her back. She ain't old, gramaw ain't. If I could only get her back where
she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. All old people
think of--the grave. It's eating her--eating her mind. Mark Haas is going
to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. That's the only
way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, Selene. Now--now that my--my
little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, I--I'm going to take her
back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head,
her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all."
"It's you will be my responsibility now, ma."
"No! No!"
"The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wasserman and a spare room for
Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down. Wasn't it sweet for him to put
it that way right off, ma? 'Mother Coblenz,' he says."
"He's a good boy, Selene. It'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. Gramaw
mustn't miss none of it. He's a good boy and a fine family."
"That's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right."
"Lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl."
"A girl don't have to--be rich to get married right."
"You'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl."
"It--it would be different if Lester's uncle and all wasn't in the Acme
Club crowd, and if I hadn't got in with all that bunch. It's the last
expense I'll ever be to you, mama."
"Oh, baby, don't say that!"
"I--me and Lester--Lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's
announced next week--a reception--"
"We can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours,
and serve the ice-cream and cake in--"
"Oh, mama, I don't mean--that!"
"What?"
"Who ever heard of having a reception _here_! People won't come from town
'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. Even Gertie Wolf, with their big
house on West Pine Boulevard, had her reception at the Walsingham Hotel.
You--We--can't expect Mark Haas and all the relations--the Sinsheimers--
and--all to come out here. I'd rather not have any."
"But, Selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in
with that crowd through being friends at school with Amy Rosen. All the
city salesmen and the boys on Washington Avenue, even Mark Haas himself,
that time he was in the store with Lester, knows the way we live. You don't
need to be ashamed of your little home, Selene, even if it ain't on West
Pine Boulevard."
"It'll be--your last expense, mama. The Walsingham, that's where the girl
that Lester Goldmark marries is expected to have her reception."
"But, Selene, mama can't afford nothing like that."
Pink swam up into Miss Coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar
there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were
fluttering within.
"I--I'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other
girls."
"But, Selene--"
"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with
marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I
can't! I--wouldn't!"
She was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were
imminent.
"Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back
yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that
can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the
border, and--"
"Oh, I know! I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old,
worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest."
"It's hand-woven, Selene, with--"
"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I
didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens,
like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I
wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with passion and tears,
rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!"
"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be
willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding
she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a
cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen,
un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars,
if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can
afford, but she 'ain't got the money!"
"You--have got the money!"
"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what
business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a
pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do
for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked
ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God
knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl
ever had. But I 'ain't got the money--I 'ain't got the money."
"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and
forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two."
"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's--to go back--"
"You mean the bank-book's hers?"
"That's gramaw's, to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take
gramaw and her wreaths back home on."
"There you go--talking luny."
"Selene!"
"Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along
like that."
"You--"
"All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first
before me, with all my life to live--all right!"
"Your poor old--"
"It's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. I couldn't even have
company since I'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around.
Nobody can say I ain't good to gramaw; Lester says it's beautiful the way I
am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just
the same, I know when right's right and wrong's wrong. If my life ain't
more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. Go ahead!"
"Selene, Selene, ain't it coming to gramaw, after all her years' hard work
helping us that--she should be entitled to go back with her wreaths for the
graves? Ain't she entitled to die with that off her poor old mind? You bad,
ungrateful girl, you, it's coming to a poor old woman that's suffered as
terrible as gramaw that I should find a way to take her back."
"Take her back. Where--to jail? To prison in Siberia herself--"
"There's a way--"
"You know gramaw's too old to take a trip like that. You know in your own
heart she won't ever see that day. Even before the war, much less now,
there wasn't a chance for her to get passports back there. I don't say it
ain't all right to kid her along, but when it comes to--to keeping me out
of the--the biggest thing that can happen to a girl--when gramaw wouldn't
know the difference if you keep showing her the bank-book--it ain't right.
That's what it ain't. It ain't right!"
In the smallest possible compass, Miss Coblenz crouched now upon the floor,
head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising
sobs.
"Selene--but some day--"
"Some day nothing! A woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town
once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia! You can't get in
there, I--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to
leave. Even before the war Ray Letsky's father couldn't get back on
business. There's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. In
thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? Do you know the size
of Siberia? No! But I got to pay--I got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. But I
won't. I won't go to Lester if I can't go right. I--."
"Baby, don't cry so--for God's sake, don't cry so!"
"I wish I was dead!"
"'Sh-h-h! You'll wake gramaw."
"I do!"
"O God, help me to do the right thing!"
"If gramaw could understand, she'd be the first one to tell you the right
thing. Anybody would."
"No! No! That little bank-book and its entries are her life--her life."
"She don't need to know, mama. I'm not asking that. That's the way they
always do with old people to keep them satisfied. Just humor 'em. Ain't I
the one with life before me--ain't I, mama?"
"O God, show me the way!"
"If there was a chance, you think I'd be spoiling things for gramaw? But
there ain't, mama--not one."
"I keep hoping if not before, then after the war. With the help of Mark
Haas--"
"With the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in
a while, she'll never know the difference. I swear to God she'll never know
the difference, mama!"
"Poor gramaw!"
"Mama, promise me--your little Selene. Promise me?"
"Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?"
"I swear we can, mama."
"Poor, poor gramaw!"
"Mama? Mama darling?"
"O God, show me the way!"
"Ain't it me that's got life before me? My whole life?"
"Yes--Selene."
"Then, mama, please--you will--you will--darling?"
"Yes, Selene."
In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and
cloak-room-service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family hostelry in
that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the city holds not
a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be
carried in for the purpose, morning readings of "Little Moments from
Little Plays," and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly
lodge-meetings of the Lady Mahadharatas of America. For weddings and
receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to the slight dais; and lined
about the brocade and paneled walls, gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the
crest of Walsingham in padded embroidery on the backs. Crystal chandeliers,
icicles of dripping light, glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped
velours, and mirrors wreathed in gilt.
At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned
with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters
tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a
finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly
seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel.
Light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon the
dais; upon Miss Selene Coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat waist
and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full-inverted petals
of a skirt; upon Mr. Lester Goldmark, his long body barely knitted yet
to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing omnivorous,
omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it lay like black
japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his smile slightly
projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very front. Next in line,
Mrs. Coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in her face, beneath the
maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom, fast, and her white-gloved hand
constantly at the opening and shutting of a lace-and-spangled fan. Back,
and well out of the picture, a potted hydrangea beside the Louis Quinze
armchair, her hands in silk mitts laid out along the gold-chair sides, her
head quavering in a kind of mild palsy, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, smiling and
quivering her state of bewilderment.
With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr.
Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm of
Mrs. Coblenz.
"Say, Mother Coblenz, ain't it about time this little girl of mine was
resting her pink-satin double A's? She's been on duty up here from four to
seven. No wonder Uncle Mark bucked."
Mrs. Coblenz threw her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a
wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which
crowds but does not lap over its sides.
"I guess the crowd is finished coming in by now. You tired, Selene?"
Miss Coblenz turned her glowing glance.
"Tired! This is the swellest engagement-party I ever had."
Mrs. Coblenz shifted her weight from one slipper to the other, her
maroon-net skirts lying in a swirl around them.
"Just look at gramaw, too! She holds up her head with the best of them. I
wouldn't have had her miss this, not for the world."
"Sure one fine old lady! Ought to have seen her shake my hand, Mother
Coblenz. I nearly had to holler, 'Ouch!'"
"Mama, here comes Sara Suss and her mother. Take my arm, Lester honey.
People mama used to know." Miss Coblenz leaned forward beyond the dais with
the frail curve of a reed.
"Howdado, Mrs. Suss.... Thank you. Thanks. Howdado, Sara? Meet my _fiancé_,
Lester Haas Goldmark; Mrs. Suss and Sara Suss, my _fiancé_.... That's
right, better late than never. There's plenty left.... We think he is, Mrs.
Suss. Aw, Lester honey, quit! Mama, here's Mrs. Suss and Sadie."
"Mrs. Suss! Say--if you hadn't come, I was going to lay it up against you.
If my new ones can come on a day like this, it's a pity my old friends
can't come, too. Well, Sadie, it's your turn next, eh?... I know better
than that. With them pink cheeks and black eyes, I wish I had a dime
for every chance." (_Sotto_.) "Do you like it, Mrs. Suss? Pussy-willow
taffeta.... Say, it ought to be. An estimate dress from Madame
Murphy--sixty-five with findings. I'm so mad, Sara, you and your mama
couldn't come to the house that night to see her things. If I say so
myself, Mrs. Suss, everybody who seen it says Jacob Sinsheimer's daughter
herself didn't have a finer. Maybe not so much, but every stitch, Mrs.
Suss, made by the same sisters in the same convent that made hers....
Towels! I tell her it's a shame to expose them to the light, much less wipe
on them. Ain't it?... The goodness looks out from his face. And such a
love-pair! Lunatics, I call them. He can't keep his hands off. It ain't
nice, I tell him.... Me? Come close. I dyed the net myself. Ten cents'
worth of maroon color. Don't it warm your heart, Mrs. Suss? This morning,
after we got her in Lester's Uncle Mark's big automobile, I says to her, I
says, 'Mama, you sure it ain't too much?' Like her old self for a minute,
Mrs. Suss, she hit me on the arm. 'Go 'way,' she said; 'on my grandchild's
engagement day anything should be too much?' Here, waiter, get these two
ladies some salad. Good measure, too. Over there by the window, Mrs. Suss.
Help yourselves."
"Mama, 'sh-h-h! the waiters know what to do."
Mrs. Coblenz turned back, the flush warm to her face.
"Say, for an old friend I can be my own self."
"Can we break the receiving-line now, Lester honey, and go down with
everybody? The Sinsheimers and their crowd over there by themselves, we
ought to show we appreciate their coming."
Mr. Goldmark twisted high in his collar, cupping her small bare elbow in
his hand.
"That's what I say, lovey; let's break. Come, Mother Coblenz, let's step
down on high society's corns."
"Lester!"
"You and Selene go down with the crowd, Lester. I want to take gramaw to
rest for a while before we go home. The manager says we can have room
fifty-six by the elevator for her to rest in."
"Get her some newspapers, ma, and I brought her a wreath down to keep her
quiet. It's wrapped in her shawl."
Her skirts delicately lifted, Miss Coblenz stepped down off the dais. With
her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded
"Springtime," done in the key of Botticelli.
"Oop-si-lah, lovey-dovey!" said Mr. Goldmark, tilting her elbow for the
downward step.
"Oop-si-lay, dovey-lovey!" said Miss Coblenz, relaxing to the support.
Gathering up her plentiful skirts, Mrs. Coblenz stepped off, too, but back
toward the secluded chair beside the potted hydrangea. A fine line of pain,
like a cord tightening, was binding her head, and she put up two fingers to
each temple, pressing down the throb.
"Mrs. Coblenz, see what I got for you!" She turned, smiling. "You don't
look like you need salad and green ice-cream. You look like you needed what
I wanted--a cup of coffee."
"Aw, Mr. Haas--now where in the world--Aw, Mr. Haas!"
With a steaming cup outheld and carefully out of collision with the crowd,
Mr. Haas unflapped a napkin with his free hand, inserting his foot in the
rung of a chair and dragging it toward her.
"Now," he cried, "sit and watch me take care of you!"
There comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving
no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time. Between forty
and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from
the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off
Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness
enhanced even the moving-over of a button. When Mr. Haas smiled, his
mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal
a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon
occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was his
own.
He smiled now, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles attached by a chain
to a wire-encircled left ear.
"Sit," he cried, "and let me serve you!"
Standing there with a diffidence which she could not crowd down, Mrs.
Coblenz smiled through closed lips that would pull at the corners.
"The idea, Mr. Haas--going to all that trouble!"
"'Trouble'! she says. After two hours' handshaking in a swallow-tail, a man
knows what real trouble is!"
She stirred around and around the cup, supping up spoonfuls gratefully.
"I'm sure much obliged. It touches the right spot."
He pressed her down to the chair, seating himself on the low edge of the
dais.
"Now you sit right there and rest your bones."
"But my mother, Mr. Haas. Before it's time for the ride home she must rest
in a quiet place."
"My car'll be here and waiting five minutes after I telephone."
"You--sure have been grand, Mr. Haas!"
"I shouldn't be grand yet to my--Let's see--what relation is it I am to
you?"
"Honest, you're a case, Mr. Haas--always making fun!"
"My poor dead sister's son marries your daughter. That makes you
my--nothing-in-law."
"Honest, Mr. Haas, if I was around you, I'd get fat laughing."
"I wish you was."
"Selene would have fits. 'Never get fat, mama,' she says, 'if you don't
want--'"
"I don't mean that."
"What?"
"I mean I wish you was around me."
She struck him then with her fan, but the color rose up into the mound of
her carefully piled hair.
"I always say I can see where Lester gets his comical ways. Like his uncle,
that boy keeps us all laughing."
"Gad! look at her blush! I know women your age would give fifty dollars a
blush to do it that way."
She was looking away again, shoulders heaving to silent laughter, the blush
still stinging.
"It's been so--so long, Mr. Haas, since I had compliments made to me. You
make me feel so--silly."
"I know it, you nice, fine woman, you; and it's a darn shame!"
"Mr.--Haas!"
"I mean it. I hate to see a fine woman not get her dues. Anyways, when
she's the finest woman of them all!"
"I--the woman that lives to see a day like this--her daughter the happiest
girl in the world, with the finest boy in the world--is getting her dues,
all right, Mr. Haas."
"She's a fine girl, but she ain't worth her mother's little finger-nail."
"Mr.--Haas!"
"No, sir-ree!"
"I must be going now, Mr. Haas. My mother--"
"That's right. The minute a man tries to break the ice with this little
lady, it's a freeze-out. Now what did I say so bad? In business, too. Never
seen the like. It's like trying to swat a fly to come down on you at the
right minute. But now, with you for a nothing-in-law, I got rights."
"If--you ain't the limit, Mr. Haas!"
"Don't mind saying it, Mrs. C., and, for a bachelor, they tell me I'm not
the worst judge in the world, but there's not a woman on the floor stacks
up like you do."
"Well--of all things!"
"Mean it."
"My mother, Mr. Haas, she--"
"And if anybody should ask you if I've got you on my mind or not, well,
I've already got the letters out on that little matter of the passports you
spoke to me about. If there's a way to fix that up for you, and leave it to
me to find it, I--"
She sprang now, trembling, to her feet, all the red of the moment receding.
"Mr. Haas, I--I must go now. My--mother--"
He took her arm, winding her in and out among crowded-out chairs behind the
dais.
"I wish it to every mother to have a daughter like you, Mrs. C."
"No! No!" she said, stumbling rather wildly through the chairs. "No! No!
No!"
He forged ahead, clearing her path of them.
Beside the potted hydrangea, well back and yet within an easy view, Mrs.
Horowitz, her gilt armchair well cushioned for the occasion, and her
black grenadine spread decently about her, looked out upon the scene, her
slightly palsied head well forward.
"Mama, you got enough? You wouldn't have missed it, eh? A crowd of people
we can be proud to entertain. Not? Come; sit quiet in another room for a
while, and then Mr. Haas, with his nice big car, will drive us all home
again. You know Mr. Haas, dearie--Lester's uncle that had us drove so
careful in his fine car. You remember, dearie--Lester's uncle?"
Mrs. Horowitz looked up, her old face crackling to smile.
"My grandchild! My grandchild! She'm a fine one. Not? My grandchild! My
grandchild!"
"You--mustn't mind, Mr. Haas. That's--the way she's done since--since
she's--sick. Keeps repeating--"
"My grandchild! From a good mother and a bad father comes a good
grandchild. My grandchild! She'm a good one. My--"
"Mama dearie, Mr. Haas is in a hurry. He's come to help me walk you into a
little room to rest before we go home in Mr. Haas's big, fine auto. Where
you can go and rest, mama, and read the newspapers. Come."
"My back--_ach_--my back!"
"Yes, yes, mama; we'll fix it. Up! So--la!"
They raised her by the crook of each arm, gently.
"So! Please, Mr. Haas, the pillows. Shawl. There!"
Around a rear hallway, they were almost immediately into a blank, staring
hotel bedroom, fresh towels on the furniture-tops only enhancing its
staleness.
"Here we are. Sit her here, Mr. Haas, in this rocker."
They lowered her, almost inch by inch, sliding down pillows, against the
chair-back.
"Now, Shila's little mama want to sleep?"
"I got--no rest--no rest."
"You're too excited, honey; that's all."
"No rest."
"Here--here's a brand-new hotel Bible on the table, dearie. Shall Shila
read it to you?"
"Aylorff--"
"Now, now, mama. Now, now; you mustn't! Didn't you promise Shila? Look!
See, here's a wreath wrapped in your shawl for Shila's little mama to work
on. Plenty of wreaths for us to take back. Work awhile, dearie, and then
we'll get Selene and Lester, and, after all the nice company goes away,
we'll go home in the auto."
"I begged he should keep in his hate--his feet in the--"
"I know! The papers! That's what little mama wants. Mr. Haas, that's what
she likes better than anything--the evening papers."
"I'll go down and send 'em right up with a boy, and telephone for the car.
The crowd's beginning to pour out now. Just hold your horses there, Mrs.
C., and I'll have those papers up here in a jiffy."
He was already closing the door after him, letting in and shutting out a
flare of music.
"See, mama, nice Mr. Haas is getting us the papers. Nice evening papers for
Shila's mama." She leaned down into the recesses of the black grenadine,
withdrawing from one of the pockets a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles,
adjusting them with some difficulty to the nodding head. "Shila's--little
mama! Shila's mama!"
"Aylorff, the littlest wreath for--Aylorff--_Meine Kräntze_--"
"Yes, yes."
"_Mem Mann. Mein Sühn_."
"'Shh-h-h, dearie!"
"Aylorff--_der klenste Kranz far ihm_!"
"'Shh-h-h, dearie! Talk English, like Selene wants. Wait till we get on the
ship--the beautiful ship to take us back. Mama, see out the window! Look!
That's the beautiful Forest Park, and this is the fine Hotel Walsingham
just across. See out! Selene is going to have a flat on--"
"_Sey hoben gestorben far Freiheit. Sey hoben_--"
"There! That's the papers!"
To a succession of quick knocks, she flew to the door, returning with the
folded evening editions under her arm.
"Now," she cried, unfolding and inserting the first of them into the
quivering hands--"now, a shawl over my little mama's knees and we're
fixed!"
With a series of rapid movements she flung open one of the black-cashmere
shawls across the bed, folding it back into a triangle. Beside the table,
bare except for the formal, unthumbed Bible, Mrs. Horowitz rattled out a
paper, her near-sighted eyes traveling back and forth across the page.
Music from the ferned-in orchestra came in drifts, faint, not so faint.
From somewhere, then immediately from everywhere--beyond, below, without,
the fast shouts of newsboys mingling.
Suddenly and of her own volition, and with a cry that shot up through the
room, rending it like a gash, Mrs. Horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to
her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced out, flung up.