small white teeth Miss Kaufman bit off an end of thread.
"Don't let him tease you, ma; he's after your dimple again."
"_Ach, du_--tease, you! Shame! Hole in my chin he scares me with!"
She resumed her work with a smile and a twitching at her lips that she was
unable to control. A warm flow of air came in, puffing the lace curtains.
A faint odor of departed splendor lay in that room, its high calcimined
ceiling with the floral rosette in the center, the tarnished pier-glass
tilted to reflect a great pair of walnut folding-doors which cut off the
room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of _salon_
parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk
arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding
back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped
bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced
at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts blown into
them.
Mrs. Kaufman let her hands drop idly in her lap and her head fell back
against the chair. In repose the lines of her mouth turned up, and her
throat, where so often the years eat in first, was smooth and even slender
above the rather round swell of bosom.
"Tired, mommy?"
"Always around Easter spring fever right away gets hold of me!"
Mr. Vetsburg bit his cigar, slumped deeper; and inserted a thumb in the arm
of his waistcoat.
"Why, Mrs. Kaufman, don't you and Ruby come down by Atlantic City with me
to-morrow over Easter? Huh? A few more or less don't make no difference to
my sister the way they get ready for crowds."
Miss Kaufman shot forward, her face vivid.
"Oh, Vetsy," she cried, and a flush rushed up, completely dyeing her face.
His face lit with hers, a sunburst of fine lines radiating from his eyes.
"Eh?"
"Why--why, we--we'd just love it, wouldn't we, ma? Atlantic City, Easter
Day! Ma!"
Mrs. Kaufman sat upright with a whole procession of quick emotions flashing
their expressions across her face. They ended in a smile that trembled as
she sat regarding the two of them.
"I should say so, yes! I--You and Ruby go, Mr. Vetsburg. Atlantic City,
Easter Day, I bet is worth the trip. I--You two go, I should say so, but
you don't want an old woman to drag along with you."
"Ma! Just listen to her, Vetsy! Ain't she--ain't she just the limit? Half
the time when we go in stores together they take us for sisters, and then
she--she begins to talk like that to get out of going!"
"Ruby don't understand; but it ain't right, Mr. Vetsburg, I should be away
over Saturday and Sunday. On Easter always they expect a little extra, and
with Annie's sore ankle, I--I--"
"Oh, mommy, can't you leave this old shebang for only two days just for an
Easter Sunday down at Atlantic, where--where everybody goes?"
"You know yourself, Ruby, how always on Annie's Sunday out--"
"Well, what of it? It won't hurt all of them old things upstairs that let
you wait on them hand and foot all year to go without a few frills for
their Easter dinner."
"Ruby!"
"I mean it. The old gossip-pots! I just sat and looked at them there at
supper, and I said to myself, I said, to think they drown kittens and let
those poor lumps live!"
"Ruby, aren't you ashamed to talk like that?"
"Sat there and looked at poor old man Katz with his ear all ragged like it
had been chewed off, and wondered why he didn't just go down to Brooklyn
Bridge for a high jump."
"Ruby, I--"
"If all those big, strapping women, Suss and Finshriber and the whole gang
of them, were anything but vegetables, they'd get out and hustle with
keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to
get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless
women who think, mommy, you're a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady's maid, and
French chef rolled in one! Honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to
Katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get
it, I--I'll go right up and tell her what I think of her if she leaves
to-morrow."
"Mr. Vetsburg, you--you mustn't listen to her."
"Can't take a day off for a rest at Atlantic City, because their old Easter
dinner might go down the wrong side. Honest, mama, to--to think how you're
letting a crowd of old, flabby women that aren't fit even to wipe your
shoes make a regular servant out of you! Mommy!"
There were tears in Miss Kaufman's voice, actual tears, big and bright, in
her eyes, and two spots of color had popped out in her cheeks.
"Ruby, when--when a woman like me makes her living off her boarders, she
can't afford to be so particular. You think it's a pleasure I can't slam
the door right in Mrs. Katz's face when six times a day she orders towels
and ice-water? You think it's a pleasure I got to take sass from such a bad
boy like Irving? I tell you, Ruby, it's easy talk from a girl that doesn't
understand. _Ach_, you--you make me ashamed before Mr. Vetsburg you should
run down to the people we make our living off of."
Miss Kaufman flashed her vivid face toward Mr. Vetsburg, still low there in
his chair. She was trembling. "Vetsy knows! He's the only one in this house
does know! He 'ain't been here with us ten years, ever since we started in
this big house, not--not to know he's the only one thinks you're here for
anything except impudence and running stairs and standing sass from the bad
boys of lazy mothers. You know, don't you, Vetsy?"
"Ruby! Mr. Vetsburg, you--you must excuse--"
From the depths of his chair Mr. Vetsburg's voice came slow and carefully
weighed. "My only complaint, Mrs. Kaufman, with what Ruby has got to say is
it ain't strong enough. It maybe ain't none of my business, but always I
have told you that for your own good you're too _gemütlich_. No wonder
every boarder what you got stays year in and year out till even the biggest
kickers pay more board sooner as go. In my business, Mrs. Kaufman, it's the
same, right away if I get too easy with--"
"But, Mr. Vetsburg, a poor woman can't afford to be so independent. I got
big expenses and big rent; I got a daughter to raise--"
"Mama, haven't I begged you a hundred times to let me take up stenography
and get out and hustle so you can take it easy--haven't I?"
A thick coating of tears sprang to Mrs. Kaufman's eyes and muddled the gaze
she turned toward Mr. Vetsburg. "Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, a mother
should want her only child should have always the best and do always the
things she never herself could afford to do? All my life, Mr. Vetsburg, I
had always to work. Even when I was five months married to a man what it
looked like would some day do big things in the wool business, I was left
all of a sudden with nothing but debts and my baby."
"But, mama--"
"Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, I should want to work off my hands my
daughter should escape that? Nothing, Mr. Vetsburg, gives me so much
pleasure she should go with all those rich girls who like her well enough
poor to be friends with her. Always when you take her down to Atlantic City
on holidays, where she can meet 'em, it--it--"
"But, mommy, is it any fun for a girl to keep taking trips like that
with--with her mother always at home like a servant? What do people think?
Every holiday that Vetsy asks me, you--you back out. I--I won't go without
you, mommy, and--and I _want_ to go, ma, I--I _want_ to!"
"My Easter dinner and--"
"You, Mrs. Kaufman, with your Easter dinner! Ruby's right. When your mama
don't go this time not one step we go by ourselves--ain't it?"
"Not a step."
"But--"
"To-morrow, Mrs. Kaufman, we catch that one-ten train. Twelve o'clock I
call in for you. Put ginger in your mama, Ruby, and we'll open her eyes on
the boardwalk--not?"
"Oh, Vetsy!"
He smiled, regarding her.
Tears had fallen and dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks; she wavered between a
hysteria of tears and laughter.
"I--children--" She succumbed to tears, daubing her eyes shamefacedly.
He rose kindly. "Say, when such a little thing can upset her it's high time
she took for herself a little rest. If she backs out, we string her up by
the thumbs--not, Ruby?"
"We're going, ma. Going! You'll love the Markovitchs' hotel, ma dearie,
right near the boardwalk, and the grandest glassed-in porch and--and
chairs, and--and nooks, and things. Ain't they, Vetsy?"
"Yes, you little Ruby, you," he said, regarding her with warm, insinuating
eyes, even crinkling an eyelid in a wink.
She did not return the glance, but caught her cheeks in the vise of her
hands as if to stem the too quick flush. "Now you--you quit!" she cried,
flashing her back upon him in quick pink confusion.
"She gets mad yet," he said, his shoulders rising and falling in silent
laughter.
"Don't!"
"Well," he said, clicking the door softly after him, "good night and sleep
tight."
"'Night, Vetsy."
Upon the click of that door Mrs. Kaufman leaned softly forward in her
chair, speaking through a scratch in her throat. "Ruby!"
With her flush still high, Miss Kaufman danced over toward her parent, then
as suddenly ebbed in spirit, the color going. "Why, mommy, what--what you
crying for, dearie? Why, there's nothing to cry for, dearie, that we're
going off on a toot to-morrow. Honest, dearie, like Vetsy says, you're all
nerves. I bet from the way Suss hollered at you to-day about her extra milk
you're upset yet. Wouldn't I give her a piece of my mind, though! Here,
move your chair, mommy, and let me pull down the bed."
"I--I'm all right, baby. Only I just tell you it's enough to make anybody
cry we should have a friend like we got in Vetsburg. I--I tell you, baby,
they just don't come better than him. Not, baby? Don't be ashamed to say so
to mama."
"I ain't, mama! And, honest, his--his whole family is just that way.
Sweet-like and generous. Wait till you see the way his sister and
brother-in-law will treat us at the hotel to-morrow. And--and Leo, too."
"I always say the day what Meyer Vetsburg, when he was only a clerk in the
firm, answered my furnished-room advertisement was the luckiest day in my
life."
"You ought to heard, ma. I was teasing him the other day, telling him that
he ought to live at the Savoy, now that he's a two-thirds member of the
firm."
"Ruby!"
"I was only teasing, ma. You just ought to seen his face. Any day he'd
leave us!"
Mrs. Kaufman placed a warm, insinuating arm around her daughter's slim
waist, drawing her around the chair-side and to her. "There's only one way,
baby, Meyer Vetsburg can ever leave me and make me happy when he leaves."
"Ma, what you mean?"
"You know, baby, without mama coming right out in words."
"Ma, honest I don't. What?"
"You see it coming just like I do. Don't fool mama, baby."
The slender lines of Miss Kaufman's waist stiffened, and she half slipped
from the embrace.
"Now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about
what is closest in both their hearts?"
"I--I--mama, I--I don't know!"
"How he's here in this room every night lately, Ruby, since you--you're a
young lady. How right away he follows us up-stairs. How lately he invited
you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain't blind, are you?"
"Why, mama--why, mama, what is Meyer Vetsburg to--to me? Why, he--he's got
gray hair, ma; he--he's getting bald. Why, he--he don't know I'm on earth.
He--he's--"
"You mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. What's, nowadays,
baby, a man forty? Why--why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you
just say yourself for sisters they take us?"
"I know, ma, but he--he--. Why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man
Katz and--and all of 'em. He says 'too-sand' for thousand. He--"
"Baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man
talks?" She reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her
lap. "You're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a
blind man can see."
Miss Kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of
her wrists. "Ma, quit scaring me!"
"Scaring you! That such a rising man like Vetsburg, with a business he
worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's
falling in love with you, should scare you!"
"Ma, not--not him!"
In reply she fell to stroking the smooth black plaits, wound coronet
fashion about Miss Kaufman's small head. Large, hot tears sprang to her
eyes. "Baby, when you talk like that it's you that scares mama!"
"He--he--"
"Why, you think, Ruby, I been making out of myself a servant like you call
it all these years except for your future? For myself a smaller house
without such a show and maybe five or six roomers without meals, you think
ain't easier as this big barn? For what, baby, you think I always want you
should have extravagances maybe I can't afford and should keep up with the
fine girls what you meet down by Atlantic City if it ain't that a man like
Meyer Vetsburg can be proud to choose you from the best?"
"Mama! mama!"
"Don't think, Ruby, when the day comes what I can give up this
white-elephant house that it won't be a happy one for me. Every night when
I hear from up-stairs how Mrs. Katz and all of them hollers down 'towels'
and 'ice-water' to me like I--I was their slave, don't think, baby, I won't
be happiest woman in this world the day what I can slam the door, bang,
right on the words."
"Mama, mama, and you pretending all these years you didn't mind!"
"I don't, baby. Not one minute while I got a future to look forward to
with you. For myself, you think I ask anything except my little girl's
happiness? Anyways, when happiness comes to you with a man like Meyer
Vetsburg, don't--don't it come to me, too, baby?"
"Please, I--"
"That's what my little girl can do for mama, better as stenography. Set
herself down well. That's why, since we got on the subject, baby, I--I hold
off signing up the new lease, with every day Shulif fussing so. Maybe,
baby, I--well, just maybe--eh, baby?"
For answer a torrent of tears so sudden that they came in an avalanche
burst from Miss Kaufman, and she crumpled forward, face in hands and red
rushing up the back of her neck and over her ears.
"Ruby!"
"No, no, ma! No, no!"
"Baby, the dream what I've dreamed five years for you!"
"No, no, no!"
She fell back, regarding her.
"Why, Ruby. Why, Ruby, girl!"
"It ain't fair. You mustn't!"
"Mustn't?"
"Mustn't! Mustn't!" Her voice had slipped up now and away from her.
"Why, baby, it's natural at first maybe a girl should be so scared. Maybe
I shouldn't have talked so soon except how it's getting every day plainer,
these trips to Atlantic City and--"
"Mama, mama, you're killing me." She fell back against her parent's
shoulder, her face frankly distorted.
A second, staring there into space, Mrs. Kaufman sat with her arm still
entwining the slender but lax form. "Ruby, is--is it something you ain't
telling mama?"
"Oh, mommy, mommy!"
"Is there?"
"I--I don't know."
"Ruby, should you be afraid to talk to mama, who don't want nothing but her
child's happiness?"
"You know, mommy. You know!"
"Know what, baby?"
"I--er--"
"Is there somebody else you got on your mind, baby?"
"You know, mommy."
"Tell mama, baby. It ain't a--a crime if you got maybe somebody else on
your mind."
"I can't say it, mommy. It--it wouldn't be--be nice."
"Nice?"
"He--he--We ain't even sure yet."
"He?"
"Not--yet."
"Who?"
"You know."
"So help me, I don't."
"Mommy, don't make me say it. Maybe if--when his uncle Meyer takes him in
the business, we--"
"Baby, not Leo?"
"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And she buried her hot, revealing face into the fresh
net V.
"Why--why, baby, a--a _boy_ like that!"
"Twenty-three, mama, ain't a boy!"
"But, Ruby, just a clerk in his father's hotel, and two older brothers
already in it. A--a boy that 'ain't got a start yet."
"That's just it, ma. We--we're waiting! Waiting before we talk even--even
much to each other yet. Maybe--maybe his uncle Meyer is going to take him
in the business, but it ain't sure yet. We--"
"A little yellow-haired boy like him that--that can't support you, baby,
unless you live right there in his mother's and father's hotel away--away
from me!"
"Ma!"
"Ruby, a smart girl like you. A little snip what don't make salt yet, when
you can have the uncle hisself!"
"I can't help it, ma! If--if--the first time Vetsy took me down to--to the
shore, if--if Leo had been a king or a--or just what he is, it wouldn't
make no difference. I--I can't help my--my feelings, ma. I can't!"
A large furrow formed between Mrs. Kaufman's eyes, darkening her.
"You wouldn't, Ruby!" she said, clutching her.
"Oh, mommy, mommy, when a--a girl can't help a thing!"
"He ain't good enough for you, baby!"
"He's ten times too good; that--that's all you know about it. Mommy,
please! I--I just can't help it, dearie. It's just like when I--I saw him
a--a clock began to tick inside of me. I--"
"O my God!" said Mrs. Kaufman, drawing her hand across her brow.
"His uncle Meyer, ma, 's been hinting all along he--he's going to give
Leo his start and take him in the business. That's why we--we're waiting
without saying much, till it looks more like--like we can all be together,
ma."
"All my dreams! My dreams I could give up the house! My baby with a
well-to-do husband maybe on Riverside Drive. A servant for herself, so I
could pass, maybe, Mrs. Suss and Mrs. Katz by on the street. Ruby, you--you
wouldn't, Ruby. After how I've built for you!"
"Oh, mama, mama, mama!"
"If you 'ain't got ambitions for yourself, Ruby, think once of me and this
long dream I been dreaming for--us."
"Yes, ma. Yes."
"Ruby, Ruby, and I always thought when you was so glad for Atlantic City,
it was for Vetsburg; to show him how much you liked his folks. How could I
know it was--."
"I never thought, mommy. Why--why, Vetsy he's just like a relation or
something."
"I tell you, baby, it's just an idea you got in your head."
"No, no, mama. No, no."
Suddenly Mrs. Kaufman threw up her hands, clasping them tight against her
eyes, pressing them in frenzy. "O my God!" she cried. "All for nothing!"
and fell to moaning through her laced fingers. "All for nothing! Years.
Years. Years."
"Mommy darling!"
"Oh--don't, don't! Just let me be. Let me be. O my God! My God!"
"Mommy, please, mommy! I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it, mommy darling."
"I can't go on all the years, Ruby. I'm tired. Tired, girl."
"Of course you can't, darling. We--I don't want you to. 'Shh-h-h!"
"It's only you and my hopes in you that kept me going all these years. The
hope that, with some day a good man to provide for you, I could find a
rest, maybe."
"Yes, yes."
"Every time what I think of that long envelope laying there on that desk
with its lease waiting to be signed to-morrow, I--I could squeeze my eyes
shut so tight and wish I didn't never have to open them again on this--this
house and this drudgery. If you marry wrong, baby, I'm caught. Caught in
this house like a rat in a trap."
"No, no, mommy. Leo, he--his uncle--"
"Don't make me sign that new lease, Ruby. Shulif hounds me every day now.
Any day I expect he says is my last. Don't make me saddle another five
years with the house. He's only a boy, baby, and years it will take,
and--I'm tired, baby. Tired! Tired!" She lay back with her face suddenly
held in rigid lines and her neck ribbed with cords.
At sight of her so prostrate there, Ruby Kaufman grasped the cold face in
her ardent young hands, pressing her lips to the streaming eyes.
"Mommy, I didn't mean it. I didn't! I--We're just kids, flirting a little,
Leo and me. I didn't mean it, mommy!"
"You didn't mean it, Ruby, did you? Tell mama you didn't."
"I didn't, ma. Cross my heart. It's only I--I kinda had him in my head.
That's all, dearie. That's all!"
"He can't provide, baby."
"'Shh-h-h, ma! Try to get calm, and maybe then--then things can come like
you want 'em. 'Shh-h-h, dearie! I didn't mean it. 'Course Leo's only a kid.
I--We--Mommy dear, don't. You're killing me. I didn't mean it. I didn't."
"Sure, baby? Sure?"
"Sure."
"Mama's girl," sobbed Mrs. Kaufman, scooping the small form to her bosom
and relaxing. "Mama's own girl that minds."
They fell quiet, cheek to cheek, staring ahead into the gaslit quiet, the
clock ticking into it.
The tears had dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks, only her throat continuing to
throb and her hand at regular intervals patting the young shoulder pressed
to her. It was as if her heart lay suddenly very still in her breast.
"Mama's own girl that minds."
"It--it's late, ma. Let me pull down the bed."
"You ain't mad at mama, baby? It's for your own good as much as mine. It is
unnatural a mother should want to see her--"
"No, no, mama. Move, dearie. Let me pull down the bed. There you are. Now!"
With a wrench Mrs. Kaufman threw off her recurring inclination to tears,
moving casually through the processes of their retirement.
"To-morrow, baby, I tighten the buttons on them new spats. How pretty they
look."
"Yes, dearie."
"I told Mrs. Katz to-day right out her Irving can't bring any more his
bicycle through my front hall. Wasn't I right?"
"Of course you were, ma."
"Miss Flora looked right nice in that pink waist to-night--not?
Four-eighty-nine only, at Gimp's sale."
"She's too fat for pink."
"You get in bed first, baby, and let mama turn out the lights."
"No, no, mama; you."
In her white slip of a nightdress, her coronet braids unwound and falling
down each shoulder, even her slightness had waned. She was like Juliet who
at fourteen had eyes of maid and martyr.
They crept into bed, grateful for darkness.
The flute had died out, leaving a silence that was plaintive.
"You all right, baby?"
"Yes, ma." And she snuggled down into the curve of her mother's arm. "Are
you, mommy?"
"Yes, baby."
"Go to sleep, then."
"Good night, baby."
"Good night, mommy."
Silence.
Lying there, with her face upturned and her eyes closed, a stream of quiet
tears found their way from under Miss Kaufman's closed lids, running down
and toward her ears like spectacle frames.
An hour ticked past, and two damp pools had formed on her pillow.
"Asleep yet, baby?"
"Almost, ma."
"Are you all right?"
"Fine."
"You--you ain't mad at mama?"
"'Course not, dearie."
"I--thought it sounded like you was crying."
"Why, mommy, 'course not! Turn over now and go to sleep."
Another hour, and suddenly Mrs. Kaufman shot out her arm from the coverlet,
jerking back the sheet and feeling for her daughter's dewy, upturned face
where the tears were slashing down it.
"Baby!"
"Mommy, you--you mustn't!"
"Oh, my darling, like I didn't suspicion it!"
"It's only--"
"You got, Ruby, the meanest mama in the world. But you think, darling, I
got one minute's happiness like this?"
"I'm all right, mommy, only--"
"I been laying here half the night, Ruby, thinking how I'm a bad mother
what thinks only of her own--"
"No, no, mommy. Turn over and go to sl--"
"My daughter falls in love with a fine, upright young man like Leo
Markovitch, and I ain't satisfied yet! Suppose maybe for two or three years
you ain't so much on your feet. Suppose even his uncle Meyer don't take him
in. Don't any young man got to get his start slow?"
"Mommy!"
"Because I got for her my own ideas, my daughter shouldn't have in life the
man she wants!"
"But, mommy, if--"
"You think for one minute, Ruby, after all these years without this house
on my hands and my boarders and their kicks, a woman like me would be
satisfied? Why, the more, baby, I think of such a thing, the more I see it
for myself! What you think, Ruby, I do all day without steps to run, and
my gedinks with housekeeping and marketing after eighteen years of it? At
first, Ruby, ain't it natural it should come like a shock that you and that
rascal Leo got all of a sudden so--so thick? I--It ain't no more, baby.
I--I feel fine about it."
"Oh, mommy, if--if I thought you did!"
"I do. Why not? A fine young man what my girl is in love with. Every mother
should have it so."
"Mommy, you mean it?"
"I tell you I feel fine. You don't need to feel bad or cry another minute.
I can tell you I feel happy. To-morrow at Atlantic City if such a rascal
don't tell me for himself, I--I ask him right out!"
"Ma!"
"For why yet he should wait till he's got better prospects, so his
mother-in-law can hang on? I guess not!"
"Mommy darling. If you only truly feel like that about it. Why, you can
keep putting off the lease, ma, if it's only for six months, and then
we--we'll all be to--"
"Of course, baby. Mama knows. Of course!"
"He--I just can't begin to tell you, ma, the kind of a fellow Leo is till
you know him better, mommy dear."
"Always Vetsburg says he's a wide-awake one!"