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Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




"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--"

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