Loom bed-sheets, Max Meltzer groped for
+oracular divination, and his heart-beats fluttered in his voice.
+
+"Like a rubber band?"
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Give up."
+
+"Aw, give a guess."
+
+"Well, I don't know, Miss Sadie, unless--unless it's because I'm stuck
+on you."
+
+Do not, ascetic reader, gag at the unsocratic plane. True, Max Meltzer
+had neither the grain nor the leisure of a sophist, a capacity for
+tenses or an appreciation of Kant. He had never built a bridge, led a
+Bible class, or attempted the first inch of the five-foot bookshelf. But
+on a two-figure salary he subscribed an annual donation to a
+skin-and-cancer hospital, wore non-reversible collars, and maintained a
+smile that turned upward like the corners of a cycle moon. Remember,
+then, ascetic reader, that a rich man once kicked a leper; Kant's own
+heart, that it might turn the world's heart outward, burst of pain; and
+in the granite cañon of Wall Street, one smile in every three-score and
+ten turns upward.
+
+Sadie Barnet met Max Meltzer's cycle-moon smile with the blazing eyes of
+scorn, and her lips, quivering to a smile, met in a straight line that
+almost ironed out the curves.
+
+"'Cause you're stuck on me! That's a swell guess. Gee! you're as funny
+as a sob, you are."
+
+The words scuttered from her lips like sharp hailstones and she glanced
+at him sidewise over a hump of uplifted shoulder and down the length of
+one akimbo arm.
+
+"'Cause you're stuck on me! Huh!"
+
+Max Meltzer leaned across a counter display of fringed breakfast
+napkins.
+
+"Ain't that a good reason, Miss Sadie? It's a true one."
+
+"You're one swell little guesser, you are _not_. You couldn't get inside
+a riddle with a can-opener. 'Cause you're stuck on me! Gee!"
+
+"Well, I am."
+
+"I didn't ask you why you was like a bottle of glue. I asked you why you
+was like a rubber band."
+
+"Aw, I give up, Miss Sadie."
+
+"'Cause you're so stretchy, see? 'Cause you're so stretchy you'll yawn
+your arm off if you don't watch it."
+
+Max Meltzer collapsed in an attitude of mock prostration against a
+stock-shelf.
+
+"Gee! that must have been cracked before the first nut."
+
+"Smarty!"
+
+Across the specially priced mill-ends she flashed the full line of her
+teeth, and with an intensity his features ill concealed he noted how
+sweet her throat as it arched.
+
+"It's the spring fever gets inside of me and makes me so stretchy, Miss
+Sadie. It's a good thing trade is slow down here in the basement to-day,
+because it's the same with me every year; the Saturday before
+spring-opening week I just get to feeling like all outdoors."
+
+"Wait till you see me with a new red-satin bow stuck on my last
+summer's shape. Dee Dee's got to lend me the price for two yards of
+three-inch red-satin ribbon for my spring opening."
+
+His breath rose in his throat.
+
+"I bet you look swell in red, Miss Sadie. But a girl like you looks
+swell in anything."
+
+"Red's my color. Dee Dee says my mamma was a gay one, too, when it came
+to color. Had to have a red bow pinned somewheres around all the months
+she was in bed and--and up to the very night she died. Gimme red every
+time. Dee Dee's the one that's always kicking against red; she says I
+got too flashy taste."
+
+"Say, if she keeps bossing and bossing at you, what do you keep on
+living with her for?"
+
+"Wouldn't you live with your own mother's sister if she raised you from
+a kid? What am I going to do, put her in cold storage, now that her eyes
+are going back on her? Up in the ribbons she can't hardly keep her
+colors graduated no more, that's how blind she's getting. Only yesterday
+a dame brought back some lavender ribbon and wiped up the whole
+department with Dee Dee for putting it over on her as blue. What am I
+going to do?"
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, I didn't know that she was your aunt and that her
+eyes was bad. I've seen you two together a lot and noticed her thick
+lenses, but I just didn't think."
+
+"Well, now I'm telling you."
+
+"I just thought she was some old girl up in the ribbons you was living
+with for company. Honest, I didn't know she had bad eyes. Gee!"
+
+"No, they ain't bad. Only she's so blind she reads her paper upside down
+and gets sore if you tell her about it."
+
+"And me thinking she was nothing but a near-sighted old grouch with a
+name like a sparrow."
+
+Miss Barnet laughed with an upward trill.
+
+"Dee Dee ain't her real name. When I was a kid and she took me to raise,
+that's the way I used to pronounce Aunt Edith. Gee! you don't think Dee
+Dee was the name they sprinkled on her when they christened her,
+did you?"
+
+Max Meltzer leaned to the breath of her laughter as if he would fill his
+lungs with it.
+
+"Gee! but you're a cute little lady when you laugh like that."
+
+"Say, and ain't you the freshie! Just because you're going to be
+promoted to buyer for your department won't get your picture in the
+Sunday supplement. No white-goods buyer I know of ever had to build
+white marble libraries or present a bread-line to the city to get rid of
+his pin-money."
+
+"I bet you was a cute little black-eyed, red-cheeked little youngster,
+alrighty."
+
+"I wasn't so worse. Like I tell Dee Dee, the way she's held me down and
+indoors evenings, it's a wonder a kid like me grew up with any pep
+at all."
+
+"Poor little lady!"
+
+"It's like Dee Dee says, though. I never was cut out for life behind the
+counter. Gee! I'd soak my pillow in gasolene every night in the week if
+it would make me dream I'm automobiling."
+
+"Poor little lady!"
+
+"Say, ain't it hot? With the Opening on Monday, they better get the fans
+working. Last year three girls keeled. Honest, sometimes I think I'd
+rather spend the summer under the daisies out on the hill than down here
+in this basement."
+
+"Don't I wish I had an auto to take you spinning in to-night."
+
+"You ought to see the flier a friend of mine has got. A Mercury Six with
+a limousine top like a grand-opera box."
+
+"Your--your--friend?"
+
+"Yes. He's that slick-looking, little fat fellow that's a cousin to
+Mamie Grant up in the ready-to-wears. He was down here talking to me the
+other day."
+
+"I seen him."
+
+"Gee! you ought to feel yourself in his Mercury Six. 'Lemme die,' I says
+to him the last time I was in it. 'Just lemme close my eyes right in
+here and die happy,' I says, cuddled up in the red-leather seat with a
+cornucopia of daffodils tickling my nose and a street-car full of
+strap-hangers riding along-side of us."
+
+"I--I guess if you got swell friends like that, a boat excursion down
+the river 'ain't got much of a sound for you."
+
+"He says he's got a launch in summer--"
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, I--I just been trying for the better part of two
+weeks to ask permission if I could come and call on you some evening,
+Miss Sadie, but--"
+
+"Whoops! ain't he the daredevil!"
+
+"The first boat of the season, Miss Sadie, a swell new one they call the
+_White Gull_, goes down to Coney to-night, and, it being real
+springtime, and you feeling kind of full of it, I thought maybe, it
+being the first boat of the season, maybe you would take a river ride
+this grand April night, Miss Sadie."
+
+Her glance slanted toward him, full of quirks.
+
+"My aunt Dee Dee, Mr. Meltzer, she's right strict with me. She don't
+think I ought to keep company with any boys that don't come to see me
+first at my house."
+
+"I know it, Miss Sadie; that's the right way to do it, but I think I can
+get around her all right. Wasn't she down here in the basement the day I
+first heard about my promotion, and didn't she give me the glad hand and
+seem right friendly to me? I can get around her all right, Miss Sadie. I
+can always tell if a person likes me or not."
+
+"Anyways, if her eyes ain't too bad, Mr. Meltzer, I got a date with my
+friend if his car is out of the shop from having the limousine top taken
+off. We--we're going for a little spin."
+
+A quick red belied her insouciance and she made a little foray into the
+bin of mill-ends.
+
+"Gee! if I've made three sales this livelong day I don't know nothing
+about two of them."
+
+Max Meltzer met her dancing gaze, pinioning it with his own quiet eyes.
+
+"You're right to pick out the lucky fellows who can buy a good time. A
+little girl like you ought to have every enjoyment there is. If I could
+give it to you, do you think I would let the other fellows beat me to
+it? The best ain't none too good for a little lady like you."
+
+"Aw, Mr. Meltzer!" Her bosom filled and waned. "Aw, Mr. Meltzer!"
+
+"I mean it."
+
+An electric bell grilled through his words. Miss Barnet sprang reflexly
+from the harness of an eight-hour day.
+
+"Aw, looka, and I wanted to sneak up before closing and get Dee Dee to
+snip me two yards of red satin, and she won't cut an inch after the
+bell. Ain't that luck for you? Ain't that luck?"
+
+Her lips drew to a pout.
+
+"Lemme get it for you, Miss Sadie. I know a girl up in the ribbons--"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Meltzer. I--I got to charge it to Dee Dee, and, anyways,
+she gets mad like anything if I keep her waiting. I gotta go. 'Night,
+Mr. Meltzer! 'Night!"
+
+She was off through the maze of the emptying store, in the very act of
+pinning on her little hat with its jaunty imitation fur pompon, and he
+breathed in as she passed, as if of the perfume of her personality.
+
+At the ribbon counter on the main floor the last of a streamlet of
+outgoing women detached herself from the file as Miss Barnet ascended
+the staircase.
+
+"Hurry up, Sadie."
+
+"Dee Dee! How'd you girls up here get on your duds so soon? I thought
+maybe if I'd hurry upstairs you--you'd find time to cut me a two-yard
+piece of three-inch red satin for my hat, Dee Dee--to-morrow being
+Sunday. Two yards, Dee Dee, and that'll make two-sixty-nine I owe you.
+Aw, Dee Dee, it won't take a minute, to-morrow Sunday and all! Aw,
+Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Barnet slid ingratiating fingers into the curve of the older
+woman's arm; her voice was smooth as salve.
+
+"Aw, Dee Dee, who ever heard of wearing fur on a hat in April? I gotta
+stick a red bow on my last summer's sailor, Dee Dee."
+
+Miss Edith Worte stiffened so that the muscles sprang out in the crook
+of her arm and the cords in her long, yellowing neck. Years had dried on
+her face, leaving ravages, and through her high-power spectacles her
+pale eyes might have been staring through film and straining to see.
+
+"Please, Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Barnet held backward, a little singsong note of appeal running
+through her voice.
+
+Miss Worte jerked forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of
+cold dish-water, showed through it. Dusk in the city comes sadly,
+crowding into narrow streets and riddled with an immediate quick-shot of
+electric bulbs.
+
+"'Ain't you got no sense a-tall? 'Ain't you got no sense in that curly
+head of yourn but ruination notions?"
+
+"Aw, Dee Dee!"
+
+They were in the flood tide which bursts through the dam at six o'clock
+like a human torrent flooding the streets, then spreading, thinning, and
+finally seeping into homes, hall bedrooms, and Harlem flats.
+
+Miss Edith Worte turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and
+against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts around
+her thin legs.
+
+"Watch out, Dee Dee! Step down; there's a curb."
+
+"I don't need you. It's lots you care if I go blind on the spot."
+
+"Dee Dee!"
+
+"God! if I didn't have nothing to worry me but red ribbons! I told the
+doctor to-day while he was putting the drops in my eyes, that if he'd
+let me go blind I--I--"
+
+"Now, now, Dee Dee! Ain't you seeing better these last few days?"
+
+"If you had heard what the doctor told me to-day when he put the drops
+in my eyes you'd have something to think about besides red ribbon,
+alrighty."
+
+"I forgot, Dee Dee, to-day was your eye-doctor day. He's always scarin'
+you up. Just don't pay no attention. I forgot it was your day."
+
+"Sure you forgot. But you won't forget if I wake up alone in the dark
+some day."
+
+"Dee Dee!"
+
+"You won't forget then. You won't forget to nag me even then for duds to
+go automobiling with fly men that can't bring you no good."
+
+"Dee Dee, I 'ain't been but one night this week. I been saving up all
+my nights for--for to-night."
+
+"To-night. Say, I can't keep you from going to the devil on skates if--"
+
+"It's only the second time this week, Dee Dee, and I--I promised. He'll
+have the limousine top off to-night--and feel, it is just like summer. A
+girl's gotta have a little something once in a while."
+
+"What do I gotta have? What do I gotta have but slave and work?"
+
+"It's different with you, Dee Dee. You're older even than my mamma was,
+and didn't you say when you and her was girls together there wasn't a
+livelier two sisters? Now didn't you, Dee Dee?"
+
+"In a respectable way, yes. But there wasn't the oily-mouthed,
+bald-headed divorced man alive, with little rat eyes and ugly lips, who
+could have took me or your mamma out auto-riding before or after dark.
+We was working-girls, too, but there wasn't a man didn't take off his
+hat to us, even if he was bald-headed and it was twenty below zero."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Yes, 'aw'! You keep running around with the kind of men that don't look
+at a girl unless she's served up with rum-sauce and see where it lands
+you. Just keep running if you want to, but my money don't buy you no red
+ribbons to help to drive you to the devil!"
+
+"The way you keep fussing at me, when I don't even go to dances like the
+other girls! I--sometimes I just wish I was dead. The way I got to
+watch the clock like it was a taximeter the whole time I'm out
+anywheres. It's the limit. Even Max Meltzer gimme the laugh to-day."
+
+"You'd never hear me say watch the clock if you'd keep company with a
+boy like Max Meltzer. A straight, clean boy with honest intentions by a
+girl lookin' right out of his face. You let a boy like Max Meltzer begin
+to keep steady with you and see what I say. You don't see no yellow
+streak in his face; he's as white as the goods he sells."
+
+"I know. I know. You think now because he's going to be made buyer for
+the white goods in September he's the whole show. Gee! nowadays that
+ain't so muchy much for a fellow to be."
+
+"No, I think the kind of fellows that fresh Mamie Grant gets you
+acquainted with are muchy much. I'm strong for the old rat-eyed sports
+like Jerry Beck, that 'ain't got a honest thought in his head. I bet he
+gives you the creeps, too, only you're the kind of a girl, God help you,
+that's so crazy for luxury you could forget the devil had horns if he
+hid 'em under a automobile cap."
+
+"Sure I am. I 'ain't seen nothing but slaving and drudging and pinching
+all my life, while other girls are strutting the Avenue in their furs
+and sleeping mornings as long as they want under eider-down quilts.
+Sure, when a man like Jerry Beck comes along with a carriage-check
+instead of a Subway-ticket I can thaw up to him like a water-ice, and I
+ain't ashamed of it, neither."
+
+They turned into a narrow aisle of street lined with unbroken rows of
+steep, narrow-faced houses. Miss Worte withdrew her arm sharply and
+plunged ahead, her lips wry and on the verge of tremoling.
+
+"When a girl gets twenty, like you, it ain't none of my put-in no more.
+Only I hope to God your mother up there is witness that if ever a woman
+slaved to keep a girl straight and done her duty by her it was me. That
+man 'ain't got no good intentions by--"
+
+"Oh, ain't you--ain't you a mean-thinking thing, ain't you? What kind of
+a girl do you think I am? If he didn't have the right intentions by me
+do you think--"
+
+"Oh, I guess he'll marry you if he can't get you no other way. Them kind
+always do if they can't help themselves. A divorced old guy like him,
+with a couple of kids and his mean little eyes, knows he's got to pay up
+if he wants a young girl like you. Oh, I--Ouch--oh--oh!"
+
+"Dee Dee, take my arm. That was only an ashcan you bumped into. It's the
+drops he puts in your eyes makes 'em so bad to-night, I guess. Go on,
+take my arm, Dee Dee. Here we are home. Lemme lead you up-stairs. It's
+nothing but the drops, Dee Dee."
+
+They turned in and up and through a foggy length of long hallway. Spring
+had not entered here. At the top of a second flight of stairs a slavey
+sat back on her heels and twisted a dribble of gray water from her cloth
+into her bucket. At the last and third landing an empty coal-scuttle
+stood just outside a door as if nosing for entrance.
+
+"Watch out, Dee Dee, the scuttle. Lemme go in first. Gee! it's cold
+indoors and warm out, ain't it? Wait till I light up. There!"
+
+"Lemme alone. I can see."
+
+An immemorial federation of landladies has combined against Hestia to
+preserve the musty traditions of the furnished room. Love in a cottage
+is fostered by subdivision promoters and practised by commuters on a
+five-hundred-dollars-down, monthly-payment basis. Marble halls have been
+celebrated in song, but the furnished room we have with us always at
+three cents per agate line.
+
+You with your feet on your library fender, stupefied with contentment
+and your soles scorching, your heart is not black; it is only fat. How
+can it know the lean formality of the furnished room? Your little
+stenographer, who must wear a smile and fluted collars on eight dollars
+a week, knows it; the book agent at your door, who earns eighteen cents
+on each Life of Lincoln, knows it. Chambermaids know it when they knock
+thrice and only the faint and nauseous fumes of escaping gas answer them
+through the plugged keyhole. Coroners know it.
+
+Sadie Barnet and Edith Worte knew it, too, and put out a hand here and
+there to allay it. A comforting spread of gay chintz covered the sag in
+their white iron bed; a photograph or two stuck upright between the
+dresser mirror and its frame, and tacked full flare against the wall was
+a Japanese fan, autographed many times over with the gay personnel of
+the Titanic Store's annual picnic.
+
+"Gee! Dee Dee, six-twenty already! I got to hurry. Unhook me while I
+sew in this ruching."
+
+"Going for supper?"
+
+"Yeh. He invited me. This is cottage-pudding night; tell old lady Finch
+when I ain't home for supper you got two desserts coming to you."
+
+"I don't want no supper."
+
+"Aw, now, Dee Dee!"
+
+Miss Worte dropped her dark cape from her shoulders, hung it with her
+hat on a door peg, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
+
+"God! my feet!"
+
+"Soak 'em."
+
+Miss Barnet peeled off her shirt-waist. Her bosom, strong and _flat_ as
+a boy's, rose white from her cheaply dainty under-bodice; at her
+shoulders the flesh began to deepen, and her arms were round and full
+of curves.
+
+"Here, Dee Dee, I'm so nervous when I hurry. You sew in this ruche; you
+got time before the supper-bell. See, right along the edge like that."
+
+Miss Worte aimed for the eye of the needle, moistening the end of the
+thread with her tongue and her fluttering fingers close to her eyes.
+
+"God! I--I just 'ain't got the eyes no more. I can't see, Sadie; I can't
+find the needle."
+
+Sadie Barnet paused in the act of brushing out the cloud of her dark
+hair, and with a strong young gesture ran the thread through the needle,
+knotting its end with a quirk of thumb and forefinger.
+
+"It's the drops, Dee Dee, and this gaslight, all blurry from the
+curling-iron in the flame, makes you see bad."
+
+Miss Worte nodded and closed her eyes as if she would press back the
+tears and let them drip inward.
+
+"Yeh, I know. I know."
+
+"Sure! Here, lemme do it, Dee Dee. I won't stay out late, dearie, if
+your eyes are bad. We're only going out for a little spin."
+
+Miss Worte lay back on the chintz bedspread and turned her face to the
+wall.
+
+"I should worry if you come home or if you don't--all the comfort you
+are to me."
+
+"You say that to me many more times and you watch and see what I do; you
+watch and see."
+
+"The sooner the better."
+
+In the act of fluting the soft ruche about her neck, so that her fresh
+little face rose like a bud from its calyx, Miss Barnet turned to the
+full length of back which faced her from the bed.
+
+"That's just the way I feel about it--the sooner the better."
+
+"Then we think alike."
+
+"You 'ain't been such a holy saint to me that I got to pay up to you for
+it all my life."
+
+"That's the thanks I get."
+
+"You only raised me because you had to. I been working for my own living
+ever since I was so little I had to He to the inspectors about my age."
+
+"Except what you begged out of my wages."
+
+"I been as much to you as you been to me and--and I don't have to stand
+this no longer. Sure I can get out and--and the sooner the better. I'm
+sick of getting down on my knees to you every time I wanna squeeze a
+little good time out of life. I'm tired paying up for the few dollars
+you gimme out of your envelop. If I had any sense I--I wouldn't never
+take it from you, nohow, the way you throw it up to me all the time. The
+sooner the better is what I say, too; the sooner the better."
+
+"That's the thanks I get; that's the--"
+
+"Aw, I know all that line of talk by heart, so you don't need to ram it
+down me. You gotta quit insinuating about my ways to me. I'm as straight
+as you are and--"
+
+"You--you--take off that ivory-hand breast-pin; that ain't yours."
+
+"Sure I'll take it off, and this ruche you gimme the money to buy, and
+this red bracelet you gimme, and--and every old thing you ever gimme.
+Sure I'll take 'em all off. I wish I could take off these gray-top shoes
+you paid a dollar toward, and I would, too, if I didn't have to go
+barefoot. It's the last time I borrow from--"
+
+"Aw, you commenced that line of talk when you was ten."
+
+"I mean it."
+
+"Well, if you do, take off them gloves that I bought for myself and you
+begged right off my hands. Just take 'em off and go barehanded with your
+little-headed friend; maybe he can buy--"
+
+"You--Oh, I--I wish I was dead! I--I'll go barehanded to a snowball
+feast rather than wear your duds. There's your old gloves--there!"
+
+Tears were streaming and leaving their ravages on the smooth surface of
+her cheeks.
+
+"I just wish I--I was dead."
+
+"Aw, no, you don't! There's him now, with a horn on his auto that makes
+a noise like the devil yelling! There's your little rat-eyed, low-lived
+fellow, now. You don't wish you was dead now, do you? Go to him and his
+two divorces and his little roundhead. That's where you belong; that's
+where girls on the road to the devil belong--with them kind. There he is
+now, waiting to ride you to the devil. He don't need to honk-honk so
+loud; he knows you're ready and waiting for him."
+
+Miss Barnet fastened on her little hat with fingers that fumbled.
+
+"Gimme--the key."
+
+"Aw, no, you don't. When you come home tonight you knock; no more
+tiptoe, night-key business like last time. I knew you was lying to me
+about the clock."
+
+"You gimme that key. I don't want you to have to get up, with all your
+kicking, to open the door for me. You gimme the key."
+
+"If you wanna get in this room when you come home to-night, you knock
+like any self-respecting girl ain't afraid to do."
+
+"You--oh--you!" With a shivering intake of breath Miss Barnet flung wide
+the door, slamming it after her until the windows and the blue-glass
+vase on the mantelpiece and Miss Worte, stretched full length on the
+bed, shivered.
+
+Two flights down she flung open the front door. There came from the
+curb the bleat of a siren, wild for speed.
+
+Stars had come out, a fine powdering of them, and the moist evening
+atmosphere was sweet, even heavy. She stood for a moment in the
+embrasure of the door, scenting.
+
+"Do I need my heavy coat, Jerry?"
+
+The dim figure in the tonneau, with his arms flung out their length
+across the back of the seat, moved from the center to the side.
+
+"No, you don't. Hurry up! I'll keep you warm if you need a coat. Climb
+in here right next to me, Peachy. Gimme that robe from the front
+there, George.
+
+"Now didn't I say I was going to keep you warm? Quit your squirming,
+Touchy. I won't bite. Ready, George. Up to the Palisade Inn, and let out
+some miles there."
+
+"Gee! Jerry, you got the limousine top off. Ain't this swell for
+summer?"
+
+Mr. Jerome Beck settled back in the roomy embrasure of the seat and
+exhaled loudly, his shoulder and shoe touching hers.
+
+She settled herself out of their range.
+
+"Now, now, snuggle up a little, Peachy."
+
+She shifted back to her first position.
+
+"That's better."
+
+"Ain't it a swell night?"
+
+"Now we're comfy--eh?"
+
+They were nosing through a snarl of traffic and over streets wet and
+slimy with thaw. Men with overcoats flung over their arms side-stepped
+the snout of the car. Delicatessen and candy-shop doors stood wide
+open. Children shrilled in the grim shadows of thousand-tenant
+tenement-houses.
+
+"Well, Peachy, how are you? Peachy is just the name for you, eh? 'Cause
+I'd like to take a bite right out of you--eh, Peachy? How are you?"
+
+"Fine and--and dandy."
+
+"Look at me."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Look at me, I say, you pretty little peach, with them devilish black
+eyes of yours and them lips that's got a cherry on 'em."
+
+She met his gaze with an uncertain smile trembling on her lips.
+
+"Honest, you're the limit."
+
+"What's your eyes red for?"
+
+"They--they ain't."
+
+"Cryin'?"
+
+"Like fun."
+
+"You know what I'd do if I thought you'd been crying? I'd just kiss them
+tears right away."
+
+"Yes, you would _not_."
+
+"Little devil!"
+
+"Quit calling me that." But she colored as if his tribute had been a
+sheath of lilies.
+
+They veered a corner sharply, skidding on the wet asphalt and all but
+grazing the rear wheels of a recreant taxicab.
+
+"Gad, George! you black devil you, why don't you watch out what you're
+doing?"
+
+"But, suh, I--"
+
+"None of your black back-talk."
+
+"Jerry!" She was shivering, and a veil of tears formed over her hot,
+mortified eyes. "Gee! what are you made of? You seen he couldn't help it
+when that taxi turned into us so sudden."
+
+He relaxed against her. "Aw, did I scare the little Peachy? That's the
+way they gotta be handled. I ain't ready by a long shot to let a black
+devil spill my brains."
+
+"'Shh-h. He couldn't--"
+
+"Sure he could, if he watched. He's a bargain I picked up cheap,
+anyways, 'cause he's lame and can't hold down heavy work. And bargains
+don't always pay. But I'll break his black back for him if--Aw, now,
+now, did I scare the little peach? Gee! I couldn't do nothing but kill
+_you_ with kindness if you was driving for me. I'd just let you run me
+right off this road into the Hudson Ocean if you was driving for me."
+
+They were out toward the frayed edge of the city, where great stretches
+of sign-plastered vacant lots began to yawn between isolated patches of
+buildings and the river ran close enough alongside of them to reflect
+their leftward lights. She smiled, but as if her lips were bruised.
+
+"It ain't none of my put-in, but he couldn't help it, and I hate for you
+to yell at anybody like that, Jerry."
+
+"Aw, aw, did I scare the little Peachy? Watch me show the little Tootsie
+how nice I can be when I want to--Aw--aw!"
+
+"Quit."
+
+She blinked back the ever-recurring tears.
+
+"All tired out, too; all tired out. Wait till you see what I'm going to
+buy you to-night. A great big beefsteak with mushrooms as big as dollars
+and piping-hot German fried potatoes and onions. M-m-m-m! And more
+bubbles than you can wink your eye at. Aw--aw, such poor cold little
+hands, and no gloves for such cold little hands! Here, lemme warm 'em.
+Wouldn't I just love to wrap a little Peachy like you up in a great big
+fur coat and put them little cold hands in a great big muff and hang
+some great big headlight earrings in them little bittsie ears. Wouldn't
+I, though. M-m-m-m! Poor cold little hands!"
+
+Her wraith of a smile dissolved in a spurt of hot tears which flowed
+over her words.
+
+"Gee! Ain't I the nut to--to cry? I--I'll be all right in a minute."
+
+"I knew when I seen them red eyes the little Peachy wasn't up to snuff,
+and her cute little devilishlike ways. What's hurting you, Tootsie? Been
+bounced? You should worry. I'm going to steal you out of that cellar,
+anyways. Been bounced?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"The old hag 'ain't been making it hot for you, has she?"
+
+"Sh-she--"
+
+"Gad! that old hag gets my fur up. I had a mother-in-law once tried them
+tricks on me till I learned her they wouldn't work. But the old hag
+of yourn--"
+
+"It's her eyes; the doctor must have scared her up again to-day. When
+she gets scared like that about 'em she acts up so, honest, sometimes
+I--I just wish I was dead. She don't think a girl oughtta have no life."
+
+"Forget it. Just you wait. She's going to wake up some morning soon and
+find a little surprise party for herself. I know just how to handle an
+old bird like her."
+
+"Sometimes she's just so good to me, and then again, when she gets sore
+like to-night, and with her nagging and fussing at me, I don't care if
+she is my aunt, I just _hate_ her."
+
+"We're going to give her a little surprise party." Beneath the lap robe
+his hand slid toward hers. She could feel the movement of the arm that
+directed it and her own shrank away.
+
+"But ain't I the limit, Jerry, airing my troubles to you, like you was a
+policeman."
+
+"Now, now--"
+
+"Quit! Leggo my hand."
+
+They were spinning noiselessly along a road that curved for the moment
+away from the river into the velvet shadows of trees. He leaned forward
+suddenly, enveloping her.
+
+"I got it. Why don't you lemme kidnap you, kiddo?"
+
+"What--"
+
+"Lemme kidnap you to-night and give the old hag the surprise of her life
+when she wakes up and finds you stolen. I'm some little kidnapper when
+it comes to kidnapping, I am, kiddo. Say, wouldn't I like to take you
+riding all wrapped up in a fur coat with nothing but your cute little
+face sticking out."
+
+"Aw, you're just fooling me."
+
+"Fooling! Lemme prove it, to-night. Lemme kidnap you this very night.
+I--"
+
+She withdrew stiff-backed against his embrace.
+
+"Is--is that what you mean by--by kidnapping me?"
+
+"Sure. There ain't nothing I'd rather do. Are you on, Peaches? A
+sensible little queen like you knows which side her bread is buttered
+on. There ain't nothing I want more than to see you all bundled up in a
+fur coat with--headlights in your little bittsie pink ears."
+
+She sprang the width of the seat from him.
+
+"You--What kind of a girl do you think I am? O God! What kind of a girl
+does he think I am? Take me home--take me--What kind of a girl do you
+think I am?"
+
+He leaned toward her with a quick readjustment of tone.
+
+"Just what I said, Peachy. What I meant was I'd marry you to-night if we
+could get a license. I'd just kidnap you to-night if--if we could
+get one."
+
+"You--you didn't mean that."
+
+"Sure I did, Peachy. Say, with a little girl of my own I ain't one of
+them guys that you think I am. Ain't you ashamed of yourself,
+Peachy--now ain't you?"
+
+The color flowed back into her face and her lips parted.
+
+"Jerry--Only a girl like me's got to be careful--that was all I meant,
+Jerry. Jerry!"
+
+He scooped her in his short arms and kissed her lips, with her small
+face crumpled up against his shoulder, and she lay quiescent enough in
+his embrace. Wind sang in her ears as they rushed swiftly and surely
+along the oiled road, but the two small fists she pressed against his
+coat lapels did not relax.
+
+"Aw, now, Peachy, you mustn't treat a fellow cold no more! Ain't I going
+to marry you? Ain't I going to set you up right in my house out in
+Newton Heights? Ain't I going to give you a swell ten-room house? Ain't
+you going to live right in the house with my girl, and ain't she going
+to have you for a little stepmother?"
+
+"Jerry, the--the little girl. I wonder if she wants--"
+
+"Sure she does. Her mother gets her every other month. I'd let her go
+for good if you don't want her, except it would do her mother too much
+good. The courts give her to me every other month and I'll have her down
+to the last minute of the last hour or bust."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+"That's what I gotta keep up the house out there for. The court says I
+gotta give her a home, and that's why I want a little queen like you in
+it. Gad! Won't her mother throw a red-headed fit when she sees the
+little queen I picked! Gad!"
+
+"Oh, Jerry, her your first wife and all! Won't it seem funny my going in
+her house and--and living with her kid."
+
+"Funny nothing. Cloonan won't think it's funny when I tell her she's
+finished running my house for me. Funny nothing. To-morrow's Sunday and
+I'm going to take you out in the afternoon and show you the place, and
+Monday, instead of going to your bargain bin, we're going down for a
+license, and you kiss the old hag good-by for me, too. Eh, how's that
+for one day's work?"
+
+"Gee! and--and--Monday the spring opening and me not there! Jerry, I--I
+can't get over me being a lady in my own house. Me! Me that hates
+ugliness and ugly clothes and ugly living so. Me that hates street-cars
+and always even hated boat excursions 'cause they was poor folks'
+pleasures. Me a lady in my own house. Oh, Jerry!"
+
+She quivered in his arms and he kissed her again with his moist lips
+pressed flat against hers.
+
+"Ten rooms, Peachy--that's the way I do things."
+
+They were curving up a gravel way, and through the lacy foliage of
+spring lights gleamed, and there came the remoter strains of
+syncopated music.
+
+She sat up and brushed back her hair.
+
+"Is this the place?"
+
+"Right-o! Now for that steak smothered in mushrooms, and, gad! I could
+manage a sweetbread salad on the side if you asked me right hard."
+
+They drew up in the flood-light of the entrance.
+
+"'Ain't I told you not to open the door for me, George? I don't need no
+black hand reaching back here to turn the handle for me. That don't make
+up for bad driving. Black hands off."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+They alighted with an uncramping and unbending of limbs.
+
+"How'd some Lynnhavens taste to you for a starter, Peachy?"
+
+"Fine, whatever they are."
+
+A liveried attendant bowed them up the steps.
+
+A woman in blue velvet, her white arms bare to the shoulder and stars in
+her hair, paused in the doorway to drop her cloak. Her heavy perfume
+drifted out to meet them.
+
+Sadie Barnet's clutch of her companion's arm quickened and her thoughts
+ran forward.
+
+"Jerry--gee! wouldn't I look swell in--in a dress like that? Gee! Jerry,
+stars and all!"
+
+The cords in the muscles of his arm rose under her fingers.
+
+"Them ain't one-two-three-six to the duds I'm going to hang on you. I
+know her; she's an old-timer. Them duds ain't one-two-three-six."
+
+"Gee--Jerry!"
+
+In the heart of a silence as deep as a bottomless pool, with the black
+hours that tiptoe on the heels of midnight shrouding her like a nun's
+wimple, limbs trembling and her hands reluctant, Sadie Barnet knocked
+lightly at her door, once, twice, thrice, and between each rap her heart
+beat with twice its tempo against her breast.
+
+Then her stealthy hand turned the white china knob and released it so
+that it sprang backward with a click.
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"Me, Dee Dee."
+
+Her voice was swathed in a whisper.
+
+She could hear the plong of the bedspring, the patter of bare feet
+across the floor; feel the slight aperture of the opening door. She
+oozed through the slit.
+
+"All right, Dee Dee."
+
+"God! I--I must have been sound asleep. What time is it?"
+
+"It isn't late, Dee Dee."
+
+"Light the gas."
+
+"I--I can undress in the dark."
+
+"Light the gas."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Light it, I say."
+
+"It's lit, Dee Dee."
+
+The figure in the center of the room, in her high-necked, long-sleeved
+nightdress, her sparse hair drawn with unpleasant tension from her brow,
+her pale eyes wide, moved forward a step, one bare foot, calloused even
+across the instep, extended.
+
+"Lit?"
+
+"Dee Dee, what's the matter?"
+
+"Gimme--my glasses."
+
+She took them from Miss Barnet's trembling ringers and curved them about
+her ears.
+
+"Quit your nonsense now and light the gas. I ain't in no humor for
+foolin'. Quit waving that little spark in front of me. Light the gas. I
+ain't going to look at the clock. I'm done worrying about your
+carryings-on. I'm done. Light the gas, Sadie, there's a good girl.
+Light the gas."
+
+"Dee Dee! My God! Dee Dee, I--I tell you it's lit--big."
+
+"There's a good girl, Sadie. Don't fool your old aunt."
+
+"See, dearie, I ain't fooling. See, the gas-jet here beside the dresser.
+Look--I can't turn it no higher. Hear it sing and splutter. You ain't
+awake good yet, Dee Dee."
+
+Silence--the ear-splitting silence that all in its brief moment is
+crammed with years and years upon years. A cold gray wash seemed
+suddenly to flow over Miss Worte's face.
+
+"Put my finger next to the gas flame. You--you're lying to me to--to
+fool your old aunt. Lemme feel my finger get burnt."
+
+They moved, these two, across the floor, their blanched faces straining
+ahead. With the sudden sting of heat finally across her palm, reddening
+it, Miss Worte flung wide her arms and her head backward, and her voice
+tore out without restraint.
+
+"God! God! God!" And she fell to trembling so that her knees gave way
+under her and she crouched on the floor with her face bared to the
+ceiling, rocking herself back and forth, beating her fists against her
+flat breasts.
+
+"God! God! God!"
+
+"Dee Dee!--Dee Dee! my darling! my darling!"
+
+"O God! O God! O God!"
+
+"Dee Dee darling, it ain't nothing! A little too much strain, that's
+all. 'Shh-h-h! Lemme bathe them. 'Shh-h-h, my darling. Oh, my God!
+darling! 'Shh-h-h!"
+
+"Lemme go! Lemme go! He told me to-day it would come like this! Only he
+didn't say how soon. Not how soon. I'm done for, I tell you! I'm done!
+Kill me, Sadie; if you love me, kill me! He told me and I wouldn't
+believe it! Kill me, girl, and put me out of it! I can't breathe in the
+dark! I can't! I can't! I can't live in the dark with my eyes open! Kill
+me, girl, and put me out of it--kill me! Kill me!"
+
+"Dee Dee, my darling, ain't I right here with you? Didn't you always
+say, darling, when it came you--you'd face it?"
+
+Like St. Cecilia, who could not die, she crouched, and the curve of her
+back rose and fell.
+
+"O God! Oh--"
+
+"Dee Dee darling, try not to holler out so! Maybe it ain't for--for
+good. Aw, darling, keep your head down here next to me! Feel how close I
+am, Dee Dee, right here next to you. 'Shh-h-h! O God! Dee Dee darling,
+you'll kill yourself going on like that! Don't pull at your hair,
+darling--don't! Oh, my God, don't!"
+
+"I'm done! Kill me! Kill me! Don't make me live in the dark with my eyes
+open--don't! There's a good girl, Sadie. Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+From the room adjoining came a rattling at the barred door between.
+
+"Cut it, in there! This ain't no barroom. Go tell your D. T.'s to a
+policeman."
+
+They crouched closer and trembling.
+
+"'Shh-h-h! Dee Dee, darling, try to be easy and not raise the
+house--try!"
+
+Miss Worte lay back exhausted against Miss Barnet's engulfing arms. Her
+passion ebbed suddenly and her words came scant, incoherent, and full
+of breath.
+
+"No use. No use. He told me to-day he wouldn't operate. He told me. No,
+no, all the colors so pale--even the reds--so pale! Lavender and blue
+I--I just couldn't tell. I couldn't. So pale. Two yards she brought back
+next day, kicking at--Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
+
+'"Shh-h-h, darling! Don't take on so! Wait till morning and we'll get
+new drops from him. 'Shh-h-h! Maybe it's only strain."
+
+"I know. I'm in the dark for good, Sadie. Oh, my God! I'm in the dark!"
+
+Except that her face was withered, she was like Iphigenia praying for
+death.
+
+"Lemme die! Lemme die!"
+
+"'Shh-h-h--darling--That's it, rest quiet."
+
+Suddenly Miss Worte flung up one arm about Sadie Barnet's neck, pressing
+her head downward until their faces touched.
+
+"Dee Dee darling, you--you hurt."
+
+"You won't never leave me, Sadie, like you said you would? You won't
+leave me alone in the dark, Sadie?"
+
+"No, no, my darling; you know I won't, never, never."
+
+"You'll keep me with you always, promise me that, Sadie. Promise me
+_that_ on the curl of your mother's hair you wear in your locket.
+Promise me, little Sadie, you won't leave your aunt Dee Dee alone in
+the dark. My poor little girl, don't leave me alone in the dark. I can't
+see; Sadie, I can't see no more. Promise me, Sadie, promise me,
+promise me!"
+
+From Sadie Barnet's heart, weakening her like loss of blood, flowed her
+tears. She kissed the heart of Edith Worte where it beat like a clock
+beneath the high-necked nightdress; she made of her bosom a pillow of
+mercy and drew the head up to its warmth.
+
+"I--I promise, Dee Dee, on her curl of hair. Sure I promise. Always will
+I keep you with me, darling, always, always, so help me, always."
+
+Along the road to Newton Heights Spring and her firstlings crept out
+tenderly. Even close up to the rim of the oiled highway itself, an
+occasional colony of wood violets dared to show their heads for the
+brief moment before they suffocated. The threat of rain still lay on the
+air, but the Sunday rank and file of motors threw back tops, lowered
+windshields, and turned shining noses toward the greening fields.
+
+In the red-leather tonneau, with her little face wind-blown and bared to
+the kiss in the air, Sadie Barnet turned to her companion and peered
+under the visor of his checked cap and up into his small inset eyes.
+
+"Is--is that the house up on the hill there, Jerry?"
+
+"Not yet. It's right around the next bend."
+
+"Gee! My--my hands are like ice, I--I'm that nervous."
+
+"Lemme feel."
+
+"No."
+
+"That's a swell way to treat a fellow who's promised to marry you."
+
+"You--you must excuse me to-day, Jerry. Honest, without a wink of
+sleep last night--you must excuse me to-day. I--I'm so upset with poor
+Dee Dee, and on top of that so nervous about--your little girl and the
+house and everything. And, Dee Dee--when I think of Dee Dee."
+
+"Don't think, Peachy; that's the way to get around that."
+
+"I--I can't help it. You ought to seen her at the doctor's this
+morning, how--how the poor thing lost her nerve when he told her that
+there--there wasn't no hope."
+
+"Aw, now, cut the sob stuff, Peachy! You can't help it. Nobody can,
+that's the trouble. Say, what kind of a little queen will they think you
+are if I bring you home all soppy with crying?"
+
+"I ought not to have come, Jerry. I'm no kind of company to-day, only
+all of a sudden she's got so--so soft with me and she made me come while
+she--she tried to take a nap. Poor old Dee Dee!"
+
+"Yeh, and poor old devil. Maybe she's just getting what's due to her."
+
+"Jerry!"
+
+"Sure, I believe every one of us gets what's coming to us."
+
+"She--"
+
+"Here we are, Tootsie. See, Peachy, that's the house I bought her and
+her mother, and they was kicking at it before the plaster was dry."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"That's a concrete front. Neat, ain't it? That's a mosaic-floor porch,
+too, I built on a year after her and her mother vamoosed."
+
+"It's a beau-tiful house, Jerry."
+
+"You're the land of a kid that knows how to appreciate a home when she
+gets it. But her with her she-devil of a mother, they no sooner got in
+than they began to side with each other against me--her and her old
+mother trying to learn me how to run my own shebang."
+
+"Where--"
+
+"Gad! they're living in a dirty Harlem flat now and tryin' to put it
+over on me that they're better off in it. Bah! if I had to double up on
+alimony, I wouldn't give her a smell at this house, not a smell."
+
+"Say, but ain't it pretty, Jerry, right up over the river, and country
+all around, and right over there in back the street-cars for the city
+when you want them?"
+
+"This is going to be your street-car, Peachy, a six-cylinder one."
+
+She colored like a wild rose.
+
+"Oh, Jerry, I--I keep forgetting."
+
+"By Gad! it's a good thing I'm going to give up my city rooms and come
+out here to watch my p's and q's. Gosh darn her neck! I told her to quit
+cluttering up that side-yard turf with her gosh darn little flower-beds!
+Gosh darn her neck! There never was a servant worth her hide."
+
+"Jerry, why, they're beautiful! They just look beautiful, those pansies,
+and is that the little girl sitting up there on the porch steps? Is--is
+that Maisie?"
+
+They drew to a stop before the box-shaped ornate house, its rough
+concrete front pretentiously inlaid over the doors and windows with a
+design of pebbles stuck like dates on a cake, and perched primly on the
+topmost step of the square veranda the inert figure of a small girl.
+
+"Aw, ain't she cute?"
+
+Miss Barnet sprang lightly to the sidewalk, and beside her Mr. Jerome
+Beck flecked the dust of travel from the bay of his waistcoat, shaking
+his trousers knees into place.
+
+"This has got your Twenty-third Street dump beat a mile, and then some,
+'ain't it, Peachy?"
+
+"Jerry, call her here, the little girl. You tell her who--who I am. Tell
+her gently, Jerry, and--and how good I'm going to be to her and--Aw,
+ain't I the silly, though, to feel so trembly?"
+
+The child on the step regarded their approach with unsmiling eyes, nor
+did she move except to draw aside her dark stuff skirts and close her
+knees until they touched.
+
+"Hello there! Moping again, eh? Get up! Didn't I tell you not to let me
+catch you not out playing or helping Cloonan around? Say howdy to this
+lady. She's coming out here to live. Come here and say howdy to her."
+
+The child shrank to the newel-post, her narrow little face overtaken
+with an agony of shyness.
+
+"Cat got your tongue? Say howdy. Quit breathing through your mouth like
+a fish. Say howdy, that's a good girl."
+
+"Don't force her, Jerry. She's bashful. Ain't you, dearie? Ain't you,
+Maisie?"
+
+"Moping, you mean. If it was her month in the dirty Harlem flat she'd be
+spry enough. She knows what I mean whan I say that, and she knows she
+better cut out this pouting. Quit breathing through your mouth or I'll
+stick a cork in it."
+
+"Aw, Jerry, she can't help that!"
+
+"Cat got your tongue? Where's Cloonan?"
+
+The child's little face quivered and screwed, each feature drawing
+itself into position for tears. Her eyes disappeared, her nostrils
+distended, her mouth opened to a quivering rectangle, and she fell into
+silent weeping.
+
+"Aw, Jerry--you--you scared her! Come here, darling; come here to me,
+Maisie; come, dearie."
+
+But the child slid past the extended arms, down the wooden steps, and
+around a corner of the house, her arm held up across her eyes.
+
+"Aw, Jerry, honest, you can be awful mean!"
+
+"I'll get that out of her or know the reason why. They've poisoned her
+against me, that's about how it is in a nutshell. I'll get that pouting
+to be in that dirty Harlem hole with her mother and grandmother out of
+her or know the reason why."
+
+"She--"
+
+"Look, this is the front hall. Guess this 'ain't got that sty in
+Twenty-third Street beat some. Look! How do you like it? This way to the
+parlor and dining-room."
+
+Sadie Barnet smiled through the shadows in her eyes.
+
+"Jerry! Say, ain't this beau-tiful! A upright piano and gold, chairs
+and--Why, Jerry! why, Jerry!"
+
+"And look in here, the dining-room. Her and her mother shopped three
+weeks to get this oak set, and see this fancy cabinet full of china.
+Slick, ain't it?"
+
+Her fingers curled in a soft, clutch around her throat as if her breath
+came too fast.
+
+"Jerry, it--it's just grand."
+
+He marshaled her in all the pride of ownership.
+
+"Look, butler's pantry, exposed plumbing."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Kitchen."
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"Here, Cloonan. I told you I was going to bring somebody out to take
+hold and sit on you and your bills, didn't I? This lady's coming out
+here tomorrow, bag and baggage. Hand over your account-book to her and I
+bet she does better with it. See that you fix us up in honeymoon style,
+too. Bag and baggage we're coming. Savvy?"
+
+The figure beside the ill-kept stove, bowl in lap and paring potatoes
+with the long fleshless hands of a bird, raised a still more
+fleshless face.
+
+"Howdy!"
+
+"Cloonan's been running this shebang for two years now, Peachy, and
+there ain't nothing much she can't learn you about my ways. They ain't
+hard. Look! Porcelain-lined sink. It's got Twenty-third Street beat
+some, 'ain't it?"
+
+"Yes, Jerry."
+
+"Fix us a beefsteak supper, Cloonan, and lemme weigh up them groceries I
+sent out and lemme see your books afterward. Come, Peachy, here, up
+these stairs. This is the second floor. Pretty neat, ain't it? Her and
+her mother shopped three more weeks on this oak bed-set. Some little
+move out here from Twenty-third Street for a little rooming-house queen
+like you, eh? Neat little bedroom, eh, Peachy? Eh?"
+
+His face was close to her and claret red with an expression she did not
+dare to face.
+
+"And what's this next room here, Jerry? Ain't it sweet and
+quiet-looking! Spare room? Ain't it pretty with them little white
+curtains? Quit, quit, Jerry! You mustn't--you mustn't."
+
+She broke from his embrace, confusion muddling her movements.
+
+"Is this the--the spare room?"
+
+"It is, now. It used to be the old woman's till I laid down on the
+mother-in-law game and squealed. Yeh, I used to have a little
+mother-in-law in our house that was some mother-in-law. Believe me, she
+makes that old devil of yourn look like a prize angel."
+
+"I--This'll be just the room for Dee Dee, Jerry, where she can feel the
+morning sun and hear the street-cars over there when she gets lonesome.
+She ought to have the sunniest room, because it's something she can feel
+without seeing--poor thing. This will be a swell room for poor old blind
+Dee Dee, won't it, Jerry? Won't it, Jerry dear?"
+
+"Cut the comedy, Peachy. There's a neat free ward waiting for her just
+the other direction from the city than Newton Heights. Cut the
+comedy, Peachy."
+
+"Jerry, I--I gotta have her with me. I--Now that she--she's in the dark.
+She couldn't stand an institution, Jerry, she--she just couldn't."
+
+"That's what they all say, but they get over it. I know a--"
+
+"She couldn't, Jerry. She 'ain't had much in her life, but she's always
+had a roof over her head that wasn't charity, and she always said,
+Jerry, that she couldn't never stand a--a institution. She can take any
+other room you say, Jerry. Maybe there's a little one up-stairs in the
+third story we could fix up comfy for her; but she's in the dark now,
+Jerry, and, my God! Jerry, she just couldn't stand an institution!"
+
+He patted her shoulder and drew her arm through his.
+
+"You lemme take care of that. She don't need to know nothing about it.
+We'll tell her we're sending her for a visit to the country for a while.
+After the second day she'll be as snug as a bug in a rug. They're good
+to 'em in those places; good as gold."
+
+"No, no, Jerry! No, no! I gotta have her with me! She raised me from a
+kid and--and she couldn't stand it, Jerry! I gotta have her, I gotta! I
+want her!"
+
+His mouth sagged downward suddenly and on an oblique.
+
+"Say, somebody must have given you a few lessons in nagging, yourself.
+Them's the lines she used to recite to me about her she-devil of a
+mother, too. Gad! she used to hang on her mother's apron-strings like
+she was tied."
+
+"Jerry, I--"
+
+"Come, Peachy, don't get me sore. Come, let's talk about to-morrow. We
+gotta get the license first and--"
+
+"Jerry, I--Promise me I can have her with me first. I--Just a little yes
+is all I want--Jerry dear--just a little yes."
+
+A frown gathered in a triple furrow on his brow.
+
+"Now, kiddo, you got to cut that with me, and cut it quick. If there's
+two things I can't stand it's nagging and pouting. Cloonan can tell you
+what pouting can drive me to. I'll beat it out of that girl of mine
+before she's through with me, and I won't stand it from no one else. Now
+cut it, Peachy, that's a nice girl."
+
+He paced the carpeted space of floor between the dresser and bed, his
+mouth still on the oblique.
+
+"Now cut it, Peachy, I said, and cut it quick."
+
+She stood palpitating beside the window, her eyes flashing to his face
+and fastening there.
+
+"God! I--I wanna go."
+
+"Where?"
+
+Her glance flashed past him out of the window and across the patch of
+rear lawn. A street-car bobbed across the country; she followed it with
+eager eyes.
+
+"I wanna go."
+
+He advanced, conciliatory. "Aw, now, Peachy, a row just the day before
+we are married. You don't want to start out making me train you just
+like you was a little kid. If you was a little girl I could beat your
+little ways out of you, but I wanna be on the level with you and show
+you how nice I can be. All the things I'm going to give you, all--"
+
+"Quit, you! I wanna go! I wanna go!"
+
+"You can go to hell, for my part. I'm going to get a steak inside of me
+before we budge. Quit your fooling. See, you nearly got me sore there.
+Come, the car won't be back for us until six. Come, Peachy, come."
+
+She was past him and panting down the stairs, out across the patch of
+rear lawn, and toward the bobbing street-car, the streamer of ribbon at
+her throat flying backward over her shoulder.
+
+In the bargain basement of the Titanic Store the first day of the spring
+opening dragged to its close. In a meadow beside a round pond a tree
+dripped apple blossoms, each so frail a thing that it fluttered out and
+away, too light to anchor.
+
+In careless similitude the bargain basement of the Titanic Store
+resuscitated from its storerooms, and from spring openings long gone by,
+dusty garlands of cotton May blossoms, festooning them between the great
+white supporting pillars of the basement and intertwining them.
+
+Over the white-goods counter and over Sunday, as it were, a papier-mâché
+pergola of green lattice-work and more cotton-back May blossoms had
+sprung up as if the great god Wotan had built it with a word. Cascades
+of summer linens, the apple green and the butter yellow, flowed from
+counters and improvised tables. Sadie Barnet's own mid-aisle bin had
+blossomed into a sacrificial sale of lawn remnants, and toward the close
+of the day her stock lay low, depleted.
+
+Max Meltzer leaned out of his bower, and how muted his voice, as if it
+came from an inner throat that only spoke when the heart bade it.
+
+"Little one, them remnants went like hot cakes, didn't they?"
+
+"Hot cakes! Well, I guess. You'd have thought there was a mill-end sale
+on postage stamps."
+
+"And if you don't look all tired out! If you just don't!"
+
+The ready tears swam in her voice.
+
+"It's--it's been awful--me away from her all day like this. But,
+anyways, I got news for her when I go home to-night about her five
+weeks' benefit money. Old Criggs was grand. He's going to send the
+committee to see her. Anyways, that's some good news for her."
+
+"I just can't get her out of my mind, neither. Seems like I--I just can
+see her poor blind face all the time."
+
+"M-me, too."
+
+"They say the girls up in the ribbons been crying all day. She was no
+love-bird, but they say she wasn't bad underneath."
+
+"God knows she--she wasn't."
+
+"That's the way with some folks; they're hard on top, but everybody
+knows hard-shell crabs have got sweeter meat than soft."
+
+"Nobody knows that she was a rough diamond better than me. I got sore at
+her sometimes, but I--I know she was always there when I--I needed her,
+alrighty."
+
+"Now, now, little girl, don't cry! You're all worn out."
+
+"She--she was always there to stand by me in--in a pinch."
+
+"Honest, Miss Sadie, you look just like a pretty little ghost. What you
+need is some spring air, girlie, some spring air for a tonic. Wouldn't I
+just love to take you all by your little self down the river to-night on
+one of them new Coney boats, where we could be--right quiet. Say,
+wouldn't I?"
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"I wanna talk to you, Miss Sadie. Can't you guess? I wanna get you all
+by yourself and talk to you right in your little ear."
+
+'"Shh-h-h! You mustn't talk like that."
+
+"That's the only way I have of trying to tell you how--how I feel, Miss
+Sadie--dearie."
+
+'"Shh-h-h!"
+
+"When I call you that it means--well, you know, dearie, you know. That's
+why I wanna take you to-night, dearie, all by your little self and--"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Meltzer! I can't leave her alone like that. I promised I
+would never leave her alone in the dark if--if I could help it."
+
+"Ain't I the dub? Sure you can't leave her. We gotta stick by her now,
+dearie. 'Ain't we? 'Ain't we?"
+
+A red seepage of blood surged across his face and under his hair.
+Beneath his little hedge of mustache his lips quivered as if at their
+own daring.
+
+"We gotta stick by her, dearie."
+
+All her senses swam, nor could she control the fluttering of her hands.
+
+"Oh--Mr. Meltzer--Max!"
+
+"What you and poor old Dee Dee need is some of this spring air. Gee!
+wouldn't I love to take you--and her down the river to-night on one of
+them new Coney boats? Gee! would I? Just you and--and her."
+
+"Max--oh, Max dearie!"
+
+
+
+
+"HEADS"
+
+By the great order of things which decreed that about the time Herod,
+brother to no man, died, Jesus, brother to all men, should be born; and
+that Rabelais, moral jester, should see light the very year that
+orthodox Louis XI passed on, by that same metaphysical scheme reduced to
+its lowliest, Essman's drop-picture machine, patent applied for, was
+completed the identical year that, for Rudolph Pelz, the rainy-day skirt
+slumped from a novelty to a commodity.
+
+At a very low tide in the affairs of the Novelty Rainy Day
+Skirt Company, Canal Street, that year of our Lord, 1898, when
+letter-head stationery was about to be rewritten and the
+I-haven't-seen-you-since-last-century jocosity was about to be born,
+Rudolph Pelz closed his workaday by ushering out Mr. Emil Hahn, locking
+his front door after his full force of two women machine-stitchers, and
+opening a rear door upon his young manhood's estate. A modest-enough
+holding in the eyes of you or me as beholders; but for the past week not
+an evening upon opening that door but what tears rushed to his throat,
+which he laughed through, for shame of them.
+
+On a bed, obviously dragged from its shadowy corner to a place beside
+the single window, and propped up so that her hair, so slickly banding
+her head in two plaits, sprang out against the coarsely white pillows,
+Mrs. Rosa Sopinsky Pelz, on an evening when the air rose sultry, stale,
+and even garbage-laden from a cat-and-can-infested courtyard, flashed
+her quick smile toward that opening door, her week-old infant suckling
+at her breast.
+
+"You ought to seen, Roody; she laughed! Puckered herself up into the
+cutest little grin when mamma left just now."
+
+Mr. Pelz wound his way through an overcrowded huddle of furniture that
+was gloomily, uglily utilitarian. A sideboard spread in pressed glass; a
+chest of drawers piled high with rough-dry family wash; a coal-range,
+and the smell and sound of simmering. A garland of garlic, caught up
+like smilax, and another of drying red peppers. On a shelf above the
+sink, cluttered there with all the pitiful unprivacy of poverty, a
+layout, to recite which will label me with the nigritude of the realist,
+but which is actually the nigritude of reality--a dish of
+brown-and-white blobs of soap; a coffee-cup with a great jag in its lip;
+a bottle of dried beans; a rubber nipple floating in a saucer of water;
+a glass tumbler containing one inverted tooth-brush; a medicine-bottle
+glued down in a dark-brown pool of its own substance; a propped-up bit
+of mirror, jagged of edge; a piece of comb; a rhinestone breastpin; a
+bunion-plaster; a fork; spoon; a sprouting onion. Yet all of this
+somehow lit by a fall of very coarse, very white, and very freshly
+starched lace curtains portière-fashion from the door, looped back in
+great curves from the single window, and even skirting stiffly and
+cleanly the bureau-front and bed-edge.
+
+"How is my little mammela?" said Mr. Pelz, leaning over the bed to kiss
+Mrs. Pelz on the shining plaits, the light-tan column of throat and the
+little fist pressed so deeply into her bosom.
+
+"Just ought to seen, Roody--honest, she laughed and nearly jerked off
+mamma's _sheidel!_" [Footnote: Black wig worn by orthodox Jewish
+women after marriage.]
+
+
+"Red head!" he said, stroking down at the warm "bulge of blanket, so
+snugly enclosed in the crotch of mothering arm.
+
+"It's redder than yours already, Roody."
+
+"She's sure a grand little thing cuddled up there, ain't it so,
+mammela?"
+
+She reached up to pat his blue shirt-sleeve.
+
+"There's some herring on the table mamma brought over, and some raw meat
+and onions. That's some _borshtsh_ on the stove Etta carried all the way
+over from Hester Street for your supper."
+
+"And what for the little mammela?"
+
+"I'm fed up, Roody. Mamma closed the store at five to run over with some
+of that milk-shake like Doctor Aarons said. He sent his little son
+Isadore over with the prescription. Like I said to mamma, she should let
+the Canal Street Kosher Sausage Company do double the business from five
+until six while she closes shop to carry her daughter a milk-shake! Like
+I was used to it from home!"
+
+"When my girl gets to be a little mammela, the best shouldn't be none
+too good."
+
+She continued to stroke up at his sleeve and occasionally on up into
+his uneven shock of red hair.
+
+"You miss me in the shop, Roody?"
+
+"You should just see once how that Ruby Grabenheiner sits at your
+machine! She does one-half your work not one-half so good."
+
+"I'll be back next week Monday."
+
+He patted her quickly. "No! No! A mammela's place is with her baby."
+
+"Roody, you make me laugh. I should sit at home now since we got a new
+mouth to feed? That would be a fine come-off!"
+
+"Who do you think was just in, Rosie? Emil Hahn."
+
+"Sol is going to make for me, Roody, one of those little packing-case
+cribs like he built for Etta up in the pants-factory, so when the
+machine works it rocks, too. Did--did the check from Solomon & Glauber
+come in on the last mail, Roody?"
+
+"Now, Rosie, you mustn't worry yourself about such--"
+
+"What you looking so funny for, Roody?"
+
+"I was starting to tell you, Rosie--Hahn was just in and--"
+
+"Roody, don't change the subject on me always. You looked funny. Is it
+something wrong with Solomon & Glau--"
+
+"If you don't take the cake, Rosie! Now, why should I look funny?
+'Funny,' she says I look, I'm hungry. I smell Etta's _borshtsh_."
+
+She half raised herself, the pulling lips of the child drawing up the
+little head from the cove of arm.
+
+"Rosie, you mustn't lift up that way!"
+
+"Roody, I can read you like a book! Solomon & Glauber have
+countermanded, too."
+
+"Now, Rosie, wouldn't that keep until--"
+
+"They have!"
+
+"Well, if you got to know it, Rosie, they're shipping back the
+consignment."
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"What you going to do about it? Give you my word never seen the like.
+It's like the rainy-day skirt had died overnight. All of a sudden from a
+novelty, I find myself with such a commodity that every manufacturer in
+the business is making them up for himself."
+
+"You seen it first, though, Roody. Nobody can take it away from you that
+you seen first how the rainy-day skirt and its shortness would be such a
+success with the women."
+
+"'Seen it first,' she says! Say, what good does it do me if I didn't see
+far enough? I pick for myself such a success that I crowd myself out of
+business."
+
+"It's a dirty shame! A big firm like Solomon & Glauber should not be
+allowed to--"
+
+"Say, if it wouldn't be Solomon & Glauber, it would be Funk & Hausman or
+any other firm. The rainy-day skirt has slipped out of my hands, Rosie,
+to the big fellows. We must realize that for ourselves. That's the
+trouble when you don't deal in a patented product. What's the little
+fellows like myself to do against a firm like Solomon & Glauber? Start
+something?"
+
+"Three countermands in a week, and no orders coming in!"
+
+"Say, it don't tickle my ribs no more than yours."
+
+"Roody, maybe it's the worst thing ever happened to us you wouldn't
+listen to mamma and be satisfied with being chief cutter at Lipschuts'."
+
+"Shame on you, Rosie! You want your daughter to grow up with a
+pants-cutter all her life for a father? You want I should die in
+somebody else's harness. Maybe I didn't hit it right away, but I say
+yet, if a fellow's got the eyes and the nerve to see ahead a little with
+his imagination--"
+
+"'Imagination.' He talks like a story-book."
+
+"Now--now, take Hahn, Rosie--there's a fellow's got imagination--but not
+enough. I know it makes you mad when I talk on his picture-machine, but
+you take it from me--there's a fellow with a good thing under his very
+nose, but he--he 'ain't quite got the eyes to see ahead."
+
+"Say, for such a good thing like Emil Hahn's picture-machine, where his
+wife had to work in my own mother's sausage-store, I can't make
+myself excited."
+
+"He 'ain't quite got the eyes to see, Rosie, the big idea in it. He's
+afraid of life, instead of making it so that life should be afraid of
+him. Ten dollars cheaper I can buy that machine to-day than last week. A
+song for it, I tell you."
+
+"Ninety dollars to me is no cheap song, Roody."
+
+"The people got to be amused the same as they got to be fed. A man will
+pay for his amusements quicker than he will pay his butcher's or his
+doctor's bill. It's a cash business, Rosie. All you do with such a
+machine like Hahn's is get it well placed, drop your penny in the slot,
+and see one picture after another as big as life. I remember back in the
+old country, the years before we came over, when I was yet a
+youngster--"
+
+"You bet Hahn never put his good money in that machine. I got it from
+Birdie Hahn herself. For a bad debt he took it over along with two
+feather beds and--"
+
+"One after another pictures as big as life, Rosie, like real people
+moving. One of them, I give you my word, it's grand! A woman it shows
+all wrapped tight around in white, on a sofa covered over with such a
+spotted--what you call--leopard-skin."
+
+"To me that has a sound, Roody, not to be proud of--"
+
+"A living picture, with such neck and arms and--"
+
+"That's enough, Roody! That's enough! I'm ashamed even for your daughter
+here!"
+
+"Such a machine, maybe some day two or three, set up in a place like
+Coney Island or, for a beginning, in Pleasure Arcade, is an immense
+idea, Rosie. Until an invention like this, nine-tenths of the people
+couldn't afford the theyater. The drop-picture machine takes care of
+them nine-tenths."
+
+"Theyaters are no place for the poor."
+
+"That's where you're wrong--they need it the most. I don't want to get
+you worked up, Rosie, while you ain't strong, but every day that we wait
+we're letting a great idea slip through our fingers. If I don't buy that
+machine off Emil Hahn, somebody else will see in it what I see. Then
+all our lives we will have something to reproach ourselves with."
+
+Mrs. Pelz let slide her hand beneath the pillow, eyes closing and her
+face seeming to whiten.
+
+"Ninety dollars! Twenty dollars less than every cent we got saved in the
+world. It ain't right we should gamble with it, Roody. Not now."
+
+"Why not now, Rosie? It's all the more reason. Is it worth maybe a
+little gamble our Bleema should grow up like the best? I got bigger
+plans for her and her little mammela than such a back room all their
+lives. In a few years, maybe three rooms for ourselves in one of them
+newfangled apartment-houses up on Second Avenue with turn-on
+hot water--"
+
+"That's right--you'll have her riding in a horseless carriage next!"
+
+"I tell you, it's a big idea!"
+
+"I wish we had ten cents for every big idea you've been struck with."
+
+"That's just why, Rosie, I'm going to hit one right."
+
+Mrs. Pelz withdrew then the slow hand from beneath the pillow and a
+small handkerchief with a small wad knotted into it.
+
+"Nearly every--cent--in--the world, Roody, that we've got. Saved nearly
+penny by penny. Our Bleema--it's a sin--our--our--"
+
+"Sin nothing!"
+
+"Our week-old little girl--it--"
+
+"Nothing ventured in life, Rosie, nothing squeezed out of it. Don't put
+it back! Look, the baby herself wants it! Papa's little Bleema! Look!
+She's trying to lift herself. Ain't that remarkable, Rosie--look at
+that child lifting for that handkerchief!"
+
+"Our little baby girl! If it was for ourselves alone, all right, maybe,
+take a chance--but for--"
+
+Suddenly Mr. Pelz clapped his thigh. "I got it! I got it! Well let the
+little Bleema decide it for us. How's that? She should decide it for us
+if we take a gamble on her daddy's big idea! Here--I put a five-cents
+piece in her little hand and see which way she drops it. The little
+mammela will say which way it is to be--heads or tails. How's that,
+Rosie--the baby should decide it for us?"
+
+"Roody--we mustn't!"
+
+"Heads or tails, Rosie?"
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"Quick!"
+
+"H-heads!"
+
+"Quick now, papa's baby, open up little fist!"
+
+"Roody, not so rough! She can't hold that big nickel."
+
+"That's just what I want--she should let it fall."
+
+"Roody, Roody, I hope it's tails."
+
+The coin rolled to the bed-edge, bounced off to the floor, rolled to the
+zinc edge.
+
+Immediately after, on all-fours, his face screwed up for scrutiny and
+the back of his neck hotly ridden with crimson, Mr. Pelz leaned after.
+
+"Roody--what?"
+
+"Heads!"
+
+Where Riverside Drive reaches its rococo climax of the
+twelve-thousand-dollar-a-year and twelve-story-high apartment-house de
+luxe and duplex, and six baths divided by fourteen rooms is equal to
+solid-marble comfort, Elsinore Court, the neurotic Prince of Denmark and
+Controversy done in gilt mosaics all over the foyer, juts above the
+sky-line, and from the convex, rather pop-eyed windows of its top story,
+bulges high and wide of view over the city.
+
+From one of these windows, looking north, Rudolph Pelz, by the
+holding-aside of a dead weight of pink brocade and filet lace, could
+gaze upon a sweep of Hudson River that flowed majestically between the
+great flank of the city and the brobdingnagian Palisades.
+
+After a day when he had unerringly directed the great swinging crane of
+this or that gigantic transaction it had a laving effect upon him--this
+view of sure and fluent tide that ran so perpetually into infinitude.
+
+Yet for Mr. Pelz to attempt to articulate into words this porcelain-thin
+pillar of emotions was to shatter it into brittle bits.
+
+"Say, Rosie, ain't that a view for you? That's how it is with life--a
+river that rises with getting born and flows into death, and the
+in-between is life and--and--"
+
+"Roody, will you please hurry for sup--dinner? Do you want Feist to
+arrive with you not yet dressed?"
+
+Mr. Pelz turned then into an interior that was as pink and as silk as
+the inside of a bud--satin walls with side brackets softly simulating
+candles; a Canet bed, piled with a careful riot of sheerest and roundest
+of pillows; that long suit of the interior decorator, the
+_chaise-longue_; the four French engravings in their gilt frames; the
+latest original Josephine's _secrétaire_; the shine of a white adjoining
+bathroom. Before a door-impaneled mirror, Mrs. Pelz, in a black-lace
+gown that was gracious to her rotundity.
+
+"Just look! I'm all dressed already."
+
+Mr. Pelz advanced to her, his clasp closing over each of her bare arms,
+smile and gaze lifting.
+
+"Rosie, you've got them all beat! Guess why I wish I was your diamond
+necklace."
+
+"Roody, it's nearly seven. Don't make me ashamed for Feist."
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"All right, then, I guess."
+
+"So I could always be round your neck."
+
+His hand flew immediately to the lay of gems at her throat, a small
+flush rising.
+
+"Roody, you hear me--hurry! Stop it, I tell you! You pinch." But she was
+warmly pink now, the shake of her head setting the heavy-carat gems in
+her ears waggling.
+
+Time, probably emulating destiny, had worked kindly here; had brought to
+Mrs. Pelz the soft, dove-like maturity of her little swell of bosom; the
+white, even creamy shoulders ever so slightly too plump between the
+blades; the still black hair polished and waved into expensive
+permanence. Out of years that had first veered and finally taken course
+under his unquestionable captaincy, Rudolph Pelz, with some of their
+storm and stress written in deep brackets round his mouth, the red hair
+just beginning to pale and thin, and a certain roundness of back
+enhancing his squattiness, had come snugly and simply into harbor. Only
+the high cheek-bones and bony jaw-line and the rather inconveniently low
+voice, which, however, had the timbre of an ormolu clock in the chiming,
+indicating his peculiar and covert power to dominate as dynamically as
+ungrammatically a board of directors reckoning in millions across
+the mahogany.
+
+"Shall I call in Sato to help you dress, Roody?"
+
+"Please--no! Just to have him in the room with his yellowness and
+tiptoes makes me nervous like a cat."
+
+"I got your shirt and studs laid out myself."
+
+He pinched her cheek again. "Rosie Posy!"
+
+"You had a hard day, Roody? You look tired."
+
+"I don't like the battle of Waterloo in the 'Saint Elba' picture."
+
+"Roody, that scene it took such a fortune to build into the shape of the
+letter A?"
+
+"It looks like what is it. Fake! The way it reads in that _French
+Revolution_ by that fellow Carlyle they gave me to read and the way it
+looks in the picture is the difference of black from white. For fifty
+thousand dollars more or less on a four-hundred-thousand-dollar picture
+I don't have a fake Waterloo."
+
+"I should say not, Roody, when you're famous for your water scenes in
+all your big pictures! In 'The Lure of Silk' it's the scenes on the
+water they went craziest over."
+
+"I've already got the passage engaged for next week to shoot the
+company over to France. That windmill scene on Long Island looks as much
+like the windmill north of Fleuris, where Napoleon could see the Blucher
+troops from, as I look like a windmill scene. 'Sol,' I says, 'it looks
+just like what it is--a piece of pasteboard out of the storehouse set up
+on a rock. Eat those feet of film, Sol,' I says to him, 'plant 'em,
+drown 'em--anything you like with 'em. That kind of fake stuff won't
+make 'Saint Elba' the greatest picture ever released, and every picture
+turned out from these studios has got to be just that.' I wish you could
+have heard, Rosie, in the projection-room, quiet like a pin after I came
+out with it."
+
+"Fifty thousand dollars, Roody?"
+
+"Yes. 'Fifty thousand dollars,' begins Sol with me, too. 'Fifty
+thousand--one hundred thousand--two!' I said. 'It would make no
+difference. If we can't fake the kind of battle-plain that wouldn't make
+Napoleon turn over in his grave, we cross the ocean for the real thing.'
+'Fifty thousand dollars,' Sol keeps saying--you know how he cries with
+his voice. 'Fifty thousand dollars your grandmother!' I hollered. 'For a
+few dollars more or less I should make a Rudolph Pelz picture something
+I'm ashamed of.' Am I right, Rosie? Am I right?"
+
+"I should say so, Roody, for a few dollars you should not belittle
+yourself."
+
+"Not if your old man knows it, by golly! and I think he does."
+
+"Hurry now, Roody; you know how Bleema likes it you should be dressed."
+
+"Believe me, if Feist had his choice he wouldn't be dressed, neither.
+Full dress for grandma and all of us to look at each other in! When
+there's company, it's bad enough, but for Feist and a few servants,
+hanged if I see it!"
+
+"Does it hurt, Roody, to give the child a little pleasure? Anyway, she's
+right--people like us should get dressed up for sup--dinner. I wouldn't
+be surprised if she didn't bring Lester Spencer back for dinner from
+automobiling."
+
+"He leaves to-night at ten with the company for Pennsylvania and the
+Horseshoe Bend picture. Anyways, I don't see where it comes in that for
+a fellow who draws his salary off of me I have to dress. I got to say it
+for him, though, give the devil his due, he does a good piece of work
+where Sol succeeds in getting him off center-stage in his scene with
+Wellington."
+
+"Lester is a good actor. Madame Coutilly, to-day, when I had my
+manicure, just raved over him and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure
+of Silk.'"
+
+"He'll be a screen proposition some day if we can chain down some of his
+conceit. Only, where such friendships with him and Bleema comes in, I
+don't see. I don't like it."
+
+"Say, the child likes to run around with celebrities. Why shouldn't it
+give her pleasure over the other girls from Miss Samuels's school to be
+seen out once in a while with Lester Spencer, their favorite, or Norma
+Beautiful? 'America's Darlings,' I see this week's _Screen Magazine_
+calls 'em. It's natural the child should enjoy it."'
+
+"Let her enjoy; only, where it comes in I should have to sit across
+from him at supper three times this week, I don't see. Out of the
+studio, me and Spencer don't talk the same language. To-night, him and
+Feist would mix like oil and water."
+
+"Does Feist know yet, Roody, you closed the deal on the Grismer estate?"
+
+"Sure! I says to him to-day: 'Feist, with us for next-door neighbors of
+your country estate, together we own nearly half of Long Island.' Am
+I right?"
+
+"Like I says last night in mamma's room to Etta and Sol, 'I was used to
+thirty-four rooms and nineteen baths from home yet!' Poor mamma--how she
+laughed! Just like before her stroke."
+
+"Nothing, Rosie, not one hundred rooms and fifty baths--nothing I can
+ever do for you is one-tenth that you deserve."
+
+"And nothing, Roody, that I can do for you is one-hundredth what you
+deserve."
+
+"I sometimes wonder, Rosie, if, with all we got, there isn't maybe some
+little happiness I've overlooked for you."
+
+She lifted herself by his coat lapels, kissing him. "Such a question!"
+
+"So many times it comes up in the scenarios and the picture-plots,
+Rosie, how money don't always bring happiness."
+
+"It wouldn't, Roody--not a penny's worth to me without you and Bleema.
+But with you, Roody, no matter how happy I feel, it seems to me I can't
+ever feel happy enough for what we have got. Why, a woman just
+couldn't--why, I--I always say about you, Roody, only yesterday to my
+own sister-in-law, 'Etta,' I says, 'it's hard for me to think of
+anything new to wish for.' Just take last week, for instance, I wished
+it that, right after the big check you gave for the Armenian sufferers,
+you should give that extra ten thousand in mamma's name to the Belgian
+sufferers. Done! Thursday, when I seen that gray roadster I liked so
+much for Bleema, this afternoon she's out riding in it. It is a wonder I
+got a wish for anything left in me."
+
+"To have you talk like this, Rosie, is the highest of all my successes."
+
+"If--if there's one real wish I got now, Roody, it is only for our
+Bleema. We got a young lady, honey; we got to put on our thinking-cap."
+
+"'Young lady'--all of a sudden she decides we've got! Young baby, you
+better say."
+
+"A graduate this month from Miss Samuels's Central Park School he calls
+a baby!"
+
+"Let me see--how old is--"
+
+"He don't know his own child's age! Well, how many years back is it
+since we were in rainy-day skirts?"
+
+"My God! Ten--fourteen--eighteen! Eighteen years! Our little Bleema! It
+seems yesterday, Rosie, I was learning her to walk along Grand Street."
+
+"You haven't noticed, Roody, David Feist?"
+
+"'Noticed'?"
+
+"Say, you may be a smart man, Rudolph Pelz--everybody tells me you
+are--but they should know once on the Picture Rialto how dumb as a
+father you are. 'Noticed?' he asks. All right then--if you need a brick
+house--noticed that David Feist hates your daughter and 'ain't got eyes
+for her and don't try every excuse to get invited here for sup--dinner."
+
+"You mean, Rosie--"
+
+"Of course I mean! It's pitiful how he follows her everywhere with his
+eyes. In the box last night at the opera you was too asleep to see it,
+but all evening Etta was nudging me how he nearly ate up our Bleema just
+with looks."
+
+"You women with your nonsense!"
+
+"I guess, Rudolph, it would be a bad thing. Our daughter and a young man
+smart enough to make himself from a celluloid collar-cutter to a
+millionaire five times over on a little thing like inventing a
+newfangled film-substance should tie up with the only child of Rudolph
+Pelz, the picture king."
+
+"I give you my word, Rosie, such talk makes me sick."
+
+"You'd hate it, wouldn't you? A prince like David Feist."
+
+"People don't talk such things till they happen. If our daughter could
+have the King of England and didn't want him, I'd say she should not
+marry the King of England. I want my girl home by me yet, anyway, for
+many a long day. She should be playing with her dolls instead of her
+mother and aunt Etta filling her up with ideas. Don't think I'm so
+stuck, neither, on how she runs around with my film stars."
+
+"Honest, Roody, the way you're so strict with that child it's a shame!
+The girl has got to have her pleasure."
+
+"Well, if she's got to have her pleasure, she should have it with young
+men like Feist and not with--"
+
+"There! Didn't I tell you so? Didn't I?"
+
+"Say, I don't deny if I got some day to have a son-in-law, my first
+choice for him would be Feist."
+
+"Roody, the two estates together in one!"
+
+"I'm surprised at you, Rosie--honest, I'm surprised. Such talk!"
+
+Mrs. Pelz took a pinch of his each cheek, tiptoeing to kiss him squarely
+on the lips.
+
+"Go get dressed," she said, "and I'll wait for you."
+
+"Rosie Posy," he said, clucking into his cheek with his tongue and
+moving away through the pink-shaded twilight.
+
+At the door to the whitely glittering bathroom she called to him again,
+softly; he turning.
+
+"What'll you bet, Roody, that I get my biggest wish as soon as I got the
+gray roadster and the Belgian check?"
+
+"Women's nonsense!" said Mr. Pelz, his voice suddenly lost in the
+violent plunge of water into porcelain.
+
+In a drawing-room faithful to Dunlap Brothers' exorbitant interpretation
+of the Italian Renaissance, a veritable forest of wrought-iron
+candle-trees burned dimly into a scene of Pinturicchio table,
+tapestry-surmounted wedding-chest, brave and hideous with _pastiglia_
+work, the inevitable camp-chair of Savonarola, an Umbrian-walnut chair
+with lyre-shaped front, bust of Dante Alighieri in Florentine cap and
+ear-muffs, a Sienese mirror of the soul, sixteenth-century suit of
+cap-à-pie armor on gold-and-black plinth, Venetian credence with
+wrought-iron locks. The voiceless and invoiced immobility of the museum
+here, as if only the red-plush railing, the cords from across chairs,
+and the "Do Not Sit" warnings to the footsore had been removed.
+
+Against a chair cruel to the back with a carved coat of arms of the
+Lombardi family Mr. David Feist leaned lightly and wisely. If his
+correct-enough patent pumps ever so slightly escaped the floor, his span
+of shoulders left hardly an inch to be desired. There was a peninsula of
+rather too closely shaved but thick black hair jutted well down Mr.
+Feist's brow, forming what might have been bald but were merely hairless
+inlets on either side. Behind _pince-nez_ his eyes sparkled in points
+not unlike the lenses themselves. Honed to a swift, aquiline boniness of
+profile which cut into the shadows, there was something swiftly vigorous
+about even his repose.
+
+Incongruous enough on the Pinturicchio table, and as if she had dared to
+walk where mere moderns feared to tread, a polychrome framed picture of
+Miss Bleema Pelz, tulle-clouded, piquant profile flung charmingly to the
+northwest, and one bare shoulder prettily defiled with a long
+screw-curl, lit, as it were, into the careful gloom.
+
+Deliberately in range of that photograph, and so beatific of gaze that
+it was as if his sense were soaked in its loveliness, Mr. Feist smiled,
+and, smiling, reddened. Enter then Mrs. Pelz, hitting softly into white
+taffetas beneath the black lace; Mr. Pelz, wide, white and boiled of
+shirt-front.
+
+"Good evening, Mr. Feist! It's a shame the way we kept you waiting."
+
+"Not at all, Mrs. Pelz--a pleasure. Hello! how's my friend, the picture
+king?"
+
+"Rotten," said Mr. Pelz, amiably, shaking hands with a great riding-up
+of cuff, and seating himself astride a Florentine bench and the
+leather-embossed arms of the Strozzi family.
+
+"Roody, what a way to sit!"
+
+"'What a way to sit,' she tells me. I'd like to see a fellow sit any way
+in this room without making a monkey of himself. Am I right, Feist? The
+Eyetalians maybe didn't know no better, but I should have to suffer,
+too, when for four-seventy-nine I can buy myself at Tracy's the finest
+kind of a rocking-chair that fits me."
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"Say, Feist agrees with me; only, he don't know you well enough yet to
+let on. I notice that with all his Louis-this and Louis-that rooms in
+his own house, up in his own room it is a good old Uncle Sam's cot and a
+patent rocker."
+
+"You've got a gorgeous room here just the same, Pelz."
+
+"Gorgeous for a funeral."
+
+"Every collector in the country knows that table. I had my eye on it for
+my music-room once myself when it was shown at Dunlap's."
+
+"Dunlap's are a grand firm of decorators, Mr. Feist. I'm having them do
+Grismer, too."
+
+"Well, Feist, how does it feel to have us for neighbors?"
+
+"Immense, Pelz!"
+
+"Like I said to my husband, between us the way the estates adjoin, we
+got a monopoly on Long Island--ain't it so?"
+
+"And believe me, Mrs. Pelz, you'll never regret the buy. The finest
+pleasure my money brought me yet is that view of my little bedroom I
+took you up to, Pelz."
+
+"Wonderful!"
+
+"I've got an outlook there, Mrs. Pelz, is a paradise to see. You can
+have all my forty-two rooms and two garages if you'll leave me my little
+top room with its miles of beautiful greenness, and--and so--so much
+beauty that--that it gets you by the throat. I--don't express it the way
+I see it, but--"
+
+"I should say so, Mr. Feist! Out of every one of our thirty-four rooms
+and eighteen baths you can see a regular oil-painting."
+
+Mr. Pelz leaned over, tongue in cheek and, at the screwing noise again,
+poking Mr. Feist in the region of the fifth rib.
+
+"She said to me up-stairs just now, Feist, 'Like we was used to it from
+home?' Eh? C-c-c-cluck! Eighteen baths a day! I know the time when one
+every Saturday night was stuck up."
+
+"Roody, honest, you're awful!"
+
+"Say, me and Feist speak the same language. We ain't entertaining a lot
+of motion-picture stars to-night."
+
+"I want Mr. Feist to come over some night to sup--dinner when we have a
+few of them over. We're great friends, Mr. Feist, with Norma Beautiful
+and Allan Hunt and Lester Spencer and all that crowd. We entertain them
+a good deal. My daughter is quite chums with them all. Elsie Love sleeps
+here some nights. Honest, Mr. Feist, you never saw a more unassuming
+girl for her salary."
+
+"Yes, especially is she unassuming when she spoils ninety feet of film
+yesterday in a row with Spencer over who should have one-half inch
+nearer to the center of the picture."
+
+"My husband, Mr. Feist, has got no patience with temperament."
+
+"Honey, a little supper wouldn't hurt."
+
+"I'll send and see if Bleema is ready yet. She's been out, taking Lester
+Spencer in her new runabout her papa bought her. I wish you could see,
+Mr. Feist, the way the traffic policemen smile after that girl the way
+she handles a car. If I do say it, she's a picture."
+
+"If you ask me, Mrs. Pelz, the finest of the objects in this room of
+fine things, it won't take me long to tell you," said Mr. Feist, leaning
+forward to lift for closer gaze the framed photograph.
+
+"Now you're shouting, Feist!"
+
+"That picture don't half do her justice. If I do say it, Mr. Feist--if
+that child had to make her living, she'd be a fortune in pictures. 'No,
+mamma,' she always says; 'God forbid if I have to make my living some
+day, I want to be a famous writer.' I want you to read sometime, Mr.
+Feist, some of that girl's poetry. I cry like a baby over the sad ones.
+And stories! There's one about a poor little girl who could look out of
+her window into the house of a rich girl and--"
+
+"Feist, her mother just hates that child!"
+
+"Say, old man, I don't see any medals on you for hating her."
+
+"He's worse than I am, Mr. Feist; only, he hides it behind making fun of
+me. I always say if Bleema Pelz wanted the moon, her father would see to
+it that his property-man got the real one for her."
+
+"You--you've got a beautiful, sweet little girl there, Pelz. I don't
+blame you."
+
+"Feist, if I didn't know it, I'd be an ungrateful dog."
+
+"Her papa can't realize, Mr. Feist, we haven't got a baby any more."
+
+"I--realize it, Mrs. Pelz."
+
+"You--you see, Roody?"
+
+"I--I--guess I'm the old-fashioned kind of a fellow, Pelz, when it comes
+to girls. I--I guess I do it the way they used to do it--the parents
+first--but--but--now that we--we're on the subject--I--I like your
+daughter, Pelz--my God! Pelz, but--but I like your little daughter!"
+
+An Augsburg clock ticked into a suddenly shaped silence, Mr. Pelz
+rising, Mr. Feist already risen.
+
+"I haven't got much besides a clean record and all that love or money
+can buy her, Pelz, but--well--you know me for what I am, and--"
+
+"Indeed we do, Mr. Feist! I always say to my husband my favorite of all
+the young men who come here is--"
+
+"You know what my standing--well, with men and in business is, Pelz, and
+as far as taking care of her goes, I can make her from a little princess
+into a little queen--"
+
+"The young man that is lucky enough to get Bleema, Mr. Feist--"
+
+"Not that the money part is everything, but if what I am suits you and
+Mrs. Pelz, I want to enter the ring for her. I might as well come out
+with it. I wouldn't for anything on earth have her know that I've spoken
+to you--yet--not till after I've spoken with her--but--well, there's my
+cards on the table, Pelz."
+
+Mr. Pelz held out a slow and rigid arm, one hand gripping, the other
+cupping Mr. Feist at the elbow.
+
+"It's the finest compliment I could pay to any man on God's earth to say
+it, Feist, but if it's got to be that my little baby girl has grown up
+to an age where she--"
+
+"She's already a year older than me when I married you, Roody."
+
+"If it's got to be, then there's one man on earth I can give her up to
+with happiness. That man is you, Feist."
+
+Into this atmosphere so surcharged that it had almost the singing
+quality of a current through it entered Miss Bleema Pelz, on slim silver
+heels that twinkled, the same diaphanous tulle of the photograph
+enveloping her like summer, her hair richer, but blending with the
+peach-bloom of her frock, the odor of youth her perfume.
+
+"Bleema darling, you're just in time!"
+
+"Hello, moms!"--in the little lifted voice trained to modulation, and
+kissing Mrs. Pelz in light consideration of powdered areas. "Hello,
+dads!"--tiptoeing and pursing her mouth into a bud. "Good evening,
+Mr. Feist."
+
+"Looks like I'm the left-over in this party," said Mr. Feist, slow to
+release her hand and wanting not to redden.
+
+"Naughty-naughty!" said Miss Pelz, with a flash of eyes to their
+corners, a flouncing of tulle, and then landing ever so lightly on her
+father's knee and at the immediate business of jerking open his tie.
+"Bad, bad dad! Didn't let Sato dress him to-night."
+
+"You little red head, you!"
+
+"Stop it! Hold up your chin."
+
+"Honey, we're all starvationed."
+
+"Lester'll be here any minute now."
+
+"Lester Spencer coming for dinner, Bleema?"
+
+"Surely. I dropped him just now at the Lions' Club to change his
+clothes. Now, don't get excited, dads; he's leaving right after dinner
+to catch his train for Horseshoe Bend."
+
+"I must tell Williams to lay another--"
+
+"I've already told him, mamma. Here he is now! Come on in, Lester;
+you're holding up the family. You've never met Mr. Feist, have you, the
+film king? You two ought to get acquainted--one makes the films and the
+other makes them famous."
+
+There was a round of greetings, Mr. Spencer passing a hand that had
+emerged white and slim through the ordeal of thousands of feet
+of heroics.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Pelz? Boss! Mr. Feist, glad to know you!"
+
+What hundreds of thousands of men, seeming to despise, had secretly, in
+the organ-reverberating darkness of the motion-picture theater, yearned
+over Mr. Lester Spencer's chest expansion, hair pomade, and bulgeless
+front and shirt-front! When Lester Spencer, in a very slow fade-out,
+drew the exceedingly large-of-eye and heaving-of-bosom one unto his own
+immaculate bosom, whole rows of ladies, with the slightly open-mouthed,
+adenoidal expression of vicarious romance, sat forward in their chairs.
+Men appraised silently the pliant lay of shirt, the uncrawling
+coat-back, and the absence of that fatal divorce of trousers and
+waistcoat.
+
+"I was telling my husband, Lester, my manicurist just raved to-day about
+you and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure of Silk.'"
+
+"Isn't that just the sweetest picture, moms?"
+
+"It certainly is! Mr. Pelz took me down to the projection-room to see
+its first showing, and I give you my word I said to him and Sol--didn't
+I, Roody?--'That picture is a fortune.' And never in my life did I fail
+to pick a winner--did I, Roody? I got a knack for it. Mr. Feist, have
+you seen 'The Lure of Silk'?"
+
+"Sorry to say I have not."
+
+"If you think that is a riot, Mrs. Pelz, you wait until you see the way
+they're going to eat me up in the court scene in 'Saint Elba.' I had the
+whole studio crying down there to-day--didn't I, Mr. Pelz? Crying like
+babies over the scene where I stand like this--so--overlooking--"
+
+"Say, Rosie, that's twice already Williams announced dinner is served."
+
+"Overlooking the--"
+
+"I hear Friedman & Kaplan made an assignment, Feist."
+
+"Come, Lester; you take me in to dinner. Rudolph, you go and get mamma.
+Bleema, you and Mr. Feist be escorts."
+
+In a dining-room so unswervingly Jacobean that its high-back chairs
+formed an actual enclosure about the glittering, not to say noble, oval
+of table, the dinner-hour moved through the stately procession of its
+courses. At its head, Mrs. Miriam Sopinsky, dim with years and the kind
+of weariness of the flesh that Rembrandt knew so well, her face even
+yellower beneath the black wig with the bold row of machine-stitching
+down its center, the hands veiny and often uncertain among the dishes.
+
+"Roody, cut up mamma's chicken for her. She trembles so."
+
+"Moms, let Williams."
+
+"No; she likes it when your father does it."
+
+Mr. Pelz leaned over, transferring his own knife and fork. In Yiddish:
+
+"Grandmother, I hear you've been flirting with Doctor Isadore Aarons.
+Now, don't you let me hear any more such nonsense. The young girls in
+this house got to walk the straight line."
+
+The old face broke still more furiously into wrinkle, the hand reaching
+out to top his.
+
+"Don't tease her, Roody; she likes to be let alone in public."
+
+MR. FEIST: The old lady certainly holds her own, don't she? Honest, I'd
+give anything if I knew how to talk to her a little.
+
+"No, Mr. Feist, mamma's breaking. Every day since her stroke I can see
+it more. It nearly kills me, too. It's pretty lonesome for her, up here
+away from all her old friends. Outside of my husband and Bleema, not a
+soul in the house talks her language except Sol and Etta when they
+come over."
+
+"She's my nice darling grandma," said Miss Pelz, suddenly pirouetting up
+from her chair around the table, kissing the old lips lightly and then
+back again, all in a butterfly jiffy.
+
+MRS. PELZ (_sotto to Mr. Feist_). Ain't she the sweetest thing with her
+grandmother?
+
+"Umh!" said Mr. Spencer, draining his wine-glass to the depth of its
+stem. "Mr. Pelz, believe me if the Atlantic Ocean was made out of this
+stuff, you wouldn't have to engage passage for me; I'd swim across."
+
+"You better learn how first," said Mr. Pelz. "You've cost me a fortune
+already in dummies for the water scenes."
+
+"It's a riot, Mr. Pelz, the way they go mad over me in that Pelham Bay
+scene in 'The Marines Are Coming.' I dropped into the Buckingham to see
+it last night, and before I knew it the house had it that I was present
+and was going wild over me. They had to throw the spotlight on the box."
+
+"I love that scene, too, Lester! Honest, I just squeeze up with
+excitement where you stand there at the edge of the deck and take the
+plunge into the water to rescue Norma Beautiful."
+
+"You mean a super for five a day takes the plunge."
+
+"Tell you another scene where I simply raise the roof off the house
+in--"
+
+MR. PELZ: Williams, pass Mr. Feist some more of them little cabbages.
+
+"Brussels sprouts, dad."
+
+MRS. PELZ: I guess you miss Norma Beautiful not playing with you in
+"Saint Elba," don't you, Lester? You and her are so used to playing with
+each other.
+
+"I was the one first suggested she wouldn't be the type to play
+Josephine, Mrs. Pelz. Too thin. I've got to be contrasted right or it
+kills me--"
+
+"Williams, a little more of that chicken stuffing. It's almost good
+enough to remind me how you and grandma used to make it, Rosie."
+
+"Speaking of 'Saint Elba,' Mr. Pelz, somebody must speak to Mabel Lovely
+about the way she keeps hogging center-stage in that scene with me on--"
+
+"There's no center-stage left to hog with you in the picture, Spencer."
+
+"She crowds me to profile. They want me full-face. If you'd put in a
+word to Sol to direct it that way! Other night, at the Buckingham, it
+was a riot every time I turned full-face. Just because a fellow happens
+to have a good profile is no reason why--"
+
+"Well, Feist, how does the war look to-day?"
+
+"Ugly, Pelz, ugly. Every hour this country lets pass with Belgium
+unavenged she is going to pay up for later."
+
+"It's not our fight, Mr. Feist."
+
+"Maybe it's not our fight, Mr. Spencer, but if ever there was a cause
+that is all humanity's fight, it is those bleeding and murdered women
+and children of Belgium. You're sailing over there yourself next week,
+Mr. Spencer, and I hope to God you will see for yourself how much of our
+fight it is."
+
+"Ain't things just simply terrible? Honest, I said to Roody, when I
+picked up the paper this morning, it gives me the blues before I
+open it."
+
+"Nobody can tell me that this country is going to sit back much longer
+and see autocracy grind its heel into the face of the world."
+
+"You're right, Feist! I think if there is one thing worse than being too
+proud to fight, it is not being proud enough to fight."
+
+"Lester Spencer, if you don't stop making eyes!"
+
+"Mr. Pelz, every time I drink to your daughter only with my eyes she
+slaps me on the wrist. You put in a good word for me."
+
+"Little more of that ice-cream, Feist?"
+
+"Thanks, Pelz; no."
+
+"You, Lester?"
+
+"Don't care if I do, Miss Bleema Butterfly."
+
+Mr. Pelz flashed out a watch. "Don't want to hurry you, Spencer, but if
+you have to catch that ten-o'clock train, by the time you get back and
+change clothes--"
+
+"You're right, Mr. Pelz; I'd better be getting on."
+
+Miss Pelz danced to her feet. "Mamma and papa will excuse us, Lester, if
+we leave before coffee. Come; I'll shoot you to the club."
+
+"Why, Bleema! George will bring the limousine around and--"
+
+"I promised! Didn't I promise you, Lester, that if you came up to dinner
+I'd drive you back to the club myself?"
+
+"She sure did, Mrs. Pelz."
+
+"Bleema, you stay right here and finish your supper. There's two
+chauffeurs on the place to drive Spencer around to his club."
+
+"But, dad, I promised."
+
+"Why, Bleema, ain't you ashamed? Mr. Feist here for dinner and you to
+run off like that. Shame on you!"
+
+"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Pelz. I'll stay around and be entertained by
+you and Mr.--"
+
+"I'll be back in twenty minutes, moms. Surely you'll excuse me that
+long! I want to drive him down in my new runabout. I promised. Please,
+moms! Dad?"
+
+"Ask your papa, Bleema; I--I don't know--"
+
+"Dad?"
+
+"You heard what I said, Bleema. No!"
+
+A quick film of tears formed over Miss Pelz's eyes, her lips quivering.
+"Oh, well--if--if you're going to be that mean--oh, you make me so
+mad--. Come on, Lester--I--I guess I can take you as far as the front
+door without the whole world jumping on me. Oh--oh--you make me so mad!"
+And pranced out on slim feet of high dudgeon.
+
+"Poor child!" said Mrs. Pelz, stirring into her coffee. "She's so high
+strung."
+
+"She's got to quit wasting her time on that conceited jackass," said Mr.
+Pelz, swallowing off his demi-tasse at a gulp. "Won't have it!"
+
+"It makes her papa mad the way the boys just kill themselves over that
+girl," said Mrs. Pelz, arch of glance toward Mr. Feist, who was stirring
+also, his eyes lowered.
+
+"Me, too," he said, softly.
+
+"Jealous!" flashed Mrs. Pelz.
+
+After an interval, and only upon despatching a servant, Miss Pelz
+returned, the tears frank streaks now down her cheeks.
+
+"Sit down, baby, and drink your coffee."
+
+"Don't want any."
+
+"Williams, bring Miss Bleema some hot coffee."
+
+"I'm finished, mother--please!"
+
+"I was telling Mr. Feist a while ago, Bleema, about your ambition to be
+a writer, not for money, but just for the pleasure in it. What is it you
+call such writing in your French, honey? Dilytanty?"
+
+"Please, mamma, Mr. Feist isn't interested."
+
+"Indeed I am, Miss Bleema! More interested than in anything I know of."
+
+"She's mad at her papa, Feist, and when my little girl gets mad at her
+papa there's nothing for him to do but apologize with a big kiss."
+
+Suddenly Miss Pelz burst into tears, a hot cascade of them that flowed
+down over her prettiness.
+
+"Why, Bleema!"
+
+"Now, now, papa's girl--"
+
+The grandmother made a quick gesture of uplifted hands, leaning over
+toward her, and Miss Pelz hiding her face against that haven of shrunken
+old bosom.
+
+"Oh, grandma, make 'em let me alone!"
+
+"Why, Bleema darling, I'm surprised! Ain't you ashamed to act this way
+in front of Mr. Feist? What'll he think?"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Pelz, don't mind me; she's a little upset--that's all."
+
+"You--you made me look like--like thirty cents before Lester
+Spencer--that--that's what you did."
+
+"Why, Bleema, do you think that if papa thought that Lester Spencer was
+worth bothering that pretty red head of yours about that he would--"
+
+"There you go again! Always picking on Lester. If you want to know it,
+next to Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt he's the biggest money-maker your
+old corporation has got."
+
+"What's that got to do with you?"
+
+"And he'll be passing them all in a year or two, you see if he
+don't--if--if--if only you'd stop picking on him and letting Uncle Sol
+crowd him out of the pictures and everybody in the company take
+advantage of him--he--he's grand--he--"
+
+"He's a grand conceited fool. If not for the silly matinée women in the
+world he couldn't make salt."
+
+"That shows all you know about him, papa! He's got big ideals, Lester
+has. He got plans up his sleeve for making over the moving-picture
+business from the silly films they show nowadays to--"
+
+"Yes--to something where no one gets a look-in except Lester Spencer.
+They're looking for his kind to run the picture business!"
+
+"Roody--Bleema--please! Just look at poor grandma! Mr. Feist, I must
+apologize."
+
+"He's a nix, an empty-headed--"
+
+"He is--is he? Well, then--well, then--since you force me to it--right
+here in front of Mr. Feist--Lester Spencer and I got engaged to-day!
+He's the only man in my life. We're going to be married right off, in
+time for me to sail for France with the company. He's going to talk to
+you when he gets back from Horseshoe Bend. We're engaged! That's how
+much I think of Lester Spencer. That's how much I know he's the finest
+man in the world. Now then! Now then!"
+
+There was a note in Miss Pelz's voice that, in the ensuing silence,
+seemed actually to ring against the frail crystal. She was on her feet,
+head up, tears drying.
+
+"Blee-Bleema!"
+
+"Moms darling, aren't you happy? Isn't it wonderful--moms?"
+
+"Roody! For God's sake, Bleema, you're choking your father to death!
+Roody, for God's sake, don't get so red! Williams--some
+water--quick! Roody!"
+
+"I'm all right. All right, I tell you. She got me excited. Sit down,
+Bleema--sit down, I said."
+
+"Pelz, if you don't mind, I think maybe I'd better be going."
+
+"You stay right here, Feist. I want you to hear every word that I'm
+going to say. If my daughter has no shame, I haven't, either. Williams,
+call Mrs. Sopinsky's maid, and see that she gets to her room
+comfortable. Sit down, Bleema!"
+
+"My God!--I can't believe my ears--Bleema and such a _goy_ play-actor--"
+
+"Please, Rosie!"
+
+"A _goy_ that--"
+
+"Rosie, I said, 'Please!' Bleema, did you hear me? Sit down!"
+
+Miss Pelz sat then, gingerly on the chair-edge, her young lips straight.
+"Well?"
+
+Her father crunched into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of
+it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with
+carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy
+for the moment, infatuated with--"
+
+"I'm not infatuated!"
+
+"Bleema, Bleema, don't talk to your father so ugly!"
+
+"Well, I guess I know my own mind. I guess I know when I'm in love with
+the finest, darlingest fellow that ever--"
+
+"You hush that, Bleema! Hush that, while I can hold myself in. That I
+should live to hear my child make herself common over a loafer--"
+
+"Papa, if you call him another name, I--I--"
+
+"You'll sit right here and hear me out. If you think you're going to let
+this loafer ruin your own life and the lives of your parents and poor
+grandmother--"
+
+"Papa, papa, you don't know him! The company are all down on him because
+they're jealous. Lester Spencer comes from one of the finest old
+Southern families--"
+
+"Roody, Roody, a _goy_ play-actor--"
+
+"'A _goy_ play-actor'! I notice, mamma, you are the one always likes to
+brag when the girls and fellows like Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt and
+Lester and--and all come up to the house. It's the biggest feather in
+your cap the way on account of papa the big names got to come running
+when you invite them."
+
+"Your mother's little nonsenses have got nothing to do with it."
+
+"She reproaches me with having brought about this _goy_ mix-up! Me that
+has planned each hour of that girl's life like each one was a flower in
+a garden, A young man, a grand young man like Mr. Feist, crazy in lo--"
+
+"Mrs. Pelz, for God's sake! Mrs. Pelz, please!"
+
+"Rosie, we'll leave Feist out of this."
+
+"Lester Spencer, papa, is one of the finest characters, if only you--"
+
+"I ask you again, Bleema, to cut out such talk while I got the strength
+left to hold in. It's a nail in my coffin I should live to talk such
+talk to my little daughter, but it's got to where I've got to say it.
+Lester Spencer and the fine character you talk about--it's free gossip
+in all the studios--is one of the biggest low-lifes in the
+picture-world. He has a reputation with the women that I'm ashamed to
+mention even before your mother, much less her daughter--"
+
+"Oh, I know what you mean! Oh, you're like all the rest--down on him.
+You mean that silly talk about him and Norma Beautiful--"
+
+"Oh my God, Roody, listen to her!"
+
+"I can clear that up in a minute. He never cared a thing for her. It was
+just their always playing in the same pictures, and that silly matinée
+public, first thing he knew, got to linking their names together."
+
+"Bleema--for God's sake--baby--what do you know about such?"
+
+"Bleema, you're killing your mother! Your mother that used to rock you
+in your cradle while she stitched on the machine to buy you more
+comforts--a mother that--"
+
+"Oh, if you're going to begin that!"
+
+"Your poor old grandmother--don't she mean nothing? You saw how she
+looked just now when they took her out, even before she knows what it's
+all about--"
+
+"I hope she never has a worse trouble than for me to marry the best--"
+
+Then Mr. Pelz came down with crashing fist that shattered an opalescent
+wine-glass and sent a great stain sprawling over the cloth.
+
+"By God, I'll kill him first! The dirty hou--"
+
+"Pelz, for God's sake, control yourself!"
+
+'I'll kill him, I tell you, Feist!"
+
+"Roody!"
+
+"You can't scare me that way, dad. I'm no baby to be hollered at like
+that. I love Lester Spencer, and I'm going to marry him!"
+
+"I'll kill him; I'll--"
+
+"Roody, Roody, for God's sake! 'Sh-h-h, the servants! Williams, close
+quick all the doors. Roody, for my sake, if not your child's! Mr. Feist,
+please--please make him, Mr. Feist!"
+
+"Pelz, for God's sake, man, get yourself together! Excitement won't get
+you anywheres. Calm down. Be human."
+
+Then Mr. Pelz sat down again, but trembling and swallowing back with
+difficulty. "She got me wild, Feist. You must excuse me. She got me wild
+--my little girl--my little flower--"
+
+"Papa--dad darling! Don't you think it kills me, too, to see you like
+this? My own darling papa that's so terribly good. My own darling sweet
+mamma. Can't you see, darlings, a girl can't help it when--when--life
+just takes hold of her? I swear to you--I promise you that, when you
+come to know Lester as I know him you'll think him as fine and--and
+gorgeous as I do. Mamma, do you think your little Bleema would marry a
+man who doesn't just love you, and dad, too? It isn't like Lester is a
+nobody--a high-salaried fellow like him with a future. Why, the best
+will be none too good! He loves you both--told me so to-day. The one aim
+in his life is to do big things, to make you both proud, to make his
+name the biggest--"
+
+"Feist--Feist--can't you talk to her? Tell her it's madness--tell her
+she's ruining herself."
+
+"Why, Miss Bleema, there's nothing much a--a stranger like me can say at
+a time like this. It's only unfortunate that I happened to be here. If I
+were you, though, I think I'd take a little time to think this over.
+Sometimes a young girl--."
+
+"I have thought it over, Mr. Feist. For weeks and weeks I've thought of
+nothing else. That's how sure I am--so terribly sure."
+
+"I won't have it, I tell you! I'll wring his--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, Pelz. If you'll take my advice, you'll handle this thing
+without threats. Why not, Miss Bleema, even if you do feel so sure, give
+yourself a little more time to--"
+
+"No! No! No!"
+
+"Just a minute now. If you feel this way so strongly to-night, isn't it
+just possible that to-morrow, when you wake up, you may see things
+differently?"
+
+"I tell you I'm going to France with him--on our honeymoon. It's all
+fixed if--moms--dad--won't you please--darlings--can't you see--my
+happiness--"
+
+"O God, Roody, were ever parents in such a fix?"
+
+"Listen to me, Miss Bleema, now: I'm an old friend of the family, and
+you don't need to take exception to what I'm going to suggest. If your
+heart is so set on this thing, all right then, make up your mind it's an
+engagement and--"
+
+"By God, Feist, no!"
+
+"Wait, Pelz, I tell you you're making a mistake with your state of
+excitement."
+
+"Let Mr. Feist talk, Roody."
+
+"Make up your mind as I was saying, Miss Bleema, that this engagement
+exists between you and--and this young man. Then, instead of doing the
+hasty thing and marrying next week, you remain here a happy, engaged
+girl until the company returns in three weeks, and meanwhile you will
+have time to know your own mind and--"
+
+"No! No! No! I do know it! It's all fixed we're--"
+
+"That's a fine idea of Mr. Feist's, Bleema darling. For mamma's sake,
+baby. For grandma's. If it's got to be an engagement, hold it until
+after he gets back. Don't go rushing in. Take time to think a little.
+France is no place for a honeymoon now--submarines and all."
+
+"Oh, I know! You hope he'll get sunk with a submarine."
+
+"Shame, Miss Bleema; shame!"
+
+"All mamma means, darling, is take a little time and get a--a trousseau
+like a girl like you has to have. If your heart is so set on it, can't
+you do that much to please mamma? That much?"
+
+"There's a trick. You want me to wait and then--"
+
+"Miss Bleema, is my promise to you enough that there's no trick? On my
+respect for your parents and grandmother, there's no trick. If it is
+only to please them, wait those few weeks and do it more dignified. If
+it's got to be, then it's got to be. Am I right, Pelz?"
+
+Mr. Pelz turned away, nodding his head, but with lips too wry to speak.
+
+"O my God, yes! Mr. Feist, you're right. Bleema, promise us! Promise!"
+
+"Just a matter of a few weeks more or less, Miss Bleema. Just so your
+parents are satisfied you know your own mind."
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Then, I say, if you still feel as you do, not even they have the right
+to interfere."
+
+"Promise us, Bleema; promise us that!"
+
+"I--I'll be engaged on your word of honor--without any fussing about
+it?"
+
+"An engaged girl, Miss Bleema, like any other engaged girl."
+
+"But dad--look at him--he won't--p-promise," trembling into tears.
+
+"Of course he will--won't you, Pelz? And you know the reputation your
+father has for a man of his word."
+
+"Will--will he promise?"
+
+"You do; don't you, Pelz?"
+
+Again the nod from the bitter inverted features.
+
+"Now, Miss Bleema?"
+
+"Well then, I--I--p-promise."
+
+On a May-day morning that was a kiss to the cheek and even ingratiated
+itself into the bale-smelling, truck-rumbling pier-shed, Mr. Lester
+Spencer, caparisoned for high seas by Fifth Avenue's highest
+haberdasher, stood off in a little cove of bags and baggage,
+yachting-cap well down over his eyes, the nattiest thing in nautical
+ulsters buttoned to the chin. Beside him, Miss Norma Beautiful, her
+small-featured pink-and-whiteness even smaller and pinker from the
+depths of a great cart-wheel of rose-colored hat, completely swathed in
+rose-colored veiling.
+
+"For a snap of my finger I'd spill the beans--that's how stuck on this
+situation I am!"
+
+Mr. Spencer plunged emphatic arms into large patch-pockets, his chin
+projecting beyond the muffle of collar.
+
+"Just you try it and see where it lands you!"
+
+Then Miss Beautiful from the rosy depths of hat began to quiver of
+voice, jerky little sobs catching her up.
+
+"I can't stand it! I b-bit off a b-bigger piece than I can swallow."
+
+"Now, Darling Beautiful, I ask you would your own Lester do anything
+that wasn't just going to be the making of his girl as well as himself?
+Is it anything, Angel Beautiful, he is asking you to do except
+wait until--"
+
+"I can't bear it, I tell you! A little red-haired kike like her! How do
+I know what I'm letting myself in for? There's only one ground for
+divorce in this state. What guarantee have I you'll get free on it?"
+
+"My guarantee, Pussy. You're letting yourself in for a pink limousine to
+match that pink sweetness of yours and a jumping-rope of pearls to match
+those sweet teeth of yours and--"
+
+"I want black pearls, Lester, like Lucille Du Pont's."
+
+"Black, then. Why, Angel Beautiful, you just know that there's not a
+hair on any head in the world, much less a red one, I'd change for one
+of my girl's golden ones. You think I'd ever have known the little
+Reddie was on earth if she hadn't just flung herself at my head! She
+could have been six Rudolph Pelz's daughters, and I wouldn't have had
+eyes for her."
+
+"But, Lester--she--she's right cute. What guarantee have I got?"
+
+"Cross my heart and swear to die, Angel! Haven't I already sworn it to
+you a thousand thousand times? You wouldn't want me to close my eyes to
+the chance of a lifetime--you know you wouldn't, Beautiful, when it's
+your chance as much as mine. Both ours!"
+
+"I--if only it was--over, Lester--all--over!"
+
+"What's three weeks, Angel Beautiful? The very day I'm back I'll pull
+the trick with the little red head, and then I'm for letting things
+happen quick."
+
+"And me, what'll I--"
+
+"I'm going to move you into the solid-goldest hotel suite in this here
+town, Pussy. I'm going to form the Norma Beautiful Film Corporation in
+my own girl's name, the first pop out of the box. Why, there's just
+nowhere Rudolph Pelz's son-in-law can't get his girl in the little while
+I'm going to stick."
+
+"How do I know? How do I know they won't find a way to hold you?"
+
+"Why, Darling Beautiful, when they're through with me, they'll pay me
+off in my weight in gold. Haven't you said things often enough about
+your boy's temper when he lets it fly? You think they're going to let
+me cut up nonsense with that little Reddie of theirs? Why, that old man
+would pay with his right eye to protect her!"
+
+"O God, it's rotten--a nice fellow like Pelz--a--"
+
+"It's done every day, Gorgeous Beautiful. Anyway, there's no way to
+really hurt the rich. Look at Warren Norton--the Talcott family paid
+Warren two hundred cool thousand to give her back quietly. It's done
+every day, Gorgeousness. Many a fellow like me has gotten himself roped
+into a thing he wanted to get out of quietly. That little girl lassoed
+me. I should have eyes for a little Reddie like her with the Deep-Sea
+Pearl of the world my very own. I'm going to marry you, too,
+Gorgeousness. I'm going to see you right through, this time. Jump right
+out of the frying-pan into the hottest, sweetest fire!"
+
+"I tell you I can't stand it! Promising to marry me with another one to
+see through before you get to me. It--it's terrible! I--"
+
+"There you go again! The Norma Beautiful Film Corporation doesn't tickle
+my pink rose on the eardrums! She doesn't want it! Wouldn't have it!"
+
+"I do, Lester; I do--only--only--I--the little Reddie--it's not right.
+She's a sweet little thing. I'm afraid, Lester--I think I must be going
+crazy! I wish to God I could hate you the way you ought to be hated. I
+tell you I can't stand it. You sailing off like this. The coming
+back--her--I'll kill myself during the ceremony. I--"
+
+"You create a scene down here and you'll be sorry!"
+
+"Lester--please!"
+
+"They'll be here any minute now. They're late as it is. Look--
+everybody's on board already! One more blast, and I'll have to go, too.
+You just kick up nasty at the last minute and watch me!"
+
+"I won't, Lester; I won't! I swear to God! Only, be good to me; be sweet
+to me, darling! Say good-by before they--she comes. I'm all right,
+darling. Please--please--"
+
+He caught her to him then, and back in the sheltering cove of baggage
+thrust back her head, kissing deep into the veiling.
+
+"Beautiful! Angel Beautiful!"
+
+"Swear to me, Lester, you'll see me through."
+
+"I swear, Beautiful."
+
+"Swear to me, or hope to die and lose your luck!"
+
+He kissed her again so that her hat tilted backward, straining at its
+pins.
+
+"Hope to die and lose my luck."
+
+"My own preciousness!" she said, her eyes tear-glazed and yearning up
+into his.
+
+"'Sh-h, Pussy; here comes Sol Sopinsky to hurry me on board. Funny the
+Pelz crowd don't show up. Quit it! Here they come! That's their car. Cut
+it--quick!"
+
+With noiselessly thrown clutch, the Pelz limousine drew up between an
+aisle of bales, its door immediately flung open. First, Mr. Pelz
+emerging, with an immediate arm held back for Mrs. Pelz. Last, Miss
+Pelz, a delightful paradox of sheer summer silk and white-fox furs, her
+small face flushed and carefully powdered up about the eyes.
+
+"There he is, dad! Over there with Norma and Uncle Sol!"
+
+"Don't run so, Bleema; he'll come over to you."
+
+But she was around and through the archipelago of baggage.
+
+"Lester darling! There was a tie-up at Thirty-third Street. I thought
+I'd die! Here's a little package of letters, love, one for each day on
+the steamer. Lester, have you got everything--are you all ready to leave
+your girlie--Hello, Norma--Uncle Sol! Lester are you--you sorry to leave
+you--your--"
+
+"Now, now--no water-works!"
+
+"My all! My own boy!" She drew him, to hide the quickening trembling of
+her lips, back behind the shelter of piled baggage.
+
+"Lester darling--I--I didn't sleep a wink all night! I--I'm so nervous,
+dear. What if a submarine should catch you? What if you meet a French
+girl and fall in--"
+
+"Now, now, Reddie! Is that what you think of your boy?"
+
+"I don't, dearest; I don't! I keep telling myself I'm a silly--What's
+three weeks? But when it means separation from the sweetest, dearest--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, Angel darling! There's the last blast, and your father's
+angry. See him beckoning! The company's been on board twenty minutes
+already. Look--there's the sailors lined up at the gangplank--Bleema--"
+
+"Promise me, Lester--"
+
+"I do! I do promise! Anything! Look, girlie: Miss Beautiful will feel
+hurt the way we left her standing. It isn't nice--our hiding this way."
+
+"I can't bear, dearest, to see you go--"
+
+"Look! See--there's David Feist come down, too. You don't want him to
+see my girl make a cry baby of herself over a three weeks' trip--"
+
+"You'll write, Lester, and cable every day?"
+
+"You just know I will!"
+
+"You won't go near the war?"
+
+"You just know I won't!"
+
+"You--"
+
+"Your father, Bleema--let's not get him sore, hiding back here. Come;
+they'll draw up the plank on me."
+
+"I'll be waving out from the edge of the pier, darling. I've got a
+special permit to go out there. I just couldn't stand not seeing my boy
+up to the last second. It's terrible for you to sneak off on a boat like
+this, darling, without flags and music the way it was before the war. I
+want music and flags when my boy goes off. Oh, Lester, I'll be working
+so hard on the sweetest little trousseau and the sweetest little--"
+
+"Bleema, please! There's Miss Beautiful overhearing every word. Please!"
+"Well, good-by, Miss Beautiful; don't walk off with the studio while
+we're gone--take care of yourself--"
+
+"Good-by--Mr. Spencer--_b-bon voyage_!"
+
+"Hi, Mr. Feist, mighty handsome of you to come down to see me off!"
+
+"Safe journey, Spencer! Remember you've got a precious piece of anxiety
+waiting back here for you."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Feist--isn't--isn't--it awful--submarine-time and all? I--I
+just can't bear it!"
+
+"Now! Now! Is that the way for a brave little girl to talk?"
+
+"Bleema, if you can't control yourself, you had better go sit in the
+car. I'm ashamed before the company."
+
+"Roody, the poor child!"
+
+"He--that's the only way papa talks to me these days--fault-finding!"
+
+"Now, now, Miss Bleema! Here--take mine; yours is all wet."
+
+Another blast then, reverberating into the din.
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+"Good-by, Lester--good-by, darling--cable every day--by--good-by--boy!"
+
+"Good-by, little Reddie! Thanks for the beautiful fruits and letters.
+Good-by, Mr. Pelz!"
+
+"Play fair in the picture, Spencer. Don't hog the scenes. Help instead
+of hinder Sopinsky."
+
+"Indeed I will, sir! Good-by, Mrs. Pelz!"
+
+"Good-by, Lester! God bless you, my boy! Take care of yourself, and
+remember my little girl is--"
+
+"Lester--Lester, a cable every day!"
+
+"Bleema, will you please let the man catch his boat? It's an
+embarrassment to even watch you."
+
+"Lester--Lester--"
+
+"Yes, yes; good-by, everybody!"
+
+"I'll be out at the pier-edge--wave back, darling!"
+
+"Yes, yes! Good-by, Miss Beautiful! By, all!" And then, from an upper
+deck, more and more shouted farewells.
+
+"They're moving! Come, Mr. Feist--please--with me--I've got the
+permit--don't let papa see us--come--the pier-edge!"
+
+"Sure! This way, Miss Bleema--here--under--quick!"
+
+Out in the open, May lay with Italian warmth over a harbor that kicked
+up the tiniest of frills. A gull cut through the blueness, winging it
+in festoons.
+
+"Over this way, Miss Bleema; we can see her steaming out."
+
+"Lester--good-by--Lester--a cable every day! I'll be waiting. Good-by!"
+
+All this unavailingly flung to the great hulk of boat moving so proud of
+bow and so grandly out to sea, decks of faces and waving kerchiefs
+receding quickly.
+
+"Good-by--darling--oh--oh--"
+
+"'Sh-h--'sh-h-h, Miss Bleema. Here--take another of mine. Yours is all
+wet again. My--what a rainy day! Here--let me dry them for you.
+Hold still!"
+
+"Oh--oh--cable every day, darling--write--oh, Mr. Feist--he
+don't see us--he's out of sight--don't wipe 'em so hard, Mr.
+Feist--you--you h-hurt!"
+
+Out toward the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer,
+cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay
+whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore
+the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of
+light from off everywhere--off smokestacks and polished railings, off
+plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank,
+to where gilt letters spelled out shiningly:
+
+"_LUSITANIA._"
+
+
+
+A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD
+
+How difficult it is to think of great lives in terms of the small
+mosaics that go to make up the pattern of every man's day-by-day--the
+too tepid shaving-water; the badly laundered shirt-front; the
+three-minute egg; the too-short fourth leg of the table; the draught on
+the neck; the bad pen; the neighboring rooster; the misplaced key; the
+slipping chest-protector.
+
+Richelieu, who walked with kings, presided always at the stitching of
+his red robes. Boswell says somewhere that a badly starched stock could
+kill his Johnson's morning. It was the hanging of his own chintzes that
+first swayed William Morris from epic mood to household utensils.
+Seneca, first in Latin in the whole Silver Age, prepared his own
+vegetables. There is no outgrowing the small moments of life, and to
+those lesser ones of us how often they become the large ones!
+
+To Samuel Lipkind, who, in a span of thirty years, had created and
+carried probably more than his share of this world's responsibilities,
+there was no more predominant moment in all his day, even to the signing
+of checks and the six-o'clock making of cash, than that matinal instant,
+just fifteen minutes before the stroke of seven, when Mrs. Lipkind, in
+a fuzzy gray wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed him awake,
+and, from across the hall, he could hear the harsh sing of his bath in
+the drawing.
+
+There are moments like that which never grow old. For the fifteen years
+that Samuel Lipkind had reached the Two Dollar Hat Store before his two
+clerks, he had awakened to that same kiss on his slightly open mouth,
+the gray hair and the ever-graying eyes close enough to be stroked, the
+pungency of coffee seeming to wind like wreaths of mundane aroma above
+the bed, and always across the aisle of hallway that tepid cataract
+leaping in glory into porcelain.
+
+Take the particular morning which ushers in our story, although it might
+have been any of twelve times three hundred others.
+
+"Sammy!" This upon opening his door, then crossing to close the
+conservative five inches of open window and over to the bedside for the
+kissing him awake. "Sammy, get up!"
+
+The snuggle away into the crotch of his elbow.
+
+"Sammy! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up! Sammy, a quarter to seven! You
+want to be late? I can't get him up!"
+
+"M-m-m-m-m-m!"
+
+"You want your own clerks to beat you to business so they can say they
+got a lazy boss?"
+
+"I'm awake, ma." Reaching up to stroke her hair, thin and gray now, and
+drawn back into an early-morning knob.
+
+"Don't splash in the bath-room so this morning, Sammy; it's a shame for
+the wall-paper."
+
+"I won't"--drawing the cord of his robe about his waist, and as if they
+did not both of them know just how faithfully disregarded would be that
+daily admonition.
+
+Then Mrs. Lipkind flung back the snowy sheets and bed-coverings, baring
+the striped ticking of the mattress.
+
+"Hurry, Sammy! I'm up so long I'm ready for my second cup of coffee."
+
+"Two minutes." And off across the hall, whistling, towel across arm.
+
+It was that little early moment sublimated by nothing more than the
+fusty beginnings of a workaday, the mere recollecting of which was one
+day to bring a wash of tears behind his eyes and a twist of anguish into
+his heart.
+
+Next breakfast, and to dine within reach of the coal-range which brews
+it is so homely a fashion that even Mr. Lipkind, upon whom such matters
+of bad form lay as a matter of course, was wont to remonstrate.
+
+"What's the matter with the dining-room, ma? Since when have
+dining-rooms gone out of style?"
+
+Pouring his coffee from the speckled granite pot, Mrs. Lipkind would
+smile up and over it.
+
+"All I ask is my son should never have it worse than to eat all his
+lifetime in just such a kitchen like mine. Off my kitchen floor I would
+rather eat than off some people's fine polished mahogany."
+
+The mahogany was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white
+spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within
+the soul of the housewife who achieves it--the lace-edged shelves, the
+scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss
+window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the
+sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white
+sink, hand-polished; the bland row of blue-and-white china jars spicily
+inscribed to nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. That such a kitchen could be
+within the tall and brick confines of an upper-Manhattan apartment-house
+was only another of the thousand thousand paradoxes over which the city
+spreads her glittering skirts. The street within roaring distance, the
+highway of Lenox Avenue flowing dizzily constantly past her windows, the
+interior of Mrs. Lipkind's apartment, from the chromos of the dear dead
+upon its walls to the upholstery of another decade against those walls,
+was as little of the day as if the sweep of the city were a gale across
+a mid-Victorian plain and the flow past the windows a broad river
+ruffled by wind.
+
+"You're right, ma; there's not a kitchen in New York I'd trade it for.
+But what's the idea of paying rent on a dining-room?"
+
+"Sa-y, if not for when Clara comes and how in America all young people
+got extravagant ideas, we was just as well off without one in our three
+rooms in Simpson Street."
+
+"A little more of that mackerel, please."
+
+You to whom the chilled grapefruit and the eggshell cup of morning
+coffee are a gastronomic feat not always easy to hurdle, raise not your
+digestive eyebrows. At precisely fifteen minutes past seven six mornings
+in the week, seven-thirty, Sundays, Mrs. Lipkind and her son sat down to
+a breakfast that was steamingly fit for those only who dwell in the
+headacheless kingdom of long, sleepful nights and fur-coatless tongues.
+
+"A few more fried potatoes with it, Sammy?"
+
+"Whoa! You want to feed me up for the fat boys' regiment!"
+
+Mrs. Lipkind glanced quickly away, her profile seeming to quiver. "Don't
+use that word, Sam--even in fun--it's a knife in me."
+
+"What word?"
+
+"'Regiment.'"
+
+He reached across to pat the vein-corduroyed back of her hand.
+
+"My little sweetheart mamma," he said.
+
+She, in turn, put out her hand over his, her old sagging throat visibly
+constricting in a gulp, and her eyes as if they could never be finished
+with yearning over him. "You're a good boy, Sammy."
+
+"Sure!"
+
+"I always say no matter what it is bad my life has had for me with my
+twenty-five years a widow, my only daughter to marry out six hundred
+miles away from me, my business troubles when I had to lose the little
+store what your papa left me, nothing ain't nothing, Sammy, when a
+mother can raise for herself a boy like mine."
+
+"You mean when a fellow can pick out for himself a little sweetheart
+mamma like mine."
+
+"Sammy, stop it with your pinching-me nonsense like I was your best
+girl!"
+
+"Well, ain't you?"
+
+She paused, her cup of coffee half-way to her lips, the lines of her
+face seeming to want to lift into what would be a smile. "No, Sammy;
+your mother knows she ain't, and if she was anything but a selfish old
+woman, she would be glad that she ain't."
+
+"'Sh! 'Sh!" said Mr. Lipkind, reaching this time half across the table
+for a still steaming muffin and opening it so that its hot fragrance
+came out. '"Sh! No April showers! Uh! Uh! Don't you dare!"
+
+"I ain't," said Mrs. Lipkind, smiling through her tear and dashing at it
+with the back of her hand. "For why should I when I got only everything
+to be thankful for?"
+
+"Now you're shouting!"
+
+"How you think, Sammy, Clara likes a cheese pie for supper to-night?
+Last week I could see she didn't care much for the noodle pudding I
+baked her."
+
+Mr. Lipkind, who was ever so slightly and prematurely bald and still
+more slightly and prematurely rotund, suffered a rush of color then, his
+ears suddenly and redly conspicuous.
+
+"That's--that's what I started to tell you last night, ma. Clara
+telephoned over to the store in the afternoon she--she thought she
+wouldn't come to supper this Wednesday night, ma."
+
+"Sammy--you--you and Clara 'ain't got nothing wrong together, the way
+you don't see each other so much these two months?"
+
+"Of course not, ma; it's just happened a few times that way. The
+trade's in town; that's all."
+
+"How is it all of a sudden a girl in the wholesale ribbon
+business should have the trade to entertain like she was in the
+cloak-and-suit chorus?"
+
+"It's not that Clara's busy to-night, ma. She--she only thought she--for
+a change--there's a little side table for two--for three--where she
+boards--she thought maybe if--if you didn't mind, I'd go over to her
+place for Wednesday-night supper for a change. You know how a girl like
+Clara gets to feeling obligated."
+
+"Obligated from eating once a week supper in her own future house!"
+
+"She asked I should bring you, too, ma, but I know how bashful you are
+to go in places like that."
+
+"In such a place where it's all style and no food--yes."
+
+"That's it; so we--I thought, ma, that is, if you don't mind, instead of
+Clara here to-night for supper, I--I'd go over to her place. If you
+don't mind, ma."
+
+There was a silence, so light, so slight that it would not have even
+held the dropping of a pin, but yet had a depth and a quality that set
+them both to breathing faster.
+
+"Why, of course, Sammy, you should go!"
+
+"I--we thought for a change."
+
+"You should have told me yesterday, Sammy, before I marketed poultry."
+
+"I know, ma; I--just didn't. Clara only 'phoned at four."
+
+"A few more fried potatoes?"
+
+"No more."
+
+"Sit up straight, Sam, from out your round shoulders."
+
+"You ain't--mad, ma?"
+
+"For why, Sammy, should I be mad that you go to Clara for a change to
+supper. I'm glad if you get a change."
+
+"It's not that, ma. It's just that she asked it. You know how a person
+feels, her taking her Wednesday-night suppers here for more than five
+years and never once have I--we--set foot in any of her boarding-houses.
+She imagines she's obligated. You know how Clara is, so independent."
+
+"You should go. I hear, too, how Mrs. Schulem sets a good table."
+
+"I'll be home by nine, ma--you sure you don't mind?"
+
+"I wouldn't mind, Sammy, if it was twelve. Since when is it that a
+grown-up son has to apologize to his mother if he takes a step
+without her?"
+
+"You can believe me, ma, but I've got so it don't seem like theater or
+nothing seems like going out without my little sweetheart mamma on one
+arm and Clara on the other."
+
+"It's not right, Sammy, you should spoil me so. Don't think that even if
+you don't let me talk about it, I don't know in my heart how I'm in
+yours and Clara's way."
+
+"Ma, now just you start that talk and you know what I'll do--I'll get up
+and leave the table."
+
+"Sammy, if only you would let me talk about it!"
+
+"You heard what I said."
+
+"To think my son should have to wait with his engagement for five years
+and never once let his mother ask him why it is he waits. It ain't
+because of to-night I want to talk about it, Sam, but if I thought it
+was me that had stood between you and Clara all these five years, if--if
+I thought it was because of me you don't see each other so much here
+lately, I--"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"I couldn't stand it, son. If ever a boy deserved happiness, that boy is
+you. A boy that scraped his fingers to the bone to marry his sister off
+well. A boy that took the few dollars left from my notion-store and made
+such a success in retail men's hats and has given it to his mother like
+a queen. If I thought I was standing in such a boy's way, who ain't only
+a grand business man and a grand son and brother, but would make any
+girl the grandest husband that only his father before him could equal, I
+couldn't live, Sammy, I couldn't live."
+
+"You should know how sick such talk makes me!"
+
+"I haven't got hard feelings, Sammy, because Clara don't like it here."
+
+"She does."
+
+"For why should an up-to-date American girl like Clara like such an
+old-fashioned place as I keep? Nowadays, girls got different ideas. They
+don't think nothing of seventy-five-dollar suits and twelve-dollar
+shoes. I can't help it that it goes against my grain no matter how fine
+a money-maker a girl is. In the old country my sister Carrie and me
+never even had shoes on our feet until we were twelve, much less--"
+
+"But, ma--"
+
+"Oh, I don't blame her, Sam. I don't blame her that she don't like it
+the way I dish up everything on the table so we can serve ourselves. She
+likes it passed the way they did that night at Mrs. Goldfinger's new
+daughter-in-law's, where everything is carried from one to the next one,
+and you got to help yourself quick over your shoulders."
+
+"Clara's like me, ma; she wants you to keep a servant to do the waiting
+on you."
+
+"It ain't in me, Sam, to be bossed to by a servant, just like I can't
+take down off the walls pictures of your papa _selig_ and your grandma,
+because it ain't stylish they should be there. It's a feeling in me for
+my own flesh and blood that nothing can change."
+
+"Clara don't want you to change that, ma."
+
+"She's a fine, up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to
+head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in
+her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old
+woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to
+Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such
+terrible fears for my boy and--and how things are now on the other side
+and--and--"
+
+"Now, now, ma; no April showers!"
+
+"An old woman that can't even be happy with a good daughter like Ruby,
+but hangs always on her son like a stone around his neck!"
+
+"You mean like a diamond."
+
+"A stone, holding him down."
+
+"Ma!" Mr. Lipkind pushed back, napkin awry at his throat and his eyes
+snapping points of light. "Now if you want to spoil my breakfast, just
+say so and I--I'll quit. Why should you be living with Ruby out in
+Marietta if you're happier here with me where you belong? If you knew
+how sore these here fits of yours make me, you'd cut them out--that's
+what you would. I'm not going over to Clara's at all now for supper, if
+that's how you feel about it."
+
+Mrs. Lipkind rose then, crossed, leaning over the back of his chair and
+inclosing his face in the quivering hold of her two hands. "Sammy,
+Sammy, I didn't mean it! I know I ain't in your way. How can I be when
+there ain't a day passes I don't invite you to get married and come here
+to live and fix the flat any way what Clara wants or even move down-town
+in a finer one where she likes it? I know I ain't in your way, son. I
+take it back."
+
+"Well, that's more like it."
+
+"You mustn't be mad at mamma when she gets old-fashioned ideas in her
+head."
+
+He stroked her hand at his cheek, pressing it closer.
+
+"Sit down and finish your breakfast, little sweetheart mamma."
+
+"Is it all right now, Sammy?"
+
+"Of course it is!" he said, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
+
+"Promise mamma you'll go over by Clara's to-night."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Promise me, Sammy; I can't stand it if you don't."
+
+"Alright, I'll go, ma."
+
+The Declaration of Economic Independence is not always a subtle one.
+There was that about Clara Bloom, even to the rather Hellenic swing of
+her very tailor-made back and the firm, neat clack of her not too high
+heels, which proclaimed that a new century had filed her fetter-free
+from the nine-teen-centuries-long chain of women whose pin-money had too
+often been blood-money or the filched shekels from trousers pocket or
+what in the toga corresponded thereto.
+
+And yet, when Miss Bloom smiled, which upon occasion she did
+spontaneously enough to show a gold molar, there were not only Hypatia
+and Portia in the straight line of her lips, but lurked in the little
+tip-tilt at the corners a quirk from Psyche, who loved and was so loved,
+and in the dimple in her chin a manhole, as it were, for Mr.
+Samuel Lipkind.
+
+At six o'clock, where the wintry workaday flows into dusk and Fifth
+Avenue flows across Broadway, they met, these two, finding each other
+out in the gaseous shelter of a Subway kiosk. She from the tall, thin,
+skylightless skyscraper dedicated to the wholesale supply of woman's
+insatiable demand for the ribbon gewgaw; he from a plate-glass shop with
+his name inscribed across its front and more humbly given over to the
+more satiable demand of the male for the two-dollar hat. There was a
+gold-and-black sign which ran across the not inconsiderable width of
+Mr. Lipkind's store-front and which invariably captioned his four inches
+of Sunday-news-paper advertisement:
+
+SAMMY LIPKIND WANTS YOUR HEAD
+
+As near as it is possible for the eye to simulate the heart, there was
+exactly that sentiment in his glance now as he found out Miss Bloom, she
+in a purple-felt hat and the black scallops of escaping hair, blacker
+because the red was out in her cheeks.
+
+He broke into the kind of smile that lifted his every feature,
+screw-lines at his eyes coming out, head bared, and his greeting
+beginning to come even before she was within hearing distance of it.
+
+There was in Mr. Lipkind precious little of Lothario, Launcelot,
+Galahad, or any of that blankety-blank-verse coterie. There remains yet
+unsung the lay of the five-foot-five, slightly bald, and ever so
+slightly rotund lover. Falstaff and Romeo are the extremes of what Mr.
+Lipkind was the not unhappy medium. Offhand in public places, men would
+swap crop conditions and city politics with him. Twice, tired mothers in
+railway stations had volunteered him their babies to dandle. Young
+women, however, were not all impervious to him, and uncrossed their feet
+and became consciously unconscious of him across street-car aisles. In
+his very Two Dollar Hat Store, Sara Minniesinger, hooked of profile, but
+who had impeccably kept his debits and credits for twelve years back
+under the stock-balcony and a green eye-shade, was wont to cry of
+evenings over and for him into her dingy pillow. He was so unconscious
+of this that, on the twelfth anniversary of her incarceration beneath
+the stock-balcony, he commissioned his mother to shop her a crown of
+thorns in the form of a gold-handled umbrella with a bachelor-girl
+flash-light attachment.
+
+There are men like that, to whom life is not only a theosophy of one
+God, but of one women who is sufficient thereof. When Samuel Lipkind
+greeted Clara Bloom there was just that in his ardently
+appraising glance.
+
+"Didn't mean to keep you waiting, Clara--a last-minute customer. _You_
+know."
+
+"I've been counting red heads and wishing the Subway was pulled by white
+horses."
+
+"Say, Clara, but you look a picture! Believe me, Bettina, that is some
+lid!"
+
+Miss Bloom tucked up a rear strand of curl, turning her head to extreme
+profile for his more complete approval.
+
+"Is it an elegant trifle, Sam? I ask you is it an elegant trifle?"
+
+"Clara, it's--immense! The best yet! What did it set you back?"
+
+"Don't ask me! I'm afraid just saying it would give your mother
+heart-failure by mental telepathy."
+
+He linked her arm. "Whatever you paid, it's worth the money. It sets you
+off like a gipsy queen."
+
+"None of that, Sam! Mush is fattening."
+
+"Mush nothing! It's the truth."
+
+"Hurry. Schulem's got a new rule--no reserving the guest-table."
+
+They let themselves be swept into the great surge of the underground
+river with all of the rather thick-skinned unsensitiveness to
+shoulder-to-shoulder contact which the Subway engenders. Swaying from
+straps in a locked train, which tore like a shriek through a tube whose
+sides sweated dampness, they talked in voices trained to compete
+with the roar.
+
+"What's the idea, Clara? When you telephoned yesterday I was afraid
+maybe it was--Eddie Leonard cutting in on my night again."
+
+"Eddie nothing. Is it a law, Sam, that I have to eat off your mother
+every Wednesday night of my life?"
+
+"No--only--you know how it is when you get used to things one way."
+
+"I told you I had something to talk over, didn't I?"
+
+They were rounding a curve now, so that they swayed face to face, nose
+to nose.
+
+A few crinkles, frequent with him of late, came out in rays from his
+eyes.
+
+"Is it anything you--you couldn't say in front of ma?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He inserted two fingers into his collar, rearing back his head.
+
+"Anything wrong, Clara?"
+
+"You mean is anything right."
+
+They rode in silence after that, both of them reading in three colors
+the border effulgencies of frenzied advertising.
+
+But when they emerged to a quieter up-town night that was already
+pointed with a first star, he took her arm as they turned off into a
+side-street that was architecturally a barracks to the eye, brownstone
+front after brownstone front after brownstone front. Block after block
+of New York's side-streets are sunk thus in brown study.
+
+"You mustn't be so ready to be put out over every little thing I say,
+Clara. Is it anything wrong to want you up at the house just as often as
+we can get you?"
+
+"No, Sam; it ain't that."
+
+"Well then, what is it?"
+
+"Oh, what's the use beginning all that again? I want to begin to-night
+where we usually leave off."
+
+"Is it--is it something we've talked about before, Clara?"
+
+"Yes--and no. We've talked so much and so long without ever getting
+anywheres--what's the difference whether we've ever talked it before
+or not?"
+
+"You just wait, Clara; everything is going to come out fine for us."
+
+Her upper lip lifted slightly. "Yes," she said; "I've heard that
+before."
+
+"We're going to be mighty happy some day, just the same, and don't you
+let yourself forget it. We've got good times ahead."
+
+"Oh dear!" she sighed out.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+He patted her arm. "You'll never know, Clara, the torture it's been for
+me even your going out those few times with Eddie Leonard has put me
+through. You're mine, Clara; a hundred Eddies couldn't change that."
+
+"Who said anybody wanted to change it?"
+
+He patted her arm again very closely. "You're a wonderful girl, Clara."
+
+They turned up the stoop of Mrs. Schulem's boarding-house, strictly
+first-class. How they flourish in the city, these institutions of the
+Not Yet, the Never Was, the Never Will Be, and the Has Been! They are
+the half-way houses going up and the mausoleums coming down life's
+incline, and he who lingers is lost to the drab destiny of this or that
+third-floor-back hearthstone, hot and cold running water, all the
+comforts of home. That is why, even as she moved up from the rooming to
+the boarding-house and down from the third-floor back to the
+second-story front, there was always under Clara Bloom's single bed the
+steamer-trunk scarcely unpacked, and in her heart the fear that, after
+all, this might not be transiency, but home. That is why, too, she paid
+her board by the week and used printed visiting-cards.
+
+And yet, if there exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among
+boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem's was of it. None of the boiled odors lay
+on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of
+better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but
+the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor.
+The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his
+bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two
+more of him were also genii of the basement dining-hall, two low rooms
+made into one and entirely bisected by a long-stemmed T of dining-table,
+and between the lace-curtained windows a small table for two, with
+fairly snowy napkins flowering out of its water-tumblers, and in its
+center a small island of pressed-glass vinegar-cruet, bottle of darkly
+portentous condiment, glass of sugar, and another of teaspoons.
+
+It was here that Miss Bloom and Mr. Lipkind finally settled themselves,
+snugly and sufficiently removed from the T-shaped battalion of eyes and
+ears to insure some privacy.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Lipkind, unflowering his napkin, spreading it across
+his knees, and exhaling, "this is fine!"
+
+There was an aura of authoritativeness seemed to settle over Miss Bloom.
+
+This to one of the black-faced genii: "Take care of us right to-night,
+Johnson, and I'll fix it up with you. See if you can't manage it in the
+kitchen to bring us a double portion of those banana fritters I see
+they're eating at the big table. Say they're for Miss Bloom. I'll fix it
+up with you."
+
+"Now, Clara, don't you go bothering with extras for me. This is
+certainly fine. Sorry you never asked me before."
+
+"You know why I never asked you before."
+
+"Why, you never saw the like how pleased ma was. She was the first one
+to fall in with the idea of my coming to-night."
+
+She dipped into a shallow plate of amber soup. "I know," she said, "all
+about that."
+
+"Ma's a good sport about being left at home alone."
+
+"How do you know? You never tried it until to-night. I'll bet it's the
+first time since that night you first met me, five years ago, at Jerome
+Fertig's, and it wouldn't have been then if she hadn't had the neuralgia
+and it was your own clerk's wedding."
+
+He laid down his spoon, settling back a bit from the table, pulling the
+napkin across his knees out into a string.
+
+"I thought we'd gone all over that, Clara."
+
+"Yes; but where did it get us? That's why we're here to-night, Sam--to
+get somewheres."
+
+He crumbed his bread. "What do you mean, Clara?"
+
+She forced his slow gaze to hers calmly, her hands outstretched on the
+table between them. "I've made up my mind, Sam. Things can't go on this
+way no longer between us."
+
+"Just what do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean that we've either got to act or quit."
+
+He was rolling the bread pills again, a flush rising. "You know where I
+stand, Clara, on things between us."
+
+"Yes, Sam, and now you know where I stand." The din of the dining-room
+surged over the pause between them. Still in the purple hat, and her
+wrap thrown back over her chair, she held that pause coolly, level of
+eye. "I'm thirty-one now, Sam, three weeks and two days older than you.
+I don't see the rest of my days with the Arnstein Ribbon Company. I'm
+not getting any younger. Five years is a long time out of a girl's life.
+Five of the best ones, too. She likes to begin to see her future when
+she reaches my age. A future with a good providing man. You and me are
+just where we started five years ago."
+
+"I know, Clara, and I'd give my right hand to change things."
+
+"If I'd been able to save a cent, it might be different. But I
+haven't--I'm that way. I make big and spend big. But you can't blame a
+girl for wanting to see her future. That's me, and I'm not ashamed
+to say it."
+
+"If only, Clara, I could get you to see things my way. If you'd be
+willing to try it with ma. Why, with a little diplomacy from you, ma'd
+move heaven and earth to please you."
+
+"There's no use beginning that, Sam; it's a waste of time. Why--why,
+just the difference in the way me and--and your mother feel on money
+matters is enough. There's no use to argue that with me; it's a waste
+of time."
+
+He lifted and let droop his shoulders with something of helplessness in
+the gesture. "What's the use, then? I'm sure I don't know what more to
+say to you, Clara. Oh, don't think my mother don't realize how things
+are between us--it's all I can do to keep denying and denying."
+
+"Well, you can't say she knows from my telling."
+
+"No; but there's not a day she don't say to me, particularly these last
+few times since you been breaking your dates with us pretty
+regular--I--well she sees how it worries me, and there's not a day she
+don't say to me, 'Sammy,' she said to me, only this morning, 'if I
+thought I was keeping you and Clara apart--'"
+
+"A blind man could see it."
+
+"There's not a day passes over her head she don't offer to go to live
+with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting
+her that time nearly killed her."
+
+"Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody."
+
+"It's my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn't no more live with
+Isadore Katz than she could fly. He's a fine fellow and all that, but
+she's not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and
+the children's food and things like Isadore loves to. She's used to her
+own little home and her own little way."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away
+from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. 'Sammy,' she wrote to
+me that time after ma's visit out there, 'I love our mother like you do,
+but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the
+housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better
+than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home
+and her own ways of doing.'"
+
+"I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that."
+
+"It's not nerve, Clara; it's the truth. Ruby's a good girl in her way."
+
+"What about you--ain't your life to be thought of? Ain't it enough she
+was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest
+in a ladies' ready-to-wear store out there?"
+
+"Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or
+any other kind further down-town that she'd want to pick out for
+herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to
+make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don't know it, but on your
+Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o'clock in the
+morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you'll like."
+
+"I'm not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she's a grand
+woman, and I admire a fellow that's good to his mother. I always say,
+'Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow
+will be good to his wife.'"
+
+"I'm not pretending to say ma mayn't be a little peculiar in her ways,
+but you never saw an old person that wasn't, did you? Neither am I
+saying it's exactly any girl's idea to start out married life with a
+third person in--"
+
+"I've always swore to myself, Sam, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, that
+if I can't marry to improve myself, I'm going to stay single till I can.
+I'm not a six-dollar-a-week stenog that has to marry for enough to eat.
+I can afford to buy a seventy-five dollar suit every winter of my life
+and twelve-dollar shoes every time I need them. The hat on my head cost
+me eighteen-fifty wholesale, without having to be beholding to
+nobody, and--"
+
+"Ma don't mean those things, Clara. It's just when she hears the price
+girls pay for things nowadays she can't help being surprised the way
+things have changed."
+
+"I'm not a small potato, Sam. I never could live like a small potato."
+
+"Why, you know there's nothing I like better than to see you dressed in
+the best that money can buy. You heard what I said about that hat just
+now, didn't you? Whatever it cost, it's worth it. I can afford to dress
+my little wife in the best that comes. There's nothing too good
+for her."
+
+"Yes; but--"
+
+"All ma needs, Clara, is a little humoring. She's had to stint so all
+her life, it's a little hard to get her used to a little prosperity.
+Take me. Why, if I bring her home a little shawl or a pockabook that
+cost, say, ten dollars, you think I tell her? No. I say, 'Here's a
+bargain I picked up for three ninety-eight,' and right away she's happy
+with something reduced."
+
+"Your mother and me, Sam, and, mind you, I'm not saying she isn't a
+grand old lady, wasn't no more made to live together than we was made to
+fly. I couldn't no more live her way than she could live mine. I've got
+a practical head on my shoulders--I don't deny it--and I want to improve
+ourselves in this world when we marry, and have an up-to-date home like
+every young couple that starts out nowadays."
+
+"Sure, we--"
+
+"That flat of yours up there or any other one under the conditions would
+be run like the ark. I'm an up-to-date girl, I am. There's not a girl
+living would be willing to marry a well-off fellow like you and go huck
+herself in a place she couldn't even have the running of herself or have
+her own say-so about the purse-strings. It may sound unbecoming, but
+when I marry I'm going to better myself, I am."
+
+"I--why--"
+
+"If she can't even stand for her own son-in-law walking into his own
+kitchen in his own house--Oh, you don't find me starting my married
+life that way at this late date. I haven't held off five years
+for that."
+
+Mr. Lipkind pushed back his but slightly tasted food, lines of strain
+and a certain whiteness out in his face. "It--it just seems awful,
+Clara, this going around in a circle and not getting anywheres."
+
+"I'm at the end of my rope, I am."
+
+"I see your point in a way, Clara, but, my God! a man's mother is his
+mother! It's eating up my life just as it's eating yours, but what you
+going to do about it? It just seems the best years of our life are
+going, waiting for God knows what."
+
+Hands clasped until her finger-nails whitened, Miss Bloom leaned across
+the table, her voice careful and concentrated. "Now you said something!
+That's why you and me are here alone together to-night. There's not
+going to be a sixth year of this kind of waiting between us. Things have
+got to come to a head. I've got a chance, Sam, to marry. Eddie Leonard
+has asked me."
+
+"I--thought so."
+
+"Eddie Leonard ain't a Sam Lipkind, but after the war his
+five-thousand-dollar job is down at Arnstein's waiting for him, and he's
+got a good stiff bank-account saved as good as yours and--and no strings
+to it. I believe in a girl facing those facts the same as any other
+facts. Why, I--this war and all--why, if anything was to happen to you
+to-morrow--us unmarried this way--I'd be left high and dry without so
+much as a penny to show for the best five years of my life. We've got to
+do one thing or another, Sam. I believe in a girl being practical as
+well as romantic."
+
+"I--see your point, Clara."
+
+"I'm done with going around in this circle of ours."
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"You know what I mean."
+
+The lower half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a
+kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard
+burning like brimstone before I let him have you!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"God! I don't know what to say--I don't know what to say!"
+
+"That's your trouble, Sam; you're so chicken-hearted you--"
+
+"My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings
+are to you, there's no power on earth can make me quit having to be him
+as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you--but if I
+got to pay with her happiness for--ours--then I never want happiness to
+the day I die."
+
+"In other words, it's the mother first."
+
+"Don't put it that way--it's her--age--first. It ain't what she wants
+and don't want; it's what she's got to have. My mother couldn't live
+away from me."
+
+"She could if you were called to war."
+
+There was something electric in the silence that followed, something
+that seemed to tighten the gaze of each for the other.
+
+"But I haven't been--yet."
+
+"The next draft will get you."
+
+"Maybe."
+
+"Well, what'll you do then?"
+
+"That's something me and ma haven't ever discussed. The war hasn't been
+mentioned in our house for two years--except that the letters don't come
+from Germany, and that's a grief to her. There's enough time for her to
+cross that bridge when we come to it. She worries about it enough."
+
+"If I was a man I'd enlist, I would!"
+
+"I'd give my right hand to. Every other night I dream I'm a lieutenant."
+
+"Why, there's not a fellow I know that hasn't beaten the draft to it and
+enlisted for the kind of service he wants. I know a half a dozen who
+have got in the home guard and things and have saved themselves by
+volunteering from being sent to France."
+
+"I wouldn't dodge the front thataway. I'd like to enlist as a private
+and then work myself up to lieutenant and then on up to captain and get
+right into the fray on the front. I--"
+
+"You bet, if I was a fellow, I'd enlist for the kind of home service I
+wanted--that's what Eddie and all the fellows are doing."
+
+"So would I, Clara, if I was what you call a--free man. There's nobody
+given it more thought than me."
+
+"Well, then, why don't you? Talk's cheap."
+
+"You know why, Clara, to get back to going around in a circle again."
+
+"But you've got to go, sooner or later. You've got a comfortable married
+sister and independent circumstances of your own to keep your mother;
+you haven't got a chance for exemption."
+
+"I don't want exemption."
+
+"Well, then, beat the draft to it."
+
+"I--Most girls ain't so anxious to--to get rid of their best fellows,
+Clara."
+
+"Silly! Can't you see the point? If--if you'd enlist and go off to camp,
+I--I could go and live near you there like Birdie Harberger does her
+husband. See?"
+
+"You mean--"
+
+"Then--God forbid anything should happen to you!--I'm your wife. You
+see, Sam?"
+
+"Why, Clara--"
+
+"You see what I mean. But nothing can happen this way, because if you
+try to enlist in some mechanical department where they need you in this
+country--you see, Sam? See?"
+
+"I--see."
+
+"Your mother would have to get used to things then, Sam--it would be the
+easiest for her. An old lady like her couldn't go trailing around the
+outskirts of a camp like your wife could. Think of the comfort it'll be
+to her to have me with you if she can't be. She'll get so used
+to--living alone--"
+
+"I--You mustn't talk that way to me, Clara. When I'm called to serve my
+country, I'm the first one that will want to go. I've given more money
+already than I can afford to help the boys who are at the front. So far
+as I'm concerned, enlisting like this with--with you--around, would be
+the happiest thing ever happened to me, but--well, you see for
+yourself."
+
+"You mean, then, you won't?"
+
+"I mean, Clara, I can't."
+
+She was immediately level of tone again and pushed back, placing her
+folded napkin beside her place, patting it down.
+
+"Well, then, Sam, I'm done."
+
+"'Done,' Clara?"
+
+"Yep. That lets me out. I've given you every chance to make this thing
+possible. Your mother is no better and no different than thousands and
+thousands of other mothers who are giving their sons, only, she is
+better off than most, because she's provided for. It's all right for a
+fellow's mother to come first, maybe, but if his wife isn't even to
+come second or third or tenth, then it's about time to call quits. I
+haven't made up my mind to this in a day. I'm done."
+
+"Clara--"
+
+"Ed has asked me. I don't pretend he's my ideal, but he's more concerned
+about my future than he is about anybody else's. If I'm ready to leave
+with him on that twelve-o'clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he's
+going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we'll be married
+there to-morrow night, and I'll settle down somewhere near camp as long
+as I can. He's got a good nest-egg if--God forbid!--anything should
+happen. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."
+
+"My God! Clara, this is awful! Eddie Leonard he's not your kind; he--"
+
+"I've given you first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A
+one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be
+a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and
+you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to
+your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and
+your mother's got hers in back of her. Now choose."
+
+"My God! Clara, this is--terrible! Why--I'd rather be a thousand boobs
+than take my mother's heart and tear it to pieces."
+
+"You won't?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Don't say that, Sam. Go home and--sleep on it. Think it over. Please!
+Come to your senses, honey. Telephone me at eleven to keep me from
+catching that twelve-o'clock train. Don't let me take it with Eddie.
+Think it over, Sam. Honey--our--future--don't throw it away! Don't let
+me take that twelve-o'clock train!"
+
+There were tears streaming from her eyes, and her lips, so carefully
+firm, were beginning to tremble. "You can't blame a girl, Sam, for
+wanting to provide for her future. Can you, Sam? Think it over. Please!
+I'll be praying when eleven o'clock comes to-morrow morning for you to
+telephone me. Please, Sam--think!"
+
+He dropped his face low, lower toward the table, trembling under the red
+wave that surged over him and up into the roots of his hair. "I'll think
+it over, Clara--my girl--my own girl!"
+
+As if the moments themselves had been woven by her flying amber needles
+into a whole cloth of meditation, Mrs. Lipkind, beside a kitchen lamp
+that flowed in gracious light, knitted the long, quiet hours of her
+evening into fabric, her face screwed and out of repose and occasionally
+the lips moving. Age is prone to that. Memories love to be mumbled and
+chewed over--the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the
+years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk.
+
+A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on
+the window-ledge, gold and unswerving of eye. The silence was like the
+singing inside of a shell, and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind.
+
+By nine o'clock she was already glancing up at the clock, cocking her
+head to each and every of night's creaks.
+
+By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering
+through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had
+neither shape nor identity. Once she went down a long slit of hallway to
+the front door, opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor
+that was papered in embossed leatherette, one speckled incandescent bulb
+lighting it sadly. There was something impregnable, even terrible to her
+in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments. She
+tiptoed, almost ran, poor dear! with the consciousness of some one at
+her heels, back to the kitchen, where at least was the warm print of the
+cat's presence; fell to knitting again, clacking her needles for the
+solace of explainable sound.
+
+Identically with the round moment of ten Mr. Lipkind entered, almost
+running down the hallway.
+
+"Hello, ma! Think I got lost? Just got to talking and didn't realize.
+Haven't been worried, ma? Afraid?"
+
+She lifted her head from his kiss. "'Afraid!' What you take me for? For
+why should I be worried at only ten o'clock? Say, I'm glad if you stay
+out for recreation."
+
+He kissed her again, shaking out of his coat and unwinding his muffler.
+"I could just see you walking the floor and looking out of the window."
+
+"Sa-y, I been so busy all evening I didn't have time to think. I'm not
+such a worrier no more like I used to be. Like the saying is--life is
+too short."
+
+He drew up beside her, lifting her needles off her work. "Little
+sweetheart mamma, why don't you sit on the big sofa in the front room
+where it's more comfortable?"
+
+"You can't make, Sammy, out of a pig's ear a silk stocking."
+
+He would detain her hands, his eyes puckered and, so intent upon her.
+
+"You had a good time, Sammy?"
+
+"You'd be surprised, ma, what a nice place Clara boards at."
+
+"What did they have to eat? Good cooking?"
+
+"Not for a fellow that's used to my boarding-house."'
+
+"What?"
+
+"I couldn't tell if it was soup or finger-bowls they served for the
+first course."
+
+"I know--stylish broth. Let me warm you up a little of my thick barley
+soup that's left over from--"
+
+He pressed her down. "Please, ma! I'm full up. I couldn't. They had pink
+ice-cream, too, with pink cake and--"
+
+"Such mess-food what is bad for you. I'm surprised how Clara keeps her
+good complexion. Let me fix you some fried--"
+
+"Ma, I tell you I couldn't. It's ten o'clock. You mustn't try to fatten
+me up so. In war-time a man has got to be lean."
+
+She sat back suddenly and whitely quiet. "That's--twice already to-day,
+Sam, you talk like that."
+
+He took up her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes
+lowered. "Why not? Doesn't it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me
+are--are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to
+each other there ain't no war?"
+
+She laid a quick hand to her breast. "What you mean, Sammy?"
+
+"Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty
+closely, all right."
+
+"Sammy, you mean something!"
+
+"Now, ma, there's no need to get excited right away. Think of the
+mothers who haven't even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go."
+
+"Sammy--you 'ain't been--"
+
+"No, no; I haven't."
+
+"You have! I can see it in your face! You've come home with some news to
+break. You been drafted!"
+
+He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. "I
+tell you I haven't! Can't you take my word for it?"
+
+"Swear to me, Sammy!"
+
+"All right; I swear."
+
+"Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!"
+
+"I swear--thataway."
+
+She was still pressing against her breathing. "You're keeping something
+back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad
+news--O my God!"
+
+"No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you've been
+getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you're going to be this
+excitable and get yourself sick, I won't talk over anything with you.
+I'll quit."
+
+"You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book."
+
+"I'm done. If I can't talk facts over with you without your going to
+pieces this way, I'm done. I quit."
+
+She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. "Sammy, what is it?
+If you don't tell me, I can't stand it. Sammy?"
+
+"Will you sit quiet and not get excited?"
+
+"Please, Sammy, I will."
+
+"It's this: you see, ma, the way the draft goes. When a fellow's called
+to war, drafted, he's got to go, no questions asked. But when a fellow
+enlists for war, volunteers, you see, before the government calls him,
+then thataway he can pick out for himself the thing he wants to be in
+the army. Y'see? And then maybe the thing he picks out for himself can
+keep him right here at home. Y'see, ma--so he don't have to go away. See
+the point?"
+
+"You mean when a boy enlists he offers himself instead of gets offered."
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"You got something behind all this. You mean you--you want to enlist."
+
+"Now, ma--you see, if I was to enlist--and stay right here in this
+country--with you near the camp or, as long as it's too rough life for
+you, with--with Clara there--a woman to look in on--"
+
+"Sammy--you mean it's enlistment!"
+
+Her voice rose in velocity; he could feel her pulse run beneath his
+fingers.
+
+"It's the best way, ma. The draft is sure to get me. Let me beat it and
+keep myself home--near you. We might as well face the music, ma. They'll
+get me one way or another. Let me enlist now, ma. Like a man. Right
+away. For my country!"
+
+Do you know the eyes of Bellini's "Agony in a Garden"? Can you hear for
+yourself the note that must have been Cassandra's when she shouted out
+her forebodings? There were these now in the glance and voice of Mrs.
+Lipkind as she drew back from him, her face actually seeming to shrivel.
+
+"No, Sammy! No! No! No!"
+
+"Ma--please--"
+
+"You wouldn't! You couldn't! No, Sammy--my son!"
+
+"Ma, for God's sake don't go on so!"
+
+"Then tell me you wouldn't! Against your own flesh and blood! Tell me
+you wouldn't!"
+
+"No, no, ma! For God's sake, don't take a fit--a stroke--no, no; I
+wouldn't--I wouldn't!"
+
+"Your own blood, Sammy! Your own baby cousins what I tucked you in bed
+with--mine own sister's children! Her babies what slept with you. Mine
+own sister who raised me and worked down her hands to the bone to make
+it so with my young husband and baby we could come to America--no--no!"
+
+"Mamma, for God's sakes--"
+
+"Three years like a snake here inside of it's eating me--all night--all
+day--I'm a good American, Sammy; I got so much I should be thankful
+for to America. Twenty-five years it's my home, the home where I had
+prosperity and good treatment, the home where I had happiness with your
+papa and where he lies buried, but I can't give you to fight against my
+own, Sammy--to be murdered by your own--my sister what never in her life
+harmed a bird--my child and her children--cousins--against each other.
+My beautiful country what I remember with cows and green fields and
+clover--always the smell of clover. It ain't human to murder against
+your own flesh and blood for God knows what reason!"
+
+"Mamma, there is a reason it--"
+
+"I tell you I'm a good American, Sammy. For America I give my last cent,
+but not to stick knives in my own--it ain't human--Why didn't I die
+before we got war? What good am I here? In my boy's way for his
+country--his marriage--his happiness--why don't I die?"
+
+"Ma, I tell you you mustn't! You're making yourself sick. Let me fan
+you. Here, ma, I didn't mean it. See--I'm holding you tight. I won't
+never let go. You're my little sweetheart mamma. You mustn't tremble
+like that. I'm holding you tight--tight--little mamma."
+
+"My boy! My little boy! My son! My all! All in their bed together.
+Three. Her two. Mine. The smell of clover--my boy--Sammy--Sam--" She
+fainted back into his arms suddenly, very white and very quiet and very
+shriveled.
+
+He watched beside her bed the next five hours of the night, his face so
+close above hers that, when she opened her eyes, his were merged into
+one for her, and the clasp of his hand never left hers.
+
+"You all right, ma? Sure? Sure you don't need the doctor?"
+
+She looked up at him with a tired, a burned-out, an ashamed smile. "The
+first time in my life, Sammy, such a thing ever happened to me."
+
+He pressed a chain of close kisses to the back of her hand, his voice
+far from firm. "It was me, ma. I'll never forgive myself. My little
+mamma, my little mamma sweetheart!"
+
+"I feel fine, son; only, with you sitting here all night, you don't let
+me sleep for worry that you ain't in bed."
+
+"I love it. I love to sit here by you and watch you sleep. You're sure
+you've no fever? Sure?"
+
+"I'm well, Sammy. It was nothing but what you call a fainting-fit. For
+some women it's nothing that they should faint every time they get a
+little bit excited. It's nothing. Feel my hands--how cool! That's always
+a sign--coolness."
+
+He pressed them both to his lips, blowing his warm breath against them.
+
+"There now--go to sleep."
+
+The night-light burning weakly, the great black-walnut bedstead
+ponderous in the gloom, she lay there mostly smiling and always
+shamefaced.
+
+"Such a thing should happen to me at my age!"
+
+"Try to sleep, ma."
+
+"Go in your room to bed, and then I get sleep. Do you want your own
+clerks should beat you to business to-morrow?"
+
+"A little whisky?"
+
+"Go away; you got me dosed up enough with such _Schnapps_."
+
+"The light lower?"
+
+"No. If you don't go in your room, I lay here all night with my eyes
+open, so help me!"
+
+He rose, stiff and sore-kneed, hair awry, and his eyes with the red rims
+of fatigue. "You'll sure ring the little bell if you want anything, ma?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"You promise you won't get up to fix breakfast."
+
+"If I don't feel good, I let you fix mine."
+
+"Good night, little sweetheart mamma."
+
+"You ain't--mad at me, Sam?"
+
+"Mad! Why, ma, you mustn't ask me a--a thing like that; it just kills me
+to hear you. Me that's not even fit to black your shoes! Mad at you?
+Why, I--I--Good night--good--night--ma."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At just fifteen minutes before seven, to the pungency of coffee and the
+harsh sing of water across the hall, Mrs. Lipkind in a fuzzy wrapper the
+color of her eyes and hair, kissed her son awake.
+
+"Sam! Sammy! Get up! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up in the morning!"
+
+The snuggle away and into the crotch of his elbow.
+
+"Sam-my--quarter to seven!"
+
+He sprang up then, haggard, but in a flood of recollection and remorse.
+"Ma, I must 'a' dropped off at the last minute. You all right? What are
+you doing up? Go right back! Didn't I tell you not to get up?"
+
+"I been up an hour already; that's how fine I feel. Get up, Sammy; it's
+late."
+
+He flung on his robe, trying to withdraw her from the business of
+looping back the bed-clothing over the footboard and pounding into
+the pillows.
+
+"I tell you I won't have it! You got to lay in bed this morning."
+
+"I'm all right, Sammy. Wouldn't I say so if I wasn't?" But she sat down
+rather weakly on the edge of the bed, holding the right side of her,
+breathing too hard.
+
+"I--I shouldn't have beat that pillow is all. Let me get my breathing.
+I'm all right." Nevertheless, she let him relax her to his pillow, draw
+the covers down from the footboard, and cover her.
+
+"This settles it," he said, quietly. "I'm going to get a doctor."
+
+She caught his hand. "If--if you want to get me excited for sure, just
+you call a doctor--now--before I talk with you a minute--I want to
+talk--I'm all right, Sammy, if you let me talk to you. One step to that
+telephone, and I get excited--"
+
+"Please, ma--"
+
+"Sammy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you listen to me and do like I want it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I--been a bad old woman."
+
+"That's right--break my heart."
+
+"I got a brave boy for a son, and I want to make from him a coward."
+
+"Ma--please!"
+
+"I laid saying to myself all night, a mother should have such a son like
+mine and make things hard for him yet!"
+
+"Please, get it all out of your head--"
+
+"From America what has given to me everything I should hold back my son
+from fighting for. In war, it ain't your own flesh and blood what
+counts; it's the flesh and blood of your country--not, Sam? I been
+thinking only it's my family affair. If God lets be such a terrible
+thing like war, there is somewhere a good reason for it. I want you to
+enlist, Sammy, for your country. Not for in an office, but for where
+they need you. I want you to enlist to get some day to be such a
+lieutenant and a captain like you used to play it with tin soldiers.
+I want--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, you know you don't mean it!"
+
+"I want it, I tell you. All night I worked on it how dumb I've been, not
+right away to see it--last night. With Clara near you in the camp--"
+
+"Ma, I didn't mean it that way; I--"
+
+"Clara near you for a woman to look in on, I been so dumb not to right
+away see it. I'm glad you let it out, Sam. I wouldn't take five thousand
+dollars it didn't happen--I feel fine--I want it--I--"
+
+"I didn't mean it, ma--I swear! Don't rub it in this
+way--please--please--"
+
+"Why, I never wanted anything in my life like I want this, Sammy--that
+you should enlist--a woman to look in on--I been a bad woman, Sammy,
+I--I--oh--"
+
+It was then that Mr. Lipkind tore to the telephone, his hands so
+frenzied that they would not properly hold the receiver.
+
+At eight o'clock, and without even a further word, Mrs. Lipkind breathed
+out quietly, a little tiredly, and yet so eloquent of eye. To her son,
+pleading there beside her for the life she had not left to give, it was
+as if the swollen bosom of some stream were carrying her rapidly but
+gently down its surface, her gaze back at him and begging him to stay
+the current.
+
+"Mamma! Darling! Doctor--please--for God's sakes--please--she wants
+something---she can't say it--give it to her! Try to make her tell me
+what she wants--she wants something--this is terrible--don't let her
+want something--mamma--just one word to me--try--try--O my
+God--Doctor--"
+
+A black arm then reached down to withdraw him from the glazed stare
+which had begun to set in from the pillow.
+
+By ten o'clock a light snow had set in, blowing almost horizontally
+across the window-pane. He sat his second hour there in a rather forward
+huddle beside the drawn shade of that window, the _sotto-voce_ comings
+and goings, all the black-coated _parvenus_ that follow the wake of
+death, moving about him. A clock shaped like a pilot's wheel, a boyhood
+property which had marked the time of twenty years, finally chimed the
+thin, tin stroke of eleven and after a swimming, nebulous interval,
+twelve. He glanced up each time with his swollen eyes, and then almost
+automatically out to the wall telephone in the hall opposite the open
+door. But he did not move. In fact, for two more hours sat there
+impervious to proffered warmth of word or deed. Meanwhile, the snow
+behind the drawn shade had turned to rain that beat and washed
+against the pane.
+
+Just so the iciness that had locked Samuel Lipkind seemed suddenly to
+melt in a tornado of sobs that swept him, felled him into a prostration
+of the terrible tears that men weep.
+
+At a training-camp--somewhere--from his side of a tent that had flapped
+like a captive wing all through a wind-swept night, Lieutenant Lipkind
+stirred rather painfully for a final snuggle into the crotch of an elbow
+that was stiff with chill and night damp.
+
+Out over the peaked city that had been pitched rather than built, and on
+beyond over the frozen stubble of fields, sounded the bugle-cry of the
+reveille, which shrills so potently:
+
+     I can't get 'em up; I can't get 'em up;
+     I can't get 'em up in the morn--ing!
+
+
+
+
+EVEN AS YOU AND I
+
+There is an intensity about September noonday on Coney Island, aided and
+abetted by tin roofs, metallic façades, gilt domes, looking-glass
+fronts, jeweled spires, screaming peanut and frankfurter-stands, which
+has not its peculiar kind of equal this side of opalescent Tangiers.
+Here the sea air can become a sort of hot camphor-ice to the cheek, the
+sea itself a percolator, boiling up against a glass surface. Beneath the
+tin roofs of Ocean Avenue the indoor heat takes on the kind of intense
+density that is cotton in the mouth and ringing in the ears.
+
+At one o'clock the jibberwock exteriors of Ocean Avenue begin fantastic
+signs of life. The House of Folly breaks out, over its entire façade,
+into a chicken-pox of red and green, blue and purple, yellow, violet,
+and gold electric bulbs. The Ocean Waves concession begins its
+side-splitting undulations. Maha Mahadra, India's foremost soothsayer
+(down in police, divorce, and night courts as Mamie Jones, May Costello,
+and Mabel Brown, respectively), loops back her spangled portière. The
+Baby Incubator slides open its ticket-windows. Five carousals begin to
+whang. A row of hula-hula girls in paper necklaces appears outside of
+"Hawaii," gelatinously naughty and insinuating of hip. There begins a
+razzling of the razzle-dazzle. Shooting-galleries begin to snipe into
+the glittering noon, and the smell of hot spiced sausages and stale malt
+to lay on the air.
+
+Before the Palace of Freaks, a barker slanted up his megaphone, baying
+to the sun:
+
+"Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u! The greatest show on the Island! Ten cents to see
+the greatest freak congress in the world. Shapiro's freaks are gathered
+from every corner of the universe. Enter and shake hands with Baron de
+Ross, the children's delight, the world's smallest human being; age,
+forty-two years, eight months; height, twenty-eight inches; weight,
+fourteen and one-half pounds, certified scales. Enter and see the
+original and only authentic Siamese Twins! The Ossified Man! You are
+cordially invited to stick pins into this mystery of the whole medical
+world. Jastrow, the world's most famous strong man end glass-eater, will
+perform his world-startling feats. Show about to begin! Our glass-eater
+eats glass, not rock candy--any one doubting same can sample it first.
+We have on view within, and all included in your ten-cents admission,
+the famous Teenie, absolutely the heaviest woman in captivity. We
+guarantee Teenie to tip the certified scales at five hundred and
+fifty-five, a weight unsurpassed by any of the heavyweights in the
+history of the show business. Come in and fox-trot with Teenie, the
+world wonder. Come in and fox-trot with her. Show begins immediately.
+Y-e-a-o-u! Y-e-a-o-u!"
+
+Within the Palace of Freaks, her platform elevated and railed in
+against the unduly curious, Miss Luella Hoag, all that she was so
+raucously purported to be, sat back in her chair, as much in the
+attitude of relaxing as her proportions would permit.
+
+There is no way in which I can hope to salve your offended estheticisms
+with any of Miss Hoag's better points. What matters it that her skin was
+not without the rich quality of cream too thick to pour, when her arms
+fairly dimpled and billowed of this creaminess, and above her rather
+small ankles her made-to-order red-satin shoes bulged over of it, the
+low-cut bosom of her red and sequin dress was a terrific expanse of it,
+her hands small cushions of it, her throat quivery, and her walk a
+waddle with it. All but her face; it was as if the suet-like inundation
+of the flesh had not dared here. The chin was only slightly doubled; the
+cheeks just a shade too plump. Neither was the eye heavy of lid or sunk
+down behind a ridge of cheek. Between her eyes and upper lip, Miss Hoag
+looked her just-turned twenty; beyond them, she was antediluvian,
+deluged, smothered beneath the creamy billows and billows of self.
+
+And yet, sunk there like a flower-seed planted too deeply to push its
+way up to bloom, the twenty-year-old heart of Miss Hoag beat beneath its
+carbonaceous layer upon layer, even skipped a beat at spring's
+palpitating sweetness, dared to dream of love, weep of desire, ache of
+loneliness and loveliness.
+
+Isolated thus by the flesh, the spirit, too, had been caught in
+nature's sebaceous trick upon Miss Hoag. Life had passed her by slimly.
+But Miss Hoag's redundancy was not all literal. A sixth and saving sense
+of humor lay like a coating of tallow protecting the surface of her. For
+nature's vagary, she was pensioned on life's pay-roll at eighteen
+dollars a week.
+
+"Easy money, friends," Miss Hoag would _ad lib_. to the line-up outside
+her railing; "how would some of you like to sit back and draw your wages
+just for the color of your hair or the size of your shoes? You there,
+that sailor boy down there, how'd you like to have a fox-trot with
+Teenie? Something to tell the Jackies about. Come on, Jack Tar, I'm
+light on my feet, but I won't guarantee what I'll be on yours. Step up
+and have a round."
+
+Usually the crowd would turn sheepish and dissolve at this Terpischorean
+threat. In fact, it was Miss Hoag's method of accomplishing just that.
+
+In the August high noon of the Coney Island Freak Palace, which is the
+time and scene of my daring to introduce to you the only
+under-thirty-years, and over-one-hundred-and-thirty-pounds, heroine in
+the history of fiction, the megaphone's catch of the day's first dribble
+of humanity and inhumanity had not yet begun its staring,
+gaping invasion.
+
+A curtain of heat that was almost tangible hung from the glass roof. The
+Ossified Man, sworn by clause of contact impervious alike to heat and
+cold, urged his reclining wheel-chair an imperceptible inch toward the
+neighboring sway of Miss Hoag's palm-leaf. She widened its arc, subtly.
+
+"Ain't it a fright?" she said.
+
+"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in a
+_patois_ of very south Italy.
+
+Then Miss Hoag turned to the right, a rail partitioning her from the
+highly popular spectacle of the Baron de Ross, christened, married, and
+to be buried by his nomenclature in disuse, Edwin Ross MacGregor.
+
+"Hot, honey?"
+
+The Baron, in a toy rocker that easily contained him, turned upon Miss
+Hoag a face so anachronistic that the senses reeled back. An old face,
+as if carved out of a paleolithic cherry-stone; the years furrowed in;
+the eyes as if they had seen, without marveling, the light of creation;
+even the hands, braceleted in what might have been portière-rings,
+leanly prehensile. When the Baron spoke, his voice was not unlike the
+middle C of an old harpsichord whose wires long since had rusted and
+died. He was frock-coated like a clergyman or a park statue of
+a patriot.
+
+Of face, a Chaldean sire; of dress, a miniature apotheosis of the
+tailor's art; of form, a paleolithic child.
+
+"Blow me to a ice-cream cone? Gowann, Teenie, have a heart!"
+
+Miss Hoag billowed into silent laughter. "Little devil! That's six
+you've sponged off me this week, you little whipper-snapper!"
+
+The Baron screwed up into the tightest of grimaces.
+
+"Nice Teenie--nice old Teenie!"
+
+She tossed him a coin from the small saucerful of them on the table
+beside her. He caught it with the simian agility of his tiny hands.
+
+"Nice Teenie! Nice old Teenie!"
+
+A first group had strolled up, indolent and insolent at the spectacle of
+them.
+
+"Photographs! Photographs! Take the folks back home a signed photograph
+of Teenie--only ten cents, one dime. Give the kiddies a treat--signed
+photograph of little Teenie!"
+
+She would solicit thus, canorous of phrase, a fan of her cardboard
+likenesses held out, invitational.
+
+Occasionally there were sales, the coins rattling down into the china
+saucer beside her; oftener a mere bombardment of insolence and
+indolence, occasionally a question.
+
+This day from a motorman, loitering in uniform between runs, "Say,
+skinnay, whatcha weigh?"
+
+Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the
+surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional
+pride--that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the
+beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the _ballerina_ for
+her double joints.
+
+"Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?"
+
+"O Lord!"--receding from the crowd and its trail of laughter. "O Lord!
+Excuse me. Good night!"
+
+A CHILD: Missus, is all of you just one lady?
+
+"Bless your heart, little pettie, they gimme a good measure, didn't
+they? Here's a chocolate drop for the little pettie."
+
+"Come away! Don't take nothing from her!"
+
+"I wouldn't hurt your little girl, lady. I wouldn't harm a pretty hair
+of her head; I love the kiddies."
+
+"Good-by, missus."
+
+"Good-by, little pettie."
+
+A MAN: Say, was you born in captivity--in this line o' work, I mean?
+
+"Law, no, friend! I never seen the light of the show business up to
+eight year ago. There wasn't a member of my family, all dead and put
+away now, weighed more 'n one-fifty. They say it of my mother, she was
+married at ninety pounds and died at a hundred and six."
+
+"You don't say so."
+
+"I was born and raised on a farm out in Ohio. Bet not far from your part
+of the country, from the looks of you, friend. Buckeye?"
+
+"Not a bad guess at that--Indiana's mine."
+
+"Law! to my way of thinking, there's no part of the Union got anything
+on the Middle States. Knock me around all you want, I always say, but
+let me be buried in the Buckeye State. Photographs? Signed photographs
+at ten cents each. Take one home to the wife, friend, out in Indiana.
+Come, friends, what's a dime? Ten cents!"
+
+The crowd, treacle-slow, and swinging its children shoulder-high, would
+shuffle on, pause next at the falsetto exhortations of the Baron, then
+on to the collapsibilities of the Boneless Wonder, the flexuosities of
+the Snake-charmer, the goose-fleshing, the terrible crunching of Jastrow
+the Granite Jaw. A commotion, this last, not unlike the steam-roller
+leveling of a rock road.
+
+Miss Hoag retired then back to her chair, readjusting the photographs
+to their table display, wielding her fan largely.
+
+"Lord!" she said, across the right railing, "wouldn't this weather fry
+you!"
+
+The Baron wilted to a mock swoon, his little legs stiffening at a
+hypotenuse.
+
+"Ice-cream cone!" he cried. "Ice-cream cone, or I faint!"
+
+"Poor Jastrow! Just listen to him! Honest, that grinding goes right
+through me. He hadn't ought to be showing to-day, after the way they had
+to have the doctor in on him last night. He hadn't ought to be eating
+that nasty glass."
+
+"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"
+
+"Yes, it's awful, Mabel! A fellow snagging up his insides like Jastrow.
+I never knew a glass-eating artist in my life that lived to old age. I
+was showing once with a pair of glass-eating sisters, the Twins Delamar,
+as fine a pair of girls as ever--"
+
+"Sure, the Delamars--I know 'em."
+
+"Remember the specialty they carried, stepping on a piece of plate glass
+and feeding each other with the grounds--"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Well, I sat up for three weeks running, with one of them girls--the
+red-haired one, till she died off of sorosis of the liver--"
+
+"Sure enough--Lizzie Delamar!"
+
+"Lida, the other one, is still carrying the act on street-fair time, but
+it won't surprise me to hear of her next. That's what'll happen to
+Granite Jaw one of these days, too, if he--"
+
+"Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw, ain't cha? M-m-n! Yum-yum! Pretty
+soft!" When the Baron mouthed he became in expression Punchinello with
+his finger alongside his nose, his face tightening and knotting into
+cunning. "Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw! Yum--yum--yum!"
+
+"Little devil! Little devil! I'll catch you and spank you to death."
+
+"Yum! Yum!"
+
+     "It's better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+"Little peewee, you! Jastrow ain't short. Them thick, strong-necked kind
+never look their height. That boy is five feet two, if he's an inch.
+Them stocky ones is the build that make the strong kind. Looka him lift
+up that cannon-ball with just his left hand. B-r-r-r-r! Listen how it
+shakes the place when he lets its fall! Looka! Honest, it makes me sick!
+It's a wonder he don't kill himself."
+
+     "Better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+The day, sun-riddled, stare-riddled, sawdusty, and white with glare,
+slouched into the clanging, banging, electric-pianoed, electrifying
+Babylonia of a Coney Island Saturday night. The erupting lava of a
+pent-up work-a-week, odoriferous of strong foods and wilted clothing,
+poured hotly down that boulevard of the bourgeoise, Ocean Avenue. The
+slow, thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and
+boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of
+machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion
+and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious
+kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific
+gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the
+chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of
+the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash
+of mustard to the frankfurter, the feather tickler in the eye, the
+barker to the ear, and the thick festival-flavored sawdust to the
+throat. By eleven o'clock the Freak Palace was a gelatinous congestion
+of the quickened of heart, of blood, of tongue, and of purse. The crowd
+stared, gaped, squirmed through itself, sweated.
+
+By twelve o'clock, from her benchlike throne that had become a
+straitjacket to the back, a heaviness had set in that seemed to thicken
+Miss Hoag's eyelids, the flush receding before doughiness.
+
+A weary mountain of the cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin
+paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out
+along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as
+ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature's huge joke--a practical
+joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust
+companies, and a china pig about ready to burst.
+
+"Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse," she said across the left rail, but
+her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.
+
+"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in Italian.
+
+The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled
+suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and
+kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an
+eighteen-inch carpenter's saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and
+around her.
+
+Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water,
+draining it. "Thank God," she said, "another day done!" and began
+getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the
+contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around
+with a rubber band.
+
+The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task.
+"This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg," he said.
+
+"It is that," said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small
+memorandum-book.
+
+"You!" cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. "You money-bag tied
+in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St.
+Louis World's Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with
+greenbacks."
+
+"You're crazy with the heat," said Miss Hoag. "What I've got out of this
+business, I've sweated for."
+
+Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. "Worth your
+weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!"
+
+"If you don't behave yourself, you little peewee, I'll leave you to plow
+home through the sand alone. If it wasn't for me playing nurse-girl to
+you, you'd have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave."
+
+"Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?"
+
+The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill
+arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind
+of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last
+of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins
+untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess
+Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly
+wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a
+rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew,
+and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed
+like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great
+sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the
+calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a
+compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest
+compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the
+undershot jaw was plunged forward, the jowls bonily defined.
+
+"Worth her weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Jastrow?
+She's worth her weight in gold."
+
+Passing within reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of
+reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail,
+capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron
+de Ross to a high-flung torch.
+
+"Lay off that noise," said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to
+dangle him head downward. "Lay off, or I'll drown you like a kitten!"
+
+With an agility that could have swung him from bough to bough, the Baron
+de Ross somersaulted astride the rear of Jastrow the Granite Jaw's great
+neck, pounding little futile fists against the bulwark of head.
+
+"Leggo me! Leggo!"
+
+"Gr-r-r-r! I'll step on you and squash you like a caterpillar."
+
+"Don't hurt him, Mr. Jastrow! Don't let him fall off backwards. He is so
+little. Teenie'll catch you if you fall, honey. Teenie's here in back
+of you."
+
+With another double twist, the Baron de Ross somersaulted backward off
+the shoulder of his captor, landing upright in the outstretched skirts
+of Miss Hoag.
+
+"Yah, yah!" he cried, dancing in the net of skirt and waggling his hands
+from his ears. "Yah, yah!"
+
+The Granite Jaw smoothed down the outraged rear of his head, eyes
+rolling and smile terrible.
+
+"Wow!" he said, making a false feint toward him.
+
+The Baron, shrill with hysteria, plunged into a fold of Miss Hoag's
+skirt.
+
+"Don't hurt him, Jastrow. He's so awful little! Don't play rough."
+
+THE BARON (_projecting his face around a fold of skirt_): Worth her
+weight in go-uld--go-uld!
+
+"He's always guying me for my saving ways, Jastrow. I tell him I 'ain't
+got no little twenty-eight-inch wife out in San Francisco sending me
+pin-money. Neither am I the prize little grafter of the world. I tell
+him he's the littlest man and the biggest grafter in this show. Come out
+of there, you little devil! He thinks because I got a few hundred
+dollars laid by I'm a bigger freak than the one I get paid for being."
+
+Jastrow the Granite Jaw flung the crook of his walking-stick against his
+hip, leaning into it, the flanges of his nostrils widening a bit, as
+if scenting.
+
+"You old mountain-top," he said, screwing at the up-curving mustache,
+"who'd have thought you had that pretty a penny saved?"
+
+"I don't look to see myself live and die in the show business, Mr.
+Jastrow."
+
+"Now you said something, Big Tent."
+
+"There's a farm out near Xenia, Ohio, where I lay up in winter, that I'm
+going to own for myself one of these days. I've seen too many in this
+business die right in exhibition, and the show have to chip in to bury
+'em, for me not to save up against a rainy day."
+
+"Lay it on, Big Tent. I like your philosophy."
+
+"That's me every time, Mr. Jastrow. I'm going to die in a little
+story-and-a-half frame house of my own with a cute little pointy roof, a
+potato-patch right up to my back steps, and my own white Leghorns
+crossin' my own country road to get to the other side. Why, I know a Fat
+in this business, Aggie Lament--"
+
+"Sure, me and the Baroness played Mexico City Carnival with Aggie
+Lament. Some heavy!"
+
+"Well, that girl, in her day, was one of the biggest tips to the scale
+this business ever seen. What happens? All of a sudden, just like
+that--pneumonia! Gets up out of bed, eight weeks later, skin and bones
+--down to three hundred and sixty-five pounds and not a penny saved. I
+chipped in what I could to keep her going, but she just down and died
+one night. Job gone. No weight. In the exhibit business, just like any
+other line, you got to have a long head. A Fat's got to look ahead for a
+thin day. Strong for a weak day. That's why I wish, Mr. Jastrow, you'd
+cut out that glass-eating feature of yours."
+
+"How much you got, Airy-Fairy? Lemme double your money for you!"
+
+"She's worth her weight in gold."
+
+"Lemme double it!"
+
+"Like fun I will. A spendthrift like you!"
+
+"Which way you going?"
+
+"We always go home by the beach. Shapiro made it a rule that the Bigs
+and Littles can't ever show themselves on Ocean Avenue."
+
+"Come on, you little flea; I'll ride you up the beach on my shoulder."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, you--you going to walk home with me--and--Baron?"
+
+"Come on was what I said."
+
+He mounted the Baron de Ross to his bulge of shoulder with veriest toss,
+Miss Hoag, in a multi-fold cape that was a merciful shroud to the bulk
+of her, descending from the platform. The place had emptied itself of
+its fantastic congress of nature's pranks, only the grotesque print of
+it remaining. The painted snake-chests closed. The array of gustatory
+swords, each in flannelet slip-cover. The wild man's cage, empty. The
+tiny velocipede of the Baron de Ross, upside down against rust. A hall
+of wonder here. A cave of distorted fancy. The Land of the Cow Jumped
+over the Moon and the Dish Ran away with the Spoon.
+
+Outside, a moon, something bridal in its whiteness, beat down upon a
+kicked-up stretch of beach, the banana-skins, the pop-corn boxes, the
+gambados of erstwhile revelers violently printed into its sands. A
+platinum-colored sea undulated in.
+
+The leaping, bounding outline of Luna Park winked out even as they
+emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist.
+There was a new breeze, spicily cool.
+
+Miss Hoag breathed out, "Ain't this something grand?"
+
+"Giddy-ap!" cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of
+the Granite Jaw's head. "Giddy-ap!"
+
+They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria--as motley a
+threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.
+
+"How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I
+never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession
+always stops there."
+
+"Good as the next," said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.
+
+"I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I
+was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always
+call me 'the Doc' around exhibits. I say--but you just ought to heard
+yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself--"
+
+"They had me crazy with pain."
+
+"You wasn't so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the
+bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at
+Albino, didn't we, Baron?"
+
+THE BARON _(impish in the moonlight)_: He fell for a cotton-top.
+
+"He didn't yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?"
+
+"It's this darn business," said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of
+sand-spray with each stride. "I'm punctured up like a tire."
+
+"I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you'd only cut out the
+glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong
+act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your
+muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it--it's a
+sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You
+ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature."
+
+"Yeh--and cut down my act to half-pay. I'd be full of them
+tricks--wouldn't I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me
+the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I'd
+be a, sweet boob, wouldn't I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need
+money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!"
+
+"What's money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain't human or freak nature to
+digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!"
+
+Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:
+
+"Gr-r-r-r-r!"
+
+"She's sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of 'em."
+
+     "Better to have loved a short man
+      Than never to have loved atall."
+
+"Baron, I--I'll spank!" "Worth her weight in gold!"
+
+"Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?" "Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the
+Baron's only tormenting me."
+
+"She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks." "Sure I got a few
+dollars saved, and I ain't ashamed of it. I've had steady work in this
+business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in
+Ohio and made me the offer, but that's no sign I can be in it eight
+years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved."
+
+"Well, whatta you know--a big tent like you?"
+
+"Ain't a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain't I--ain't I
+just like any other--girl--twenty years old--ain't I just
+like--other--girls--underneath all this?"
+
+"Sure, sure!" said Mr. Jastrow. "How much you to the good, little one?"
+
+"I've about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig."
+
+"'Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better
+lemme double your money for you!"
+
+"Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain't you the torment, too?"
+
+"Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as
+your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get
+down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and
+take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good!
+Good night!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol's poison. Mr.
+Jastrow--please--you mustn't!"
+
+"Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say--have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!"
+
+"No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don't take the Baron. The little fellow can't
+stand alcohol. His baroness don't want it. Anyways, it's against the
+rules--please--"
+
+"You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a
+gentleman. 'Leven hundred to the good! Say, I'd see a lady as far as the
+devil on that. Good night!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced
+packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over
+veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly
+in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from
+without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted
+pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the
+switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his
+first-floor back.
+
+"Y'all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?"
+
+The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted,
+the turmoil of little lines scattering.
+
+"Aw!" he said. "Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!"
+
+A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag's glance and, suddenly gaining
+rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.
+
+"I'm human, Baron. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm human."
+
+"Now what did I do, Teenie?"
+
+"It--it ain't you, Baron; it--it ain't anybody. It--it's--only I just
+wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways--making our kind. Where
+do we belong--"
+
+"Aw, you're a great Heavy, Teenie--and it's the Bigs and the Littles got
+the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How'd you like to be
+hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How'd you like to let 'em stick
+pins in you all for their ten cents' worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a
+girl's a fool to waste any heartache gettin' stuck on him. That old
+boy's going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How'd
+you like to chew glass because it's big money and then drink it up so
+fast you'd got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor's
+prescription--"
+
+The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag's cheeks, bouncing off to
+the cape.
+
+"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With
+us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten
+million dollars to me--twenty millions? Last night when I went in to
+offer him help--him in the same business and that ought to be used to
+me--right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every
+time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"
+
+"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he--"
+
+'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind
+getting the horrors just to look at me!"
+
+"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating
+you--you're sweet on the Granite Jaw--"
+
+Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the
+silence re-echoed sharply.
+
+"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute
+blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears
+staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"
+
+Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an
+immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white
+water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light
+where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was
+bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her
+mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at
+herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an
+inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing
+it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A
+voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp
+dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge.
+Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the
+business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.
+
+Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the
+voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.
+
+"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's
+sakes--quick--down in his room!"
+
+In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss
+Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.
+
+"Teenie! For God's sakes--quick! He's yellin' for you--"
+
+"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum--coming--coming--coming!"
+
+In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather
+futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling
+above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking
+group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that
+overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.
+
+THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six
+months.
+
+MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!
+
+THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?
+
+THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago
+from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He's in debt already to half
+the exhibit.
+
+THE LANDLADY: He's two weeks in arrears. Not that I'm pestering the poor
+devil now, but Gawd knows I--need--
+
+THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?
+
+MISS HOAG (_turning and stooping_): 'Ain't you got no relations or
+friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act?
+Are they friends of yours? 'Ain't you got no relatives, no--no friends,
+maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who's he? 'Ain't you,
+Jastrow, got no relations?
+
+The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward
+the wall, palm slapping out against it.
+
+"Hell!" said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.
+
+THE DOCTOR (_drawing down his shirt-sleeves_): I'll have an ambulance
+around in twenty minutes.
+
+MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?
+
+THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.
+
+THE LANDLADY (_apron up over her head_): Poor fellow! Poor handsome
+fellow!
+
+MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!
+
+THE DOCTOR (_rather tiredly_): Sorry, madam, but there is no
+alternative.
+
+MISS HOAG: No, no! I'll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?
+
+THE BARON: Yeh. I'll throw in a tenner myself. Don't throw the poor
+devil to charity. We'll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars
+for a nigger wild man, once when--
+
+THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man
+needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it
+is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air,
+fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!
+
+Miss HOAG: That's me, Doc! That's me! I'm going to fix just that for
+him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means
+and a place out in Ohio I can rent 'til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh
+milk! Leghorns! I'll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I
+was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means.
+I'll pull him through, Doctor. I'll pull him through!
+
+THE BARON: Good God! Teenie--you crazy--
+
+FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an
+ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with
+rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering
+of birds--the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape
+moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might
+have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of
+slant, dipped down over the window, giving the façade the expression of
+a coolie under peaked hat.
+
+"Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind
+staggers?"
+
+"I didn't know it was in your eyes, honey. There--that better?"
+
+Silence.
+
+A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow.
+A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of
+white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble
+mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and
+hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the
+figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.
+
+"That better, Jas?" Silence. "Better? That's good! Now for the boy's
+supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up
+fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?"
+
+Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather
+terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow
+rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.
+
+"Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before
+I get ugly."
+
+"Oh, Jastrow honey, don't begin that. Please, Jastrow, don't begin
+that. You been so good all day, honey--"
+
+"Get me a swig," he repeated through set teeth. "You and a boob country
+quack of a doctor ain't going to own my soul. I'll bust up the place
+again. I ain't all dead yet. Get me a swig--quick, too."
+
+"Jas, there ain't none."
+
+"There is!"
+
+"That's just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine.
+That's medicine, Jas; it ain't to be took like drink. You know what the
+doc said last time. He ain't responsible if you disobey. I
+ain't--neither. Please, Jas!"
+
+"I know a thing or two about the deal I'm getting around here. No quack
+boob is going to own my soul."
+
+"Ain't it enough the way you nearly died last time, Jas? Honest, didn't
+that teach you a lesson? Be good, Jas. Don't scare poor old Teenie all
+alone here with you. Looka out there through the door. Ain't it
+something grand? Honest, Jas, I just never get tired looking. See them
+low little hills out there. I always say they look like chiffon this
+time of evening. Don't they? Just looka the whole fields out there, so
+still--like--like a old horse standing up dozing. Smell! Listen to the
+little birds! Ain't we happy out here, me and my boy that's getting
+well so fine?"
+
+Then Jastrow the Granite Jaw began to whimper, half-moans engendered by
+weakness. "Put me out of my misery. Shoot!"
+
+"Jas--Jas--ain't that just an awful way for you to talk? Ain't that
+just terrible to say to your poor old Big Tent?"
+
+She smoothed out his pillow, and drew out his cot on ready casters,
+closer toward the open door.
+
+"See, Jas--honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When
+I was a kid on my pap's farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge,
+instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a
+heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or
+something and look and look and look. There's something about this soft
+kind of scenery that a person that's born in it never gets tired of.
+Why, I've exhibited out in California right under the nose of the
+highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time."
+
+"I'm a lump--that's what I am. Nine months of laying. I'm a lump--on a
+woman, too."
+
+"Why, Jas, Teenie's proud to have you on--on her. 'Ain't we got plans
+for each other after--you get well? Why, half the time I'm just in
+heaven over that. That's why, honey, if only you won't let yourself get
+setbacks! That's all the doctor says is between you and getting well.
+That's all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go
+against the doctor's orders. Last week your eating that steak--that
+drink you stole--ain't you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and
+broke the lock? You--you mustn't ever again, Jas, make me go against
+the doctor."
+
+"I gets crazy. Crazy with laying."
+
+"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make
+first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it.
+Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it
+would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for
+medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those
+months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting
+well, the--the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start
+that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The
+doctor told me, honey--honest, he did--one of them spells--from liquor
+could--could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way
+you are!"
+
+"I'm a lump; that's what I am."
+
+"You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world."
+
+"Sponging off a woman!"
+
+"'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I
+like that!"
+
+"Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!"
+
+"Jas--Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a
+man-nurse out here--honest I am!"
+
+"A swig, Teenie."
+
+"Please, Jas--it's only for bad spells--five drops mixed up in your
+medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells."
+
+"Stingy gut!"
+
+"Looka down there, honey--there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether
+again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up
+the road."
+
+"Stingy gut!"
+
+"You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten
+bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the
+doctor says is best, Jas."
+
+"'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss
+over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to
+having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles."
+
+"Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow
+this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and
+nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money
+he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going
+to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas,
+never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?"
+
+He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand,
+white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.
+
+"Nice old Big Tent!"
+
+"That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells,
+your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you."
+
+"I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly."
+
+"I know, Jas--I know--anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick
+coming--a--tub like me to have--you."
+
+She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own
+gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning
+to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,
+
+"If--if not for one thing, Jas, you know--you know what? I think if a
+person was any happier than me, she--she'd die."
+
+"Let's play I'm Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come
+on; let's kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie--"
+
+"Why don't you ask me, Jas, except for what I'd be the happiest girl?
+Well, it's this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you
+couldn't see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so--so you
+got to look at me!"
+
+"You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at
+you--that's how used a fellow can get to anything. I'm going to square
+it up with you, too."
+
+"You mean it's me will square it with you, Jas--you see if I don't. Why,
+there'll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness
+we're going to have, Jas. I'm going to make this the kinda little home
+you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk
+furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and
+the money beginning to come in. I'm even going to fix up the little
+trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old
+exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit
+us. Just think, Jas--a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it's funny,
+but there's not one thing scares me about all these months on the place
+alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares
+sometimes that we--we're back exhibiting. That's why I want to keep open
+house for them that ain't as lucky as us. Honest, Jas--I--I just can't
+think it's real, not, anyways, till we've paid down six hundred and--the
+fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side 'fore
+comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I--I'll make it
+square with you. You'll never have a sorry day for it!"
+
+"You're all right, Big Tent," said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly,
+lips twitching.
+
+"Ain't you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?"
+
+"A little swig, Teenie--a little one, is all I ask."
+
+"No, no--please, Jastrow; don't begin--just as I had you forgetting."
+
+"It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack
+country boob does. I'm a freak, I am--a prize concession that has to be
+treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different
+man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I'm a
+freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there's nothing like a swig for
+strength."
+
+"Not for you! It's poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what
+they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch
+out--just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to
+have. Wouldn't I give it to you otherwise--wouldn't I?"
+
+"Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!"
+
+"No, no, Jas! No, no, no!"
+
+Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his
+hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.
+
+"Gimme!" he said. "I've done it before and I'll do it now--smash up the
+place! Gimme! You're getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy.
+Gimme--you hear--gimme!"
+
+"Jas--for God's sakes--no--no!"
+
+"Gimme! By God! you hear--gimme!" There was a wrenching movement of his
+body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held
+forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something
+glittering, something steel.
+
+"Now," he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth--"now
+gimme, or by God--"
+
+"Jas--Jas--for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun?
+Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning--over to my trunk for my
+watch-dog? Gimme that gun--Jas! You--you're crazy--Jas!"
+
+"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing
+pointing? Well, gimme quick."
+
+"Jas--"
+
+"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly _I'm ugly!_"
+
+"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed,
+don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow;
+it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going.
+Wait--wait--Teenie's going--"
+
+She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.
+
+"Jas honey, won't you please--"
+
+"Gimme, was what I said--gimme and quick!"
+
+Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he
+drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against
+his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.
+
+She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the
+bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.
+
+"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like
+it."
+
+"Jas--Jas, what have you done?"
+
+"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.
+
+"If--if you wasn't so sick, honey--I don't know what I'd do after such a
+terrible thing like this--you acting like this--so terrible--God! I--I'm
+all trembling."
+
+"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting
+her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"
+
+"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is
+awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell--Sleep--please!"
+
+"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round--he's the one; he's
+the one!"
+
+"Yes--yes, honey. Try to sleep!"
+
+"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream,
+it's Rockefeller."
+
+"Not now--not now--"
+
+"Lemme go to sleep like a king."
+
+"Yes, honey."
+
+"Like a king," I said.
+
+She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her
+dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.
+
+"There, honey. Go to sleep now--like a king."
+
+He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring
+of lamplight.
+
+"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow--oh, wow! If Sid could only see me
+now!"
+
+"He can, honey--he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"
+
+"Slide 'em under--slide 'em under--Rockefeller."
+
+She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over,
+cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.
+
+"Jas!"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard.
+It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey--for God's
+sake--quit!"
+
+Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face
+turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly
+open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so
+much as cloud.
+
+At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of
+those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country
+road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green
+landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door
+following almost immediately.
+
+"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over,
+Doctor--Doctor--it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss
+Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows
+from an uneven wick.
+
+"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"
+
+"What--what--"
+
+"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy
+not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a
+good-natured Fat?"
+
+There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the
+Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and
+ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat
+crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol
+long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a
+cluster of sister baubles.
+
+"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you
+beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"
+
+"Who--Whatta you--want?"
+
+"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The
+Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with
+youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid
+fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight
+bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"
+
+"He--Who--You--"
+
+"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It
+don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is
+he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets
+up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell
+him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."
+
+"I--That's him--Jastrow--there--O my God--that's him laying there,
+miss! Who are you? Sid--I thought--I never knew--Who are you? I
+thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here--
+I--O God!"
+
+There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a
+quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved
+slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands
+crossed atop the parrot.
+
+"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I
+musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show.
+God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in
+Dayton. I--I musta!"
+
+"It come so sudden, miss. It's a wonder I didn't die, too, right on the
+spot. I was standing here and--"
+
+Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief,
+her face lifting to cry.
+
+"He spun me dirt, Will did. If ever a girl was spun dirt, that girl was
+me, but just the same it--it's my husband laying there--it's my husband,
+no matter what dirt he spun me. O God--O--O--"
+
+At half after ten to a powdering of eye-sockets, a touching up with
+lip-stick, a readjustment of three-tiered hat, Miss Sidonia Sabrina took
+leave. There were still streaks showing through her retouched cheeks.
+
+"I left you the collar-and-cuff box with his initials on, dearie, for a
+remembrance. I give it to him the first Christmas after we was married,
+before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire.
+I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel,
+you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it
+now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the
+way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe
+horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in
+drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it,
+dearie, but I been through the mill in my day. But that's all over now,
+him layin' there--my husband. Will was a good Strong in his day--nobody
+can't ever take that away from him. I'm leavin' you the funeral money
+out of what he had under his pillow. It's a godsend to me my husband
+layin' up that few hundred when things ain't so good with me. You was a
+good influence, dearie. I never knew him to save a cent. I'd never have
+thought it. Not a cent from him all these months. My legs for the
+air-work ain't what they used to be. Inflammatory rheumatism, y'know.
+I've got a mind to buy me a farm, too, dearie. Settle down. Say, I got
+to hand it to you, dearie--you're one fine Fat. Baby Ella herself had
+nothin' on you, and I've worked with as fine Fats as there is in the
+business. You're sure one fine Fat, and if there's such a thing as a
+recordin' angel--I got to catch that train, dearie--the chauff's
+honkin'--no grandmother stories goes with my concession. God, to think
+of Will layin' on a cool six hundred! Here's twenty-five for the
+funeral. If it's more, lemme know. Sidonia Sabrina, care Flying-Fish
+Troupe, State Fair, Butler County, Ohio. Good-by, dearie, and God
+bless you!"
+
+Long after the thridding of engine had died down, and the purple quiet
+flowed over the path of twin lamplights, Miss Hoag stood in her
+half-open screen door, gazing after. There were no tears in her eyes;
+indeed, on the contrary, the echo of the chugg-chugging which still lay
+on the air had taken on this rhythm:
+
+     Better to have loved a short man
+     Than never to have loved atall.
+
+     Better to have loved a short man
+     Than never to have loved atall.
+
+
+
+
+THE WRONG PEW
+
+For six midnights of the week, on the roof of the Moncrieff Frolic,
+grape-wreathed and with the ecstatic quivering of the flesh that is
+Asia's, Folly, robed in veils, lifts her carmined lips to be kissed, and
+Bacchus, whose pot-belly has made him unloved of fair women, raises his
+perpetual goblet and drinks that he may not weep.
+
+On the stroke of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible
+joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff
+Follies--twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair
+of whistling Pierrots--burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle
+and rhinestone power.
+
+Saint Geneviève, who loved so to brood over the enigmatic roofs of the
+city, would have here found pause. Within the golden inclosure of the
+Moncrieff Roof, a ceiling canopied in deep waves of burnt-orange velvet
+cunningly concealed, yet disclosed, amber light, the color of wine in
+the pouring. Behind burnt-orange portières of great length and great
+depth of nap, the Twenty-Four Follies, each tempered like a knife edge,
+stood identically poised for the first clash of Negroid music from a
+Negroid orchestra.
+
+At a box-office built to imitate a sedan chair--Louis Quinze without
+and Louis Slupsky within--Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred
+hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company,
+incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of
+the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien,
+St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering _à la carte_
+from the most _à la mode_ menu in Oh-là-là, New York.
+
+The line grew, eighty emptying theaters fifteen stories below, sending
+each its trickle toward the Midnight Frolic--men too tired to sleep,
+women with slim, syncopated hips, and eyes none too nice. The smell of
+fur and fragrant powder on warm flesh began to rise on a fog of best
+Havana smoke. At the elevators women dropped out of their cloaks and, in
+the bustle of checking, stood by, not unconscious of the damask finish
+to bare shoulders.
+
+When Mr. Herman Loeb detached himself from the human tape-line before
+the box-office, the firm and not easily discomposed lines of his face
+had fallen into loose curves, the lower lip thrust forward and the
+eyebrows upward. Sheep and men in their least admirable moments have
+that same trick of face. He rejoined his companion, two slips of
+cardboard well up in the cup of his palm.
+
+"Good seats, Herman?"
+
+"I ask you, Sam, is it an outrage? Twenty bucks for a table on the
+side!"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Is that highway robbery or not, I ask you!"
+
+Mr. Samuel Kahn hitched at his belt, an indication of mental ferment.
+
+"I wouldn't live in this town, not if you gave it to me!"
+
+"It's not the money, Sam. What's twenty dollars more or less on a
+business trip, and New-Year's Eve at that? But it's the principle of the
+thing. I hate to be made a good thing of!"
+
+"Twenty bucks!"
+
+"Yes, and like he was doing me a favor, that Louis Slups kyin the
+box-office who used to take tickets in our Olympic at home. Somebody at
+the last minute let go of his reservation or we couldn't have got
+a table."
+
+"Twenty bucks, and we got to feel honored yet that they let us sit at a
+table to buy a dinner! But say, Herm, it's a great sight, ain't it?"
+
+"There's only one little old New York! Got to hand it to this
+town--they're a gang of cut-throats, but they do things up brown. A
+little of it goes a long ways, but I always say a trip to New York isn't
+complete without a night at the Moncrieff Roof. You sit here, Sam,
+facing the stage."
+
+"No, you! An old bachelor has got the right to sit closer to a girl-show
+than a married man."
+
+They drew up before a small table edging a shining area of reserved
+floor space and only once removed from the burnt-orange curtains.
+
+"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Samuel Kahn, his rather strongly aquiline face lifted
+in profile.
+
+"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Loeb, smiling out of eyes ten years younger.
+
+"What'll you have, Sam?"
+
+"Say, what's the difference? I'll take a cheese sandwich and a glass of
+beer."
+
+"Now cut that! Maybe I squealed about the twenty bucks, but that don't
+make me out a short skate. This isn't Cherokee Garden at home, man. I'm
+going to blow my brother-in-law to New-Year's Eve in my own way, or know
+the reason why not. Here, waiter, a pint of extra dry and a layout of
+sandwiches."
+
+"If you can stand it, I guess I can!"
+
+"It's not on the firm, either, Sam; it's on me!"
+
+"For the price of to-night ma and Etta would hang themselves, ain't it?"
+
+"Say, we only live once. I always tell ma she can't take it with her
+when she goes. Anyways, for the discount we got on those Adler sport
+skirts, we can afford to celebrate."
+
+"Say, Herman, I wish I had a dime for every dollar that is spent up here
+to-night. Look at the women! I guess American men don't make queens out
+of their wives!"
+
+"For every wife who's up here to-night I wouldn't take the trouble to
+collect the dimes," said Mr. Loeb, with cunning distinction.
+
+"I guess that ain't all wrong, neither. It isn't such a pleasure to be
+away from your family New-Year's Eve, but I can assure you I'd rather
+have Etta having her celebration with ma and grandma, and maybe the
+Bambergers over at the house, than up here where even a married woman
+can blush to be."
+
+"Take it from me, old man, a flannel petticoat in the family is worth
+all the ballet skirts on this roof put together."
+
+"I bought ma and Etta each one of them handbags to-day at Lauer's for
+nine dollars. What they don't know about the price won't hurt them. Two
+for nine I'll tell them."
+
+"To this day ma believes that five-hundred-dollar bar pin I brought her
+two years ago from Pittsburgh cost fifty at auction."
+
+"There's Moe Marx from Kansas City just coming in! Spy the blonde he's
+with, will you? I guess Moe is used to that from home, nix! There's a
+firm, Marx-Jastrow, made a mint last year."
+
+"Look!"
+
+The lights had sunk down, the sea of faces receding into fog. The buzz
+died, too, and doors were swung against the steady shuffle of incomers.
+From behind the curtains a chime tonged roundly and in one key.
+One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten--eleven
+--twelve!
+
+Then the orange curtains parted and on a gilded dais the width of the
+room, in startling relief against a purple circle the size of a tower
+clock, the Old Year, hoar on his beard and with limbs that shivered in
+an attitude of abdication, held out an hourglass to a pink-legged cherub
+with a gold band in his or her short curls.
+
+A shout went up and a great clanging of forks against frail glass, the
+pop of corks and the quick fizz ensuing. The curtains closed and the
+lights flashed up. Time had just sailed another knot into space, and
+who cared?
+
+At a center table a woman's slipper was already going the rounds. It
+began to sag and wine to ooze through the brocade.
+
+"Well, Hermie, here's a happy New Year to you!"
+
+"And to you, Sam, and many of 'em!"
+
+"To ma and Etta and grandma!"
+
+"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien!"
+
+"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien and that to this time next year we got the
+Men's Clothing Annex."
+
+They drank in solemn libation.
+
+The curtains had parted again. A Pierrot, chalky white, whistled in
+three registers, soprano, bass, and baser. A row of soubrettes rollicked
+in and out again in a flash of bushy skirts.
+
+"Say, look at the third one from this end with the black curls all
+bobbing. I'm for her!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Gone now!"
+
+Mr. Kahn leaned across his singing glass, his eye quickened into a wink.
+
+"Old man, you can pull that woman-hater stuff on the home folks, but it
+takes your brother-in-law to lead you to the live ones. Eh?"
+
+"You dry up," said Mr. Loeb, peering between the halves of a sandwich.
+
+On a glass runway built over the heads of the assembled, a crystal aisle
+for satin feet, the row of soubrettes suddenly appeared, peering over
+the crystal rail, singing down upon the sea of marcelled, bald, and dead
+heads. Men, sheepish of their smiles but with the small heels overhead
+clanging like castanets into their spirits, dared to glance up.
+
+"Gad, Herman! What'll they think up next? Whatta you know about
+that--all those little devils dancing right over our heads!"
+
+"There she is!"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The little one in the boy's black-satin suit, with the black curls
+bobbing!"
+
+"Watch out, Herm! You'll die of crick in the neck."
+
+"I don't see any blinkers on you!"
+
+"Hey, old man! Your mouth's open."
+
+"I know. I opened it," said Mr. Loeb, his head back and eyes that were
+suddenly bold staring up at the twinkling aisle.
+
+At a table adjoining, a man reached up, flecking one of the tiny
+black-satin feet with a whirl of his napkin.
+
+Then Mr. Herman Loeb, of St. Louis, committed an act of spontaneous
+combustion. When came the turn of the black satin and the bobbing curls
+to bend over the rail directly above him, he flung wide his arms,
+overturning a wine bottle.
+
+"Jump!" he cried.
+
+Beneath the short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to
+open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and
+quicker than Harlequin's wink the aisle was clean.
+
+"Gad!" said Mr. Loeb, his strong profile thrust forward and a light on
+it.
+
+"That little one with the black curls? Say! You can put her on your
+watch-fob and take her home."
+
+"Wouldn't mind!" said Mr. Loeb.
+
+"You and Moe Marx are like all the women-haters. You don't know it, but
+you're walking in your sleep and the tenth-story window's open."
+
+"We oughtn't to come up here in business clothes," said Mr. Loeb, eying
+his cuff-edges.
+
+A woman sang of love. A chorus, crowned and girdled in inflated toy
+balloons, wreathed in and out among the tables.
+
+"She's not in that crowd."
+
+Men to whom life for the most part was grim enough vied for whose
+cigarette end should prick the painted bubbles. A fusillade ensued;
+explosions on the gold-powdered air--a battle _de luxe!_
+
+Mr. Kahn threw back his head, yawned, and slid a watch from his
+waistcoat pocket.
+
+"W-ell, a little of this goes a long way. If we want to pull out of this
+town day after to-morrow we've got to get down to Cedar Street early in
+the morning on that sweater job lot. It's about time for us to be
+getting across to the hotel."
+
+"Wait!" said Mr. Loeb.
+
+A jingling and a right merry cacophony of sound came fast upon the
+bubble bombardment, and then, to a light runnel of song, the row of
+twenty-four, harnessed in slotted sleigh-bells and with little-girl
+flounced frocks to their very sophisticated pink-silk knees.
+
+The devices of vaudeville are perennial. Rigoletto, who set a court's
+sides aching, danced to bells. The row of twenty-four, pink and white as
+if the cradle had just yielded them up, shivered suddenly into an
+ecstasy of sound, the jerked-up shoulder of one, the tossing curls of
+another, the naughty shrug of a third, eking out a melody.
+
+A laugh rose off the crowd.
+
+"Say, this town'll fall for anything! That act's got barnacles. But the
+little devils look cute, though. Say--say, old man, cut that out! This
+is no place for your mother's son. Say!"
+
+Mr. Loeb was leaning forward across the table, his head well ahead of
+his shoulders. From the third from the end of the row of twenty-four, a
+shoulder shrugging to the musical nonsense of bells was arching none too
+indirectly toward him, and once the black curls bobbed, giving a share
+of tremolo to the melody. But the bob was carefully directed, and Herman
+Loeb returned it in fashion, only more vehemently and with repetition.
+
+"Say, Herman, enough is enough! You'll have her here at the table next.
+It's like Al Suss always says, the reason he woke up one morning and
+found himself married to the first pony in the sextet was because he
+stuck a stamp upside down on a letter to her and found he could be held
+for a proposal in stamp language."
+
+To a great flare of the Negroid music, the row of twenty-four suddenly
+turned turtle, and prone on a strip of rug, heads to audience and faces
+to ceiling, twenty-four pairs of legs, ankleted in bells, kicked up a
+syncopated melody. From a Niagara of lace, insteps quivered an arpeggio.
+A chromatic scale bounced off a row of rapidly pointing toes. The third
+from the end, seized with sudden chill, quivered into grace notes,
+small pink feet kicking violently to the chandelier.
+
+Men red with laughter pounded their plates. The rhythmic convulsion
+passed down the prostrate line, forty-eight little feet twinkled a grand
+finale, and the curtains swung, then opened, remaining so.
+
+The line of twenty-four danced down and across the wide hair-line that
+separates life and stage, butterflies sipping from table to table. The
+cabaret was done. Lights resumed, and the business of food and drink.
+
+Mr. Loeb flung out an arm, pulling awry a carefully averted pink sash.
+
+"Say, little Jingle Bells, you and your friend!"
+
+"Cut it out, Herm! If we want to be down on Cedar Street by--"
+
+"What's your hurry, little one?"
+
+"It ain't mine; it belongs to the management."
+
+"Won't you join us?"
+
+"Herm, that job-lot of sweaters--"
+
+"Oh, come on, little Jingle Bells!"
+
+"My friend, too?"
+
+"Sure your friend."
+
+They teetered, the two of them like animated dolls, arm in arm, and so
+at ease.
+
+"Here, you little Black Curls, sit next to me, and you, Blondey, over
+there by my brother-in-law."
+
+"What'll you have, girls?"
+
+"Anchovies and fine-chopped onions for mine. Tell 'em in the kitchen,
+waiter, I said _fine_, and if the gentlemen are going to order wine,
+bring me a plate of oyster crackers first to take off the edge of my
+emptiness."
+
+"Sure, another bottle of wine, waiter."
+
+"Hermie, we--"
+
+"And you, little Jingle Bells, same as Blondey's order?"
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Say, you know what?"
+
+"No. What?"
+
+"I fell for those bouncing black curls of yours before I was in the
+place five minutes."
+
+At that there was an incredible flow of baby talk.
+
+"Gemmemen ike ikkie gurl wiz naughty-naughty black curl-curlies?"
+
+"You bet your life I do," said Mr. Loeb, unashamed of comprehension.
+
+Mr. Kahn flashed another look at his watch.
+
+"Say, don't you know, you girls oughtn't to keep us boys up so late.
+Ain't there no wear out to you?"
+
+The yellow curls to his right bounced sharply.
+
+"He asks if there's a wear out to us, Cleone? I wish it to you this
+minute, Baldy, that you had the muscles in the back of my legs. I guess
+you think it's choice for us girls to come out on the floor after
+the show!"
+
+"Sylvette!"
+
+"Yah, it's my New-Year's resolution to tell the truth for thirty minutes
+if I'm bounced for it. If you got to know it, it's a ten-per-cent.
+rake-off for us girls on every bottle of golden vichy you boys blow
+us to."
+
+"Honest, Sylvette, you're wearing scrambled eggs instead of brains
+to-night. Why don't you cry a few brinies for the gemmemen while
+you're at it!"
+
+That so quickened Mr. Loeb's risibilities that he dropped his hand over
+Miss Cleone St. Claire's, completely covering yet not touching it.
+
+"You're a scream, kiddo! Gee! I like you!"
+
+She drank with her chin flung up and her throat very white.
+
+"Bubbles! Bubbles! God bless all my troubles!"
+
+"Well, I'll be darned!" said Mr. Kahn, smiling at her.
+
+"The gemmemen from out of town?"
+
+"St. Louis."
+
+"I had a friend out there--Joe Kelsannie, of Albuquerque. Remember him,
+Sylvette?"
+
+"Do I!"
+
+"I'm going out there myself some day if the going's good, and get me a
+cowboy west of Newark."
+
+Mr. Loeb leaned forward, smiling into her quick-fire eyes.
+
+"I'll take you!"
+
+"Stick her on your watch-fob, Herman."
+
+"No, sirree, I'll take her life size."
+
+"Watch out, Hermie; remember the upside-down postage stamp!"
+
+"Want to go, Jingle Bells?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"But I'm on the level, little one. No kidding. Day after to-morrow. St.
+Louis--with me!"
+
+Miss Cleone St. Claire drew herself up, the doll look receding somewhat
+from her gaze.
+
+"Say, bo, you got me wrong. I'm one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine
+thousand chorus girls you could introduce your sister to. Aren't
+I, Syl?"
+
+"You let that kid alone," said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not
+part of her rôle. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's
+time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face
+had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a
+sunburst of fine lines showing through the powder like stencil designs.
+
+"Come on, Herm. It's getting late, and if we want to be down on Cedar--"
+
+"You think I'm kidding this little black-eyed chum of yours, don't you,
+Blondey?"
+
+"Sure not! You want 'er to grace the head of your table and wear the
+family heirlooms!"
+
+"Well, Sam, you're my brother-in-law--married to my own sister and
+living under the same roof with me--am I a habitual lady-fusser, or do
+they call me Hermie the Hermit at home?"
+
+"Never knew him to talk ten straight words to a skirt before, girls,"
+said Mr. Kahn through a yawn; "and if you don't believe it, go out and
+ask Louis Slupsky, who used to play chinies with him."
+
+"Say, you," said Miss De Long, edging slightly, "you're about as funny
+as a machine-gun, you are! If you got a private life, why ain't you back
+in St. Louis a night like this, showing her and the kids a good time?"
+
+She was frankly tired, her eyelids darkening.
+
+"I wish to Heaven I was," said Mr. Kahn, suddenly. "Take it from me,
+girl, it was nothing but a business hang-over kept me. Come, Herm,
+if we--"
+
+"You think I'm kidding little Jingle Bells, don't you?"
+
+Miss St. Claire sat back against her chair; her black eyes had quieted.
+"If you ain't kidding you must be crazy with the heat or dr--"
+
+"Look at my glass. Have I touched it?"
+
+"The man's raving, Syl! Wants to marry me and take me back to St. Louis,
+Thursday."
+
+"Cut the comedy and come! Herm, it's getting on to three in the
+morning."
+
+"This little girl keeps thinking I'm kidding, Blondey. I always knew if
+I ever fell for matrimony it would be just like this. Right off the
+reel. No funny business. Just bing! Bang! Done!"
+
+"Catch me while I swoon--but he sounds on the level, Cleone."
+
+"Well, what if he is? Of all the nerve! Whatta you know about me? How do
+you know I haven't got three kids and a crippled husband at home? How do
+you know--?"
+
+"I know, little Jingle Bells! Why, I was as sure of you, the minute I
+clapped eyes on you, as if we'd been raised next door to each other. I
+can see right down in your little life like it was this glass of wine."
+
+Miss St. Claire threw out her arms in a beautiful and sleepy gesture.
+
+"Well, boys, this is a nice little party, but I got to get up at three
+o'clock to-morrow afternoon, and I need the sleep. Oh, how I love my
+morning sleep!" She drew back, her bare outflung arm pushing her from
+the table. "If you'll call me and my room-mate a taxi--"
+
+"No, you don't, Jingle Bells!"
+
+He placed a hand that trembled slightly on the sleeved part of her arm.
+She opened wider her very wide black eyes.
+
+"Are you bats?" she said.
+
+"I'm going to marry you and take you home with me, if I have to carry
+you off like a partridge."
+
+"Cleone, I tell you the man means it!"
+
+"You're right, Blondey. I never meant anything more in my life."
+
+A sudden shortness of manner crept over Mr. Kahn.
+
+"Man, you're drunk!" he cried, springing to his feet.
+
+"See my glass!"
+
+"Then you're crazy!"
+
+"Sit down, old Baldy. Why's he crazy? That little room-mate of mine is
+as straight a little girl as--"
+
+"Why, I tell you he's crazy! That man's the head of a big business. He
+can't kick up any nonsense like this. Come on, Herm, cut the comedy.
+It's time we were getting across to our hotel. Look at the crowd
+thinning, and what's left is getting rough. Come!"
+
+"If you don't know how to behave yourself, Sam, in the presence of these
+ladies, maybe you better go back to the hotel alone. I'm going to see
+these young ladies to their door, and before we go me and this little
+girl are going to understand each other."
+
+Mr. Kahn sat down again in some stupefaction.
+
+"Well, of all the nerve! Who are you? Whatta you think I am? Syl, what's
+his game?"
+
+Miss De Long thrust forward her tired and thinning face; her eyes had a
+mica gleam.
+
+"Cleone, he wants to marry you. A decent man with a decent face from a
+decent town has taken a shine to you and wants to marry you. M-a-r-r-y!
+Do you get it, girl?"
+
+"How do you know he's decent? I don't know no more about him than he
+knows about me. I--"
+
+"'Ain't you got no hunch on life, girl? Look at him! That's how I know
+he's decent. So would you if you'd been in this business as long as me.
+Can't you tell a real honest-to-God man when you see one? A business
+man at that!"
+
+"You got me right, Blondey. Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, Ladies' Wear, St.
+Louis. Here's my card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and
+I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis
+Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather
+pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in
+business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are
+you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, as Mrs.--?"
+
+"Herm! You're cr--"
+
+"Syl--what'll I--do?"
+
+"An on-the-level guy, Cleone. Marry! Do you hear? M-a-r-r-y! Say, and it
+couldn't happen to me!"
+
+"Herman, man, I tell you you're off your head. Think once of your
+home--ma, Etta, grandma--with a _goy_ girl that--"
+
+"Easy there, Baldy, you're adding up wrong. You and her both celebrates
+the same Sundays. If anybody should ask you for Sylvette de Long's birth
+certificate, look it up under the P's. Birdie Pozner. It's the same with
+my friend. Cleone, tell the gemmemen your real name! Well, I'll tell it
+for you. Sadie Mosher, sister to the great Felix Mosher who played heavy
+down at Shefsky's theater for twenty years. _Goy!_ Say, Sammie, it's too
+bad a nut from the bug-house bought the Brooklyn Bridge to-day or I'd
+try to sell it to you."
+
+"Little Jingle Bells, if I put you in a taxi now and shoot up those
+credentials, will you marry me to-morrow at noon?"
+
+"I--oh, I dunno."
+
+"Marry, he says to you, girl. Think of the minus number of times girls
+like us get that little word whispered to 'em. Think of the short
+season. Moncrieff's grouch. The back muscles of your legs! Marry, he
+says to you, girl! Marry!"
+
+"To-morrow at noon, little one?"
+
+"I--I sleep till three."
+
+"And it couldn't 'a' been me!"
+
+"Little Jingle Bells?"
+
+"Why, y-yes, I--I'm on."
+
+At three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in a magistrate's office,
+beneath a framed engraving of a judicial court in wigged session, Herman
+Schulien Loeb and Sadie Helen Mosher became as one. A bar of scant
+metropolitan sunshine, miraculously let in by a cleft between two
+skyscrapers, lay at the feet of the bride.
+
+Slightly arear of them: Mr. Louis Slupsky; Mr. Samuel Kahn, with a
+tinge the color of apoplexy in his face; and Miss Sylvette de Long, her
+face thrust forward as if she heard melody. The voice of the magistrate
+rose like a bird in slow flight, then settled to a brief drone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+East is East and West is West, and St. Louis is neither. It lies like a
+mediator, the westerly hand of the east end of the country stretching
+across the sullenest part of the Mississippi to clasp the easterly hand
+of the west end of the country.
+
+Indians have at one time or another left their chirography upon the face
+of St. Louis. But all that is effaced now under the hot lava of
+Americanism that is covering the major cities in more or less even
+layers. Now it stands atop its Indian mounds, a metropolis of almost a
+million souls, a twenty-story office-building upon the site of an old
+trading-post, and a subway threatening the city's inners. There is a
+highly restricted residence district given over to homes of the most
+stucco period of the Italian Renaissance, and an art-museum, as high on
+the brow of a hill as the Athenians loved to build. St. Louis has not
+yet a Champs-Élysées or a Fifth Avenue. And of warm evenings it takes
+its walks without hats. Neither is the café or the cabaret its
+evening solace.
+
+It dines, even in its renaissance section, placidly _chez soi;_ the
+family activities of the day here thrown into a common pool of
+discussion.
+
+On Washington Boulevard, probably sixty dollars a foot removed from the
+renaissance section, architecture suddenly turns an indifferent shoulder
+to period, Queen Anne rubbing sloping roof with neighbor's concrete
+sleeping-porch of the hygienic period. Only the building-line is
+maintained, the houses sitting comfortably back and a well-hosed strip
+of sidewalk, bordered in hardy maples, running clear and white out to De
+Balaviere Avenue, where the _art-nouveau_ apartment-house begins to
+invade. In winter bare branches meet in deadlock over this walk. On the
+smooth macadamized road of Washington Boulevard automobiles try out
+their speed limit.
+
+One such wintry day, with the early dusk already invading, Mrs. Herman
+Loeb, with red circles round her very black eyes, and her unrouged face
+rather blotched, sat in one of the second-floor-front rooms of a double
+buff-brick house on Washington Boulevard, hunched up in a red-velvet
+chair, chin cupped in palm, and gazing, through perfectly adjusted
+Honiton lace curtains, at the steady line of home-to-dinner motor-cars.
+
+Warmth lay in that room, and a conservative mahogany elegance--a great
+mahogany double bed, immaculately covered in white, with a large
+monogram heavily hand-embroidered in its center; a mahogany swell-front
+dresser, with a Honiton lace cover and a precise outlay of monogramed
+silver. Over it a gilt-framed French engraving with "Maternal Love" writ
+in elegant script beneath. A two-toned red rug ate in footsteps.
+
+Mrs. Loeb let her head fall back against the chair and closed her eyes.
+In her dark-stuff dress with its sheer-white collar, she was part of
+the note of the room, except that her small bosom rose and fell too
+rapidly. A pungent odor of cookery began to invade; the street lamps of
+Washington Boulevard to pop out. The door from the hallway opened, but
+at the entrance of her mother-in-law Mrs. Loeb did not rise, only folded
+one foot closer under her.
+
+"You, Sadie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Herman home yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Smell? I fixed him red cabbage to-night."
+
+"Yes, I smell."
+
+"How she sits here in the dark. Thank goodness, Sadie, electricity we
+don't have to economize on."
+
+She pushed a wall key, a center chandelier of frosted electric bulbs
+springing into radiance. In its immediate glare Mrs. Loeb regarded her
+daughter-in-law, inert there beside the window.
+
+"Get your embroidery, Sadie, and come down by me and Etta till the men
+get home to supper. I want her to show you that cut-work stitch she's
+putting in her lunch napkins."
+
+"Ugh!"
+
+"What?"
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb approached with the forward peer of the nearsighted.
+Time and maternity had had their whacks at her figure, her stoutness
+enhanced by a bothersome shelf of bust, but her face--the same virile
+profile of her son's and with the graying hair parted tightly from
+it--guiltless of lines, except now, regarding her daughter-in-law, a
+horizontal crease came into her brow.
+
+"You want to go sit a while by grandma, then?"
+
+"No. Gee! can't--can't a girl just sit up in her room quiet? I'm all
+right."
+
+"I didn't say, Sadie, you wasn't all right. Only a young girl with
+everything to be thankful for don't need to sit up in her room like it
+was a funeral, with her mother and sister and grandma in the
+same house."
+
+On the mahogany arms of her chair Mrs. Herman Loeb's small hand closed
+in a tight fist over her damp wad of handkerchief,
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Sadie, you been crying again."
+
+"What if I have?"
+
+"A fine answer from a girl to her mother."
+
+"I--you--you drive me to it--your questions--"
+
+"I shouldn't have the interest of my own son's wife at heart!"
+
+"Can't a girl get--get blue?"
+
+"Blue?"
+
+"Yes, blue."
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb reached out her hand with its wide marriage band
+slightly indented in flesh; the back of that hand was speckled with
+large, lightish freckles and trembled slightly.
+
+"Sadie, ain't there just no way we can make you feel happy in St. Louis?
+Last night through the door to my room I couldn't help hear again you
+and Herman with a scene. Take your feet down off the plush, Sadie."
+
+"Oh yes, you heard, all right."
+
+"'Ain't you got a good home here, Sadie? Everything in the world a girl
+could wish for! A husband as good as gold, like his poor dead father
+before him. 'Ain't we done everything, me and my Etta, to make you feel
+how--how glad we are to have you for our Hermie's wife?"
+
+"Oh, I know, I know."
+
+"What maybe we felt in the beginning--well, wasn't it natural, an only
+son and coming such a surprise--all that's over now. Why, it's a
+pleasure to see how grandma she loves you."
+
+"I--I'm all right, I tell you."
+
+"Didn't we even fix it you should go in a flat on Waterman Avenue
+housekeeping for yourself, if you wanted it?"
+
+"Yes, and tie myself down to this dump yet. Not much!"
+
+"Well, I only hope, Sadie Loeb, you never got in your life to live in a
+worse dump. I know this much, I have tried to do my part. Did I sign
+over this house to you and Herman for a wedding present, giving only to
+my own daughter the row of Grand Avenue stores?"
+
+"I never said you didn't."
+
+"Have you got the responsibility even to run your own house, with me and
+Etta carrying it on like always?"
+
+"Am I complaining?"
+
+"Do I ask of you one thing, Sadie, except maybe that you learn a little
+housekeeping and watch how I order from the butcher, things that every
+wife should know if she needs it or not? In the whole year you been my
+daughter, Sadie, have I asked of you more than you should maybe help the
+up-stairs girl a little mornings, and do a little embroidery for your
+linen-chest, and that maybe, instead of sleeping so late till noon every
+morning, you should get up and have breakfast with your husband?"
+
+"If you begin going over all that again I--I'll just yell!"
+
+"With anybody pouting in the house I just 'ain't got heart to do
+nothing. I don't see, Sadie, that you had such fine connections in the
+East that you shouldn't be satisfied here."
+
+"You just leave my friends in the East out of it. If you wanna know it,
+they're a darn sight better than the wads of respectability I see
+waddlin' in here to swap Kaffee Klatsches with you!"
+
+"Just let me tell you, Sadie Loeb, you can be proud such ladies call on
+you. A girl what don't think no more of her husband's business
+connections than not to come down-stairs when Mrs. Nathan Bamberger
+calls! Maybe our friends out here got being good wifes and good
+housekeepers on the brain more as high kicking in New York; but just the
+same Mrs. Nathan Bamberger, what can buy and sell you three times over,
+ain't ashamed to go in her Lindell Avenue kitchen, when her husband or
+her son likes red cabbage, what you can't hire cooked, or once in a
+while a miltz."
+
+"Say, if I've heard that once, I've--"
+
+"Then, too, Sadie, since we're talking--it's a little thing--I haven't
+liked to talk about it, but I--I got the first time I should hear the
+word _ma_ on your lips. You think it's so nice that a daughter-in-law
+should always call me 'Say,' like a bed-post?"
+
+"I--I can't, Mrs. Loeb--it--it just won't come--mother."
+
+"Don't tell me you don't know any better! A girl what can be so nice
+with poor old blind grandma, like you been, can be nice with her
+mother-in-law and sister-in-law, too, if she wants to be. I didn't want
+I should ever have to talk to you like this, Sadie, but sometimes a--a
+person she just busts out."
+
+And then Mrs. Herman Loeb leaped forward in her chair, her small tight
+fist pounding each word:
+
+"Then let me go! Whatta you holding me here for? Let me go back,
+Mrs.--mother! Let me go! I don't deny it, you're too good for me round
+here. I don't fit! Let me go back to the old room and--my old room-mate
+where--where I belong with my--my crowd. You tell what you just said to
+Herm! Get him to let me go back with him on his trip to-morrow night.
+Please, Mrs.--mother--please!"
+
+"You mean to New York with him on his business trip for a visit?"
+
+"Call it that if you want to, only let me go! You--you can tell them
+later that--that I ain't coming back. I--I've begged him so! I don't
+belong here. You just said as much yourself. I don't belong here. Let me
+go, Mrs. Loeb. Let me go! You tell him, Mrs. Loeb, to let me go."
+
+Mrs. Bertha Loeb suddenly sat down, and the color flowed out of her
+face.
+
+"That I should live to see this day! My Herman's wife wants to leave
+him! Oh, my son, my son! What did you do to yourself! A di--a separation
+in the Loeb family! I knew last night when I heard through the door and
+how worried my poor boy has looked for months, that it didn't mean no
+good. Since her first month here I've seen it coming. I did my
+part to--"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Loeb, and I done my part!"
+
+"Oh--oh--oh, and how that boy of mine has catered to her! Humored her
+every whim to keep her contented! I always say it's the nix-nux wives
+get the most attentions and thanks from their husbands. I--"
+
+"I done my part. I've tried as much as you to make myself fit in out
+here. I--I just ain't your kind, Mrs. Loeb. Yours and--Etta's. I--I
+can't be saving and economical when I see there's plenty to spend. I--I
+was raised with my brother down in Shefsky's theater, where nobody cares
+about monogramed guest towels and about getting up before noon if they
+don't want to. The evenings here kill me! Kill me! I hate pinochle! I
+gotta have life, Mrs. Loeb. I hate Kaffee Klatsches with a lot of--I--I
+tell you I got different blood in my veins, Mrs. Loeb, I--"
+
+"No, no, Sadie Mosher Loeb, that kind of talk don't go. You got just the
+same _shabbos_ like us. Saturday is your--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I'm in the right church, all right, Mrs. Loeb, but I'm in
+the wrong pew. Mrs. Loeb, please can't you understand I'm in the
+wrong pew!"
+
+And all her carefully confined curls, springing their pins, she fell
+forward a shivering mass.
+
+In that surcharged moment and brisky exuding a wintry out-of-doors, Mr.
+Herman Loeb entered and stood for a moment in the open doorway, in the
+act of removing his greatcoat.
+
+"Herman, my son! Oh, my son!"
+
+"What's wrong, ma? Sadie!"
+
+"It's come, Herman, like I always predicted to Etta it would. Your wife,
+my poor boy, she wants to leave you. This should happen to a Loeb yet--a
+separation in the family! My poor boy! My poor boy!"
+
+"Why, ma, what--what's Sadie been telling you?"
+
+At that Mrs. Herman Loeb raised her streaming face, her eyes all rid of
+their roguery and stretched in despair.
+
+"I didn't want to let out to her, Herman. I wanted to make a quiet
+get-away, you know I did. But she nagged me! She nagged me!"
+
+"Ma, you shouldn't--"
+
+"She heard us last night and Heaven knows how many nights before that.
+She's wise. She knows. She knows it's been a year of prison here for--"
+
+"Oh, my poor boy! Prison! A girl like her finds herself married into one
+of the most genteel families in St. Louis, a girl what never in her life
+was used to even decent sheets to sleep on!"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and
+them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and
+such a mess!"
+
+"Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and
+go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or
+a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you?
+Ma! Sadie!"
+
+"My poor boy! My poor boy!"
+
+"I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm,
+is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let
+me go, Herm, for--for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and
+it ain't your mother or your sister and---and it ain't you--it ain't any
+one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here!
+There ain't none!"
+
+"I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up
+the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York,
+where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri--"
+
+"No, no, he knows I don't want that!"
+
+"If she did, ma, we'd go!"
+
+"Herm knows it was all a mistake with me. I didn't know my own mind. I
+wanna go back along where I came from and where I belong! It ain't like
+I was the kind of a girl with another man in the case--"
+
+"We should thank her, Hermie, that there ain't more scandal mixed up in
+it yet!"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"My poor boy, what could have had his pick from the first girls in
+St.--"
+
+"Ma!"
+
+There was an edge to Mr. Loeb's voice that had the bite of steel. He
+tossed his greatcoat to the snowy bed, walking between the bed-end and
+the mantel, round to the crouched figure of his wife.
+
+"There, there, Sadie!" he said in his throat, and, stooping over her: "I
+give in! I give in!"
+
+Her head flew up.
+
+"Herm!"
+
+"My son!"
+
+"No, no, ma, it's no use trying to put anything but a jingle-bell
+harness on poor little Jingle Bells. She don't understand us any more
+than we--we can understand her!"
+
+"That's it, Herm; that's why I say if you'll only let me go!"
+
+"Oh, my God! A separation in the Loeb family? My poor dead husband! My
+daughter Etta, president of the Ladies' Auxiliary! Grandma--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, ma! You want grandma to hear?"
+
+"My son, the cleanest, finest--"
+
+"Ma!" There were lines in his face as if a knot at his heart were
+tightening them. "You mustn't blame her, ma; and, Sadie, you mustn't
+feel this way toward my mother. Nobody's to blame. I've been thinking
+this thing over more than you think, Sadie, and I--I give in. She's a
+poor little thing, ma, that's been trapped into something she can't
+fit into."
+
+"Yes, Herm, that's it."
+
+"It's natural. My fault, too. I carried her off like a partridge. Don't
+cry, little Jingle Bells! To-morrow night we leave for New York, and
+when I come back you're going to stay on with--"
+
+"Sylvette says--"
+
+"With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't!
+'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"
+
+With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking
+herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the
+open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap
+of a cane.
+
+Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end.
+
+"Nothing is the matter, grandma."
+
+"Come and get me, Herman."
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon
+Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane
+quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even
+some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust.
+
+"Bertha?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Here, grandma, by the window is your chair."
+
+He lowered her to the red-velvet arm-chair, placing her cane gently
+alongside.
+
+"So!"
+
+She moved her sightless face from one to the other, interrogating each
+presence.
+
+"Sadie?"
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+"How you holler, children! Everything ain't right?"
+
+"Yes, grandma. Ma and Sadie and me been making plans. To-morrow night
+Sadie goes with me to New York on my trip. A little pleasure trip."
+
+The little face, littler with each year, broke into smile.
+
+"So, little Sadie-sha, you got good times, not? A good husband and good
+times? New York! To New York she goes, Bertha?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Schulien fell to crooning slightly, redigesting with the senility
+of years.
+
+"To New York! Nowadays young wives got it good. How long you stay,
+Hermie?"
+
+"It's just my Pittsburgh-New York trip, grandma."
+
+"Sadie, come here by grandma."
+
+She approached with the tears drying on her face, her bosom heaving in
+suppressed jerks.
+
+"Yes, grandma." And patted the little clawlike hand, and the bit of
+white hair beneath the fluted cap, and a bit of old lace fastened with
+an old ivory cameo and covering the old throat.
+
+"You got good times, not?"
+
+"Yes, grandma."
+
+"And you'm a good girl, Sadie. Eh? Eh?"
+
+"Y-yes, grandma."
+
+"When you come back from New York, you bring grandma a fine present,
+not?"
+
+"Yes, yes, grandma."
+
+"A quilted under jacket wholesale, for when grandma rides out in the
+wheel-chair."
+
+"Y-yes, grandma."
+
+To the saturnine, New York of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a
+thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one
+such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept
+over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his
+enveloping hand over that of his wife,
+
+"Well, Sadie, you take good care of yourself, girl. No matter how we
+decide to--to end this thing, remember you're my wife--yet."
+
+"Yes, Herman," said Mrs. Loeb, through a gulp.
+
+"Don't stint, and remember how easily you get cold from draughts."
+
+"I won't. I will."
+
+"If you find yourself too crowded in that room with your friend, get a
+better one farther away from the theaters, where it isn't so
+noisy--maybe by yourself."
+
+"I'll see."
+
+"You won't be afraid to go back to that room now, with Sylvette still at
+the show?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"If I was you--now mind, I'm only suggesting it--but if I was you I
+wouldn't be in such a hurry about getting back in that roof show, Sadie.
+Maybe in a few days something better may show up or--or you'll change
+your mind or something."
+
+"I gotta get back to work to keep from thinking. Anyway, I don't want
+to be sponging on you any longer than I can help."
+
+"You're my wife, aren't you?"
+
+She sat, a small cold huddle in the center of the cab seat, toward him
+her quivering face flashing out as street lamps bounced past. They were
+nearing the great marble façade of the Seventh Avenue Terminal.
+
+"Herman, I--I hate to see everything bust up like this--you--you such a
+prince and all--but like Syl says, I--I guess all fools ain't dead yet!"
+
+"You've had time to work this thing out for yourself now, Sadie, but
+like I was saying before, anybody can play stubborn, but--but it's a
+wise person who ain't ashamed to change his mind. Eh, Sadie? Eh?"
+
+They were sliding down a runway and drew up now alongside a curb. A
+redcap, wild for fee, swung open the cab door, immediately confiscating
+all luggage.
+
+"No, no, not that! You carry that box, Herm. It's the padded underjacket
+for grandma. Tell her I--I sent it to her, Herm--with--with love."
+
+"Yes, Sadie."
+
+She was frankly crying now, edging her way through the crowd, running in
+little quick steps to match her pace to his.
+
+At the trainside, during the business of ticket inspection, she stood
+by, her palm pat against her mouth and tears galumphing down. With a
+face that stood out whitely in the gaseous fog, Mr. Loeb fumbled for
+the red slip of his berth reservation.
+
+"Well, Sadie girl, three minutes more and--"
+
+"Oh--oh, Herm!"
+
+"If you feel as bad as that, it's not too late, Sadie. I--you--it takes
+a wise little girlie to change her mind. Eh? Eh?"
+
+"No--no, Herm, I--"
+
+He clenched her arm suddenly and tightly.
+
+"If you want to come, girl, for God's sake now's your time. Sadie honey,
+you want to?"
+
+She shook him off through gasps.
+
+"No, no. Herm, I--I can't stand it--it's only that I feel so bad at
+seeing you--No--no--not--not now."
+
+The all-aboard call rang out like a shout in a cave.
+
+He was fumbling at his luggage for the small pasteboard box, haste
+fuddling his movements.
+
+"I'll be in Pittsburgh to-morrow till seven, honey. Sleep over it, and
+if you change your mind, catch the eleven-forty-five St. Louis flyer out
+of here to-morrow morning, and that train'll pick me up at
+Pittsburgh--eleven forty-five."
+
+"Oh, I--"
+
+"You be the one to bring this box home, with your own little hands, to
+poor grandma, honey, and--and if you don't change your mind, why--why,
+you can send it. You be the one to bring it to her, honey. Remember,
+it's a wise girlie knows when to change her mind!"
+
+"Oh, Hermie--Hermie!"
+
+"All--aboard!"
+
+With her hands clasped and her uncovered face twisted, she watched the
+snakelike train crawl into oblivion.
+
+When she re-entered the taxicab she was half swooning of tears.
+
+"Don't cry, baby," said the emboldened chauffeur, placing the small
+pasteboard box up beside her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the great old-fashioned room in Fortieth Street--of two beds and two
+decades ago--she finally in complete exhaustion slid into her white iron
+cot against the wall, winding an alarm-clock and placing it on the floor
+beside her.
+
+Long before Miss Sylvette de Long, with her eyelids very dark, tiptoed
+in, and, rubbing the calves of her legs in alcohol, undressed in the
+dark, she was asleep, her mouth still moist and quivering like
+a child's.
+
+At nine-thirty and with dirty daylight cluttering up the cluttered room,
+the alarm-clock, full of heinous vigor, bored like an awl into
+the morning.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Humoresque, by Fannie Hurst
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUMORESQUE ***
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