A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




"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.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.