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Humoresque

F >> Fannie Hurst >> Humoresque




"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.

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