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Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




"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."

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