He led her to a high-backed lounge against the wall, where, seated
on its extreme edge, he gazed silently at her with an expression of
sentimental concern. Mr. Moses Feldt was a short round man, bald but
for a fluffy rim of pale hair, and with the palest imaginable eyes in
a countenance perpetually flushed by the physical necessity of
accommodating his rotundity to awkward edges and conditions. As usual
he was dressed with the nicest care--a band of white linen laid in the
opening of his waistcoat, his scarf ornamented by a pear-shaped pearl
on a diamond finished stem; his cloth-topped varnished black shoes
glistened, while his short fat fingers clasped a prodigious unlighted
cigar. At last, in a tone exactly suited to his gaze, he exclaimed:
“So that naughty mama has gone out again and deserted Moses and her
little Linda!” In what way her mother had deserted Mr. Feldt she failed
to understand. Of course he wanted to marry them--the comprehensive
phrase was his own--but that didn't include him in whatever they did.
Principally it made a joke for their private entertainment. Mrs. Condon
would mimic his eager manner, “Stella, let me take you both home where
you'll have the best in the land,” And, “Ladies like you ought to have a
loving protection.” Linda would laugh in her cool bell-like manner, and
her mother add a satirical comment on the chance any Moses Feldt had of
marrying her.
Linda at once found him ridiculous and a being who forced a slighting
warmth of liking. His appearance was preposterous, the ready emotion
often too foolish for words; but underneath there was a--a goodness, a
mysterious quality that stirred her heart to recognition. Certain rare
things in life and experience affected her like that memory of an old
happiness. She could never say what they might be, they came at
the oddest times and by the most extraordinary means; but at their
occurrence she would thrill for a moment as if in response to a sound of
music.
It was, for example, absurd that Mr. Moses Feldt, who was a Jew, should
make her feel like that, but he did. And all the while that she
was disagreeable to him, or mocking him behind his back, she was as
uncomfortable and “horrid” as possible. While this fact, of course, only
served to make her horrider still. At present she adopted the manner of
a patience that nothing could quite exhaust; she was polite and formal,
relentlessly correct in position.
Mr. Moses Feldt, the cigar in his grasp, pressed a hand to the probable
region of his heart. “You don't know how I think of you,” he protested,
tears in his eyes; “just the idea of you exposed to anything at all in
hotels keeps me awake nights. Now it's a drunk, or a fresh feller on the
elevator, or--”
“It's nice of you,” Linda said, “but you needn't worry. No one would
dare to bother us. No one ever has.”
“You wouldn't know it if they did,” he replied despondently, “at your
age. And then your mother is so trustful and pleasant. Take those
parties where she is so much--roof frolics and cocoanut groves and
submarine cafés; they don't come to any good. Rowdy.” Linda studied
him coldly; if he criticized them further she would leave. He mopped a
shining brow with a large colorful silk handkerchief. “It throws me into
a sweat,” he admitted.
“Really, Mr. Feldt, you mustn't bother,” she told him in one of her few
impulses of friendliness. “You see, we are very experienced.” He nodded
without visible happiness at this truth. “I'm a jackass!” he cried.
“Judith tells me that all the time. If you could only see my daughters,”
he continued with a new vigor; “such lovely girls as they are. One dark
like you and the other fair as a daisy. Judith and Pansy. And my home
that darling mama made before she died.” The handkerchief was again in
evidence.
“Women and girls are funny. I can't get you there and not for nothing
will Judith make a step. It may be pride but it seems to me such
nonsense. I guess I'm old-fashioned and love's old-fashioned. Homes have
gone out of style with the rest. It's all these restaurants and roofs
now, yes, and studios. I tell the girls to stay away from them and from
artists and so on. I don't encourage them at the apartment--a big lump
of a feller with platinum bracelets on his wrists. What kind of a man
would that be! I'd like to know who'd buy goods from him.
“Sometimes, I'm sorry I got a lot of money, but it made mama happy. When
she laid there at the last sick and couldn't live, I said, 'Oh, if you
only won't leave me I'll give you gold to eat.'” He was so moved, his
face so red, that Linda grew acutely embarrassed. People were looking
at them. She rose stiffly but, in spite of her effort to escape him, he
caught both her hands in his:
“You say I'm an old idiot like Judith,” he begged. This Linda declined
to do. And, “Ask your mother if you won't come to dinner with the girls
and me, cozy and at home--just once.”
“I'm afraid it will do no good,” she admitted; “but I'll try.” She
realized that he was about to kiss her and moved quickly back. “I am
almost afraid of you,” he told her; “you're so distant and elegant.
Judith and Pansy would get on with you first rate. I'll telephone
tomorrow, in the afternoon. If the last flowers I sent you came I never
heard of it.”
She thanked him appropriately for the roses and stood, erect and
impersonal, as a man in the hotel livery helped him into a coat. Mr.
Moses Feldt waved the still unlighted cigar at her and disappeared
through the rotating door to the street.
She gave a half-affected sigh of relief. Couldn't he see that her mother
would never marry him. At the same time the strange thrill touched her;
the sense of his absurdity vanished and she no longer remembered him
perched like a painted rubber ball on the edge of the lounge.
In the somber red plush and varnished wood of the reception-room of
their suite he seemed again charming. Perhaps it was because he,
too, adored her mother. That wasn't the reason. The familiar rare joy
lingered. It seemed now as though she were to capture and understand it
... there was the vibration of music; and then, as always, she felt at
once sad and brave. But, in spite of her old effort to the contrary, the
feeling died away. Some day it would be clear to her; in the meanwhile
Mr. Moses Feldt became once more only ridiculous.