When the two sides of every story are told Henry VIII may establish an
alibi or two, Shylock and the public-school system meet over and melt
that too, too solid pound of flesh, and Xantippe, herself the sturdier
man than Socrates, give ready lie to what is called the shrew in her.
Landladies, whole black bombazine generations of them--oh, so long
unheard--may rise in one Indictment of the Boarder: the scarred bureau
front and match-scratched wall paper; the empty trunk nailed to the
floor in security for the unpaid bill; cigarette-burnt sheets and the
terror of sudden fire; the silent newcomer in the third floor back
hustled out one night in handcuffs; the day-long sobs of the blond girl
so suddenly terrified of life-about-to-be and wringing her ringless
hands in the fourth-floor hallroom; the smell of escaping gas and the
tightly packed keyhole; the unsuspected flutes that lurk in boarders’
trunks; towels, that querulous and endless pæan of the lodger; the high
cost of liver and dried peaches, of canned corn and round steak!
Tired bombazine procession, wrapped in the greasy odors of years of
carpet sweeping and emptying slops, airing the gassy slit of room after
the coroner and padding from floor to floor on a mission of towels and
towels and towels!
Sometimes climbing from floor to floor, a still warm supply of them
looped over one arm, Mrs. Kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted
and with crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking
face the years had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit
suddenly, there in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the
balustrade. Oftener than not the Katz boy from the third floor front
would come lickety-clapping down the stairs and past her, jumping the
last four steps of each flight.
“Irving, quit your noise in the hall.”
“Aw!”
“Ain’t you ashamed, a big boy like you, and Mrs. Suss with her
neuralgia?”
“Aw!”--the slam of a door clipping off this insolence.
After a while she would resume her climb.
And yet in Mrs. Kaufman’s private boarding house in West Eighty-ninth
Street, one of a breastwork of brown-stone fronts, lined up stoop for
stoop, story for story, and ash can for ash can, there were few enough
greasy odors except upon the weekly occasion of Monday’s boiled dinner;
and, whatever the status of liver and dried peaches, canned corn and
round steak, her menus remained static--so static that in the
gas-lighted basement dining room and at a remote end of the long,
well-surrounded table Mrs. Katz, with her napkin tucked well under her
third chin, turned _sotto_ from the protruding husband at her right to
her left neighbor, shielding her remark with her hand. “Am I right, Mrs.
Finshriber? I just said to my husband in the five years we been here she
should just give us once a change from Friday night lamb and noodles.”
“Say, you should complain yet! With me it’s six and a half years day
after to-morrow, Easter Day, since I asked myself that question first.”
“Even my Irving says to me to-night up in the room, jumping up and down
on the hearth like he had four legs--”
“I heard him, Mrs. Katz, on my ceiling like he had eight legs.”
“‘Mamma,’ he says, ‘guess why I feel like saying “Baa.”’”
“Saying what?”
“Sheep talk, Mrs. Finshriber. B-a-a, like a sheep goes.”
“Oh!”
“’Cause I got so many Friday nights’ lamb in me, mamma,’ he said. Quick
like a flash that child is.”
Mrs. Finshriber dipped her head and her glance, all her drooping
features pulled even further down at their corners. “I ain’t the one to
complain, Mrs. Katz, and I always say when you come right down to it,
maybe Mrs. Kaufman’s house is as good as the next one, but--”
“I wish, though, Mrs. Finshriber, you would hear what Mrs. Spritz says
at her boarding house they get for breakfast: fried--”
“You can imagine, Mrs. Katz, since my poor husband’s death, how much
appetite I got left; but I say, Mrs. Katz, just for the principle of the
thing, it would not hurt once Mrs. Kaufman should give somebody else
besides her own daughter and Vetsburg always the white meat from
everything, ain’t it?”
“It’s a shame before the boarders! She knows, Mrs. Finshriber, how my
husband likes breast from the chicken. You think once he gets it? No. I
always tell him, not till chickens come double-breasted like overcoats
can he get it in this house, with Vetsburg such a star boarder.”
“Last night’s chicken, let me tell you, I don’t wish it to a dog! Such a
piece of dark meat with gizzard I had to swallow.”
Mrs. Katz adjusted with greater security the expanse of white napkin
across her ample bosom. Gold rings and a quarter-inch marriage band
flashed in and out among the litter of small tub-shaped dishes
surrounding her, and a pouncing fork of a short, sure stab. “Right away
my husband gets mad when I say the same thing. ‘When we don’t like it we
should move,’ he says.”
“Like moving is so easy, if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to
take with you. But I always say, Mrs. Katz, I don’t blame Mrs. Kaufman
herself for what goes on; there’s _one_ good woman if there ever was
one!”
“They don’t come no better or no better-looking, my husband always says.
‘S-ay,’ I tell him, ‘she can stand her good looks.’”
“It’s that big-ideaed daughter is more to blame. Did you see yet her new
white spats to-night? Right away the minute they come out she has to
have ’em. I’m only surprised she ain’t got one of them red hats from
Gimp’s what is all the fad. _Oser_, if not such ideas, her mother could
afford something better as succotash for us for supper.”
“It’s a shame, let me tell you, that a woman like Mrs. Kaufman can’t see
for herself such things. God forbid I should ever be so blind to my
Irving. I tell you that Ruby has got it more like a queen than a
boarding-house keeper’s daughter. Spats, yet!”
“Rich girls could be glad to have it always so good.”
“I don’t say nothing how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder,
and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can
afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn’t be made to take
up a little stenography or help with the housework!”
“S-ay, when that girl even turns a hand, pale like a ghost her mother
gets.”
“How girls are raised nowadays, even the poor ones!”
“I ain’t the one to complain, Mrs. Katz, but just look down there, that
red stuff.”
“Where?”
“Ain’t it cranberry between Ruby and Vetsburg?”
“Yes, yes, and look such a dish of it!”
“Is it right extras should be allowed to be brought on a table like this
where fourteen other boarders got to let their mouths water and look at
it?”
“You think it don’t hurt like a knife! For myself I don’t mind, but my
Irving! How that child loves ’em, and he should got to sit at the same
table without cranberries.”
From the head of the table the flashing implements of carving held in
askance for stroke, her lips lifted to a smile and a simulation of
interest for display of further carnivorous appetites, Mrs. Kaufman
passed her nod from one to the other.
“Miss Arndt, little more? No? Mr. Krakower? Gravy? Mrs. Suss? Mr. Suss?
So! Simon? Mr. Schloss? Miss Horowitz? Mr. Vetsburg, let me give you
this little tender--No? Then, Ruby, here let mamma give you just a
little more--”
“No, no, mamma, please!” She caught at the hovering wrist to spare the
descent of the knife.
By one of those rare atavisms by which a poet can be bred of a peasant
or peasant be begot of poet, Miss Ruby Kaufman, who was born in Newark,
posthumous, to a terrified little parent with a black ribbon at the
throat of her gown, had brought with her from no telling where the
sultry eyes and tropical-turned skin of spice-kissed winds. The
corpuscles of a shah might have been running in the blood of her, yet
Simon Kaufman and Simon Kaufman’s father before him had sold wool
remnants to cap factories on commission.
“Ruby, you don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive. Ain’t it a shame, Mr.
Vetsburg, a girl should be so dainty?”
Mr. Meyer Vetsburg cast a beetling glance down upon Miss Kaufman, there
so small beside him, and tinked peremptorily against her plate three
times with his fork. “Eat, young lady, like your mamma wants you should,
or, by golly, I’ll string you up for my watch fob, not, Mrs. Kaufman?”
A smile lay under Mr. Vetsburg’s gray-and-black mustache. Gray were his
eyes too, and his suit, a comfortable baggy suit with the slouch of the
wearer impressed into it, the coat hiking center back, the pocket flaps
half in, half out, and the knees sagging out of press.
“That’s right, Mr. Vetsburg, you should scold her when she don’t eat.”
Above the black bombazine basque, so pleasantly relieved at the throat
by a V of fresh white net, a wave of color moved up Mrs. Kaufman’s face
into her architectural coiffure, the very black and very coarse skein of
her hair wound into a large loose mound directly atop her head and
pierced there with a ball-topped comb of another decade.
“I always say, Mr. Vetsburg, she minds you before she minds anybody else
in the world.”
“Ma,” said Miss Kaufman, close upon that remark, “some succotash,
please.”
From her vantage down table, Mrs. Katz leaned a bit forward from the
line.
“Look, Mrs. Finshriber, how for a woman her age she snaps her black eyes
at him. It ain’t hard to guess when a woman’s got a marriageable
daughter, not?”
“You can take it from me she’ll get him for her Ruby yet! And take it
from me, too, almost any girl I know, much less Ruby Kaufman, could do
worse as get Meyer Vetsburg.”
“S-say, I wish it to her to get him. For why once in a while shouldn’t a
poor girl get a rich man except in books and choruses?”
“Believe me, a girl like Ruby can manage what she wants. Take it from
me, she’s got it behind her ears.”
“I should say so.”
“_Oser_ without it she could get in with such a crowd of rich girls like
she does. I got it from Mrs. Abrams in the Arline Apartments how every
week she plays five hundred with Nathan Shapiro’s daughter.”
“No! Shapiro and Stein?”
“And yesterday at matinée in she comes with a box of candy and laughing
with that Rifkin girl! How she gets in with such swell girls, I don’t
know, but there ain’t a nice Saturday afternoon I don’t see that girl
walking on Fifth Avenue with just such a crowd of fine-dressed girls,
all with their noses powdered so white and their hats so little and
stylish.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if her mother don’t send her down to Atlantic
City over Easter again if Vetsburg goes. Every holiday she has to go
lately like it was coming to her.”
“Say, between you and me, I don’t put it past her it’s that Markovitch
boy down there she’s after. Ray Klein saw ’em on the Boardwalk once
together, and she says it’s a shame for the people how they sat so close
in a rolling chair.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised she’s fresh with the boys, but, believe me, if
she gets the uncle she don’t take the nephew!”
“Say, a clerk in his own father’s hotel like the Markovitches got in
Atlantic City ain’t no crime.”
“Her mother has got bigger thoughts for her than that. For why I guess
she thinks her daughter should take the nephew when maybe she can get
the uncle herself. Nowadays it ain’t nothing no more that girls marry
twice their own age.”
“I always say I can tell when Leo Markovitch comes down by the way her
mother’s face gets long and the daughter’s gets short.”
“Can you blame her? Leo Markovitch, with all his monograms on his shirt
sleeves and such black rims on his glasses, ain’t the Rosenthal Vetsburg
Hosiery Company, not by a long shot! There ain’t a store in this town
you ask for the No Hole guaranteed stocking, right away they don’t show
it to you. Just for fun always I ask.”
“Cornstarch pudding! Irving, stop making that noise at Mrs. Kaufman!
Little boys should be seen and not heard even at cornstarch pudding.”
“Gott! Wouldn’t you think, Mrs. Katz, how Mrs. Kaufman knows how I hate
desserts that wobble, a little something extra she could give me.”
“_Oser_ how she plays favorite, it’s a shame. I wish you look, too,
Mrs. Finshriber, how Flora Proskauer carries away from the table her
glass milk with slice bread on top. I tell you it don’t give tune to a
house the boarders should carry away from the table like that. Irving,
come and take with you that extra piece cake. Just so much board we pay
as Flora Proskauer.”
The line about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of
chairs and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks. A blowsy
maid strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying
lamb platter, and turned off two of the three gas jets.
In the yellow gloom, the odors of food permeating it, they filed out and
up the dim-lit stairs into dim-lit halls, the line of conversation and
short laughter drifting after.
A door slammed. Another. Irving Katz leaped from his third-floor
threshold to the front hearth, quaking three layers of chandeliers. From
Morris Krakower’s fourth floor back the tune of a flute began to wind
down the stairs. Out of her just-closed door, Mrs. Finshriber poked a
frizzled gray head.
“Ice water, ple-ase, Mrs. Kauf-man.”
At the door of the first floor back Mrs. Kaufman paused with her hand on
the knob.
“Mamma, let me run and do it.”
“Don’t you move, Ruby. When Annie goes up to bed is time enough. Won’t
you come in for a while, Mr. Vetsburg?”
“Don’t care if I do.”
She opened the door, entering cautiously. “Let me light up, Mrs.
Kaufman.” He struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his shoe,
turning up three jets.
“You must excuse, Mr. Vetsburg, how this room looks; all day we been
sewing for Ruby her new dress.”
She caught up a litter of dainty pink frills in the making, clearing a
chair for him.
“Sit down, Mr. Vetsburg.”
They adjusted themselves around the shower of gaslight, Miss Kaufman
fumbling in her flowered workbag, finally curling her foot up under her,
her needle flashing and shirring through one of the pink flounces.
“Ruby, in such a light you shouldn’t strain your eyes.”
“All right, ma,” stitching placidly on.
“What’ll you give me, Ruby, if I tell you whose favorite color is pink?”
“Aw, Vetsy!” she cried, her face like a rose, “_your_ color’s pink!”
From the depths of an inverted sewing-machine top Mrs. Kaufman fished
out another bit of the pink, ruffling it with deft needle.
The flute lifted its plaintive voice, feeling for high C.
Mr. Vetsburg lighted a loosely wrapped cigar and slumped in his chair.
“If anybody,” he observed, “should ask right this minute where I’m at,
tell ’em for me, Mrs. Kaufman, I’m in the most comfortable chair in the
house.”
“You should keep it, then, up in your room, Mr. Vetsburg, and not always
bring it down again when I get Annie to carry it up to you.”
“Say, I don’t give up so easy my excuse for dropping in evenings.”
“Honest, you--you two children, you ought to have a fence built around
you the way you like always to be together.”
He sat regarding her, puffing and chewing his live cigar. Suddenly he
leaped forward, his hand closing rigidly over hers.
“Mrs. Kaufman!”
“What?”
“Quick, there’s a hole in your chin.”
“Gott, a--a--what?”
At that he relaxed at his own pleasantry, laughing and shrugging. With
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 fall 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 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 just now, and I said to myself, I said, to think they drown
kittens and let those poor lumps live!”
“Ruby, ain’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, mamma, to--to think
how you’re letting a crowd of old, flabby women that ain’t fit even to
wipe your shoes make a regular servant out of you! Mommy!”
There were tears in Miss Kaufman’s voice and 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 now 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
what don’t understand. _Ach_, you--you make me ashamed before Mr.
Vetsburg you should run down so 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 get 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 way 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--”
“Mamma, 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, mamma--”
“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
mamma 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 mamma, 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 Markovitches’ 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 no better than him. Not, baby? Don’t be
ashamed to say so to mamma.”
“I ain’t, mamma! And, honest, his--his whole family is just that way.
Sweetlike 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 mamma coming right out in words.”
“Ma, honest I don’t. What?”
“You see it coming just like I do. Don’t fool mamma, 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, mamma, 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 upstairs. How lately he
invited you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain’t blind,
are you?”
“Why, mamma--why, mamma, 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 mamma 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 you, 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 mamma!”
“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?”
“Mamma, mamma!”
“Don’t think, Ruby, when the day comes what I can give up this
white-elephant house it won’t be a happy one for me. Every night when I
hear from upstairs how Mrs. Katz and all of them hollers down ‘towels’
and ‘ice water’ to me like I--I was their slave, you don’t think, baby,
I will be happiest woman in this world the day what I can slam the door,
bang, right on the words.”
“Mamma, mamma, 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, baby, you think I ask anything except my little
girl’s happiness? Anyways, when happiness come 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 mamma, 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--”
“Mamma, mamma, 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 mamma?”
“Oh, mommy, mommy!”
“Is there?”
“I--I don’t know.”
“Ruby, should you be afraid to talk to mamma, 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 mamma, 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, mamma, 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 brow.
“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--”
“Oh, 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, mamma, mamma, mamma!”
“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.”
“Gott im Himmel, Ruby, I always thought, and how he must have thought
it, too, when you was so glad for Atlantic City, it--it was for Vetsburg
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, mamma. No. No.”
Suddenly Mrs. Kaufman threw up her hands, clasping them tight against
her eyes, pressing them in frenzy. “Oh, 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. Oh, 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 mamma 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.”
“Ehh-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.”
“Mamma’s girl,” sobbed Mrs. Kaufman, scooping the small form to her
bosom and relaxing. “Mamma’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.
“Mamma’s own girl that minds.”
“It--it’s late, ma. Let me pull down the bed.”
“You ain’t mad at mamma, baby? It’s for your own good as much as mine.
It is unnatural a mother should want to see her--”
“No, no, mamma. 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 mamma turn out the lights.”
“No, no, mamma; 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 mamma?”
“’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 mamma 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 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. Mamma 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 wideawake one!”
“That’s just what he is, ma. He’s just a prince if--if there ever was
one. One little prince of a fellow.” She fell to crying softly, easy
tears that flowed freely.
“I--I can tell you, baby, I’m happy as you.”
“Mommy, dear, kiss me.”
They talked, huddled arm in arm, until dawn flowed in at the window and
dirty roofs began to show against a clean sky. Footsteps began to
clatter through the asphalt court and there came the rattle of milk
cans.
“I wonder if Annie left out the note for Mrs. Suss’s extra milk!”
“Don’t get up, dearie; it’s only five.”
“Right away, baby, with extra towels I must run up to Miss Flora’s room.
That six o’clock train for Trenton she gets.”
“Ma, dear, let me go.”
“Lay right where you are! I guess you want you should look all worn out
when a young man what I know walks down to meet our train at Atlantic
City this afternoon, eh?”
“Oh, mommy, mommy.” And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows.
At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and
every sort of maker hustling in and out the basement way; the sweeping
of upstairs halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the
smell of spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from
various stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its
Saturday morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of
motor cars, tops back, and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A
homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up
through the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed.
After a morning of upstairs and downstairs and in and out of chambers,
Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with
starch, hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the
staircase and entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside
the open shelf of her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk,
and she took it up slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them
squeezed tight as if she would press back a vision, even then a tear
oozing through. She blinked it back, but her mouth was wry with the
taste of tears.
A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. “Mrs. Katz
broke ’er mug!”
“Take the one off Mr. Krakow’s washstand and give it to her, Tillie.”
She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though
it swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall
forward into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and
falling.
But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his
white apron and shirt sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a
file on her desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance
and a keen eye for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon.
On the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pass one
another in the doorway, Mr. Vetsburg entered with an overcoat flung
across his right arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling
bag.
“Well,” he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well
back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, “is this
what you call ready at twelve?”
She rose and moved forward in her crackly starched apron. “I--please,
Mr. Vetsburg, it ain’t right I know--”
“You don’t mean you’re not going!” he exclaimed, the lifted quality
immediately dropping from his voice.
“You--you got to excuse me again, Mr. Vetsburg. It ain’t no use I should
try to get away on Saturdays, much less Easter Saturday.”
“Well, of all things!”
“Right away the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, right one things after
another!”
He let his bag slip to the floor.
“Maybe, Mrs. Kaufman,” he said, “it ain’t none of my business, but ain’t
it a shame a good business woman like you should let herself always be
tied down to such a house like she was married to it? Ain’t it?”
“But--”
“Can’t get away on Saturdays, just like it ain’t the same any other day
in the week, I ask you! Saturday you blame it on yet!”
She lifted the apron from her hem, her voice hurrying. “You can see for
yourself, Mr. Vetsburg, how in my brown silk all ready I was. Even--even
Ruby don’t know yet I don’t go. Down by Gimp’s I sent her she should buy
herself one of them red straw hats is the fad with the girls now. She
meets us down by the station.”
“That’s a fine come-off, ain’t it, to disappoint--”
“At the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, how things can happen. Out of a clear
sky Mrs. Finshriber has to-morrow for Easter dinner that skin doctor,
Abrams, and his wife she’s so particular about. And Annie with her sore
ankle and--”
“A little shyster doctor like Abrams with his advertisements all over
the newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday. By golly, Mrs.
Kaufman, just like Ruby says, how you let a whole household of old hens
rule this roost it’s a shame!”
“When you go down to the station, Mr. Vetsburg, so right away she ain’t
so disappointed I don’t come, tell her maybe to-morrow I--”
“I don’t tell her nothing!” broke in Mr. Vetsburg and moved toward her
with considerable strengthening of tone. “Mrs. Kaufman, I ask you, you
think it right you should go back like this on Ruby and me, just when
we want most you should--”
At that she quickened and fluttered. “Ruby and you! Ach, it’s a old
saying, Mr. Vetsburg, like the twig is bent so the tree grows. That
child won’t be so surprised her mother changes her mind. Just so
changeable as her mother, and more, is Ruby herself. With that girl, Mr.
Vetsburg, it’s--it’s hard to know what she does one minute from the
next. I always say no man--nobody can ever count on a little
harum-scarum like--like she is.”
He took up her hat, a small turban of breast feathers, laid out on the
table beside him, and advanced with it clumsily enough. “Come,” he said,
“please now, Mrs. Kaufman. Please.”
“I--”
“I--I got plans made for us to-morrow down by the shore that’s--that’s
just fine! Come now, Mrs. Kaufman.”
“Please, Mr. Vetsburg, don’t force. I--I can’t! I always say nobody can
count on such a little harum-scarum as--”
“You mean to tell me, Mrs. Kaufman, that just because a little shyster
doctor--”
Her hand closed over the long envelope again, crunching it. “No, no,
that--that ain’t all, Mr. Vetsburg. Only I don’t want you should tell
Ruby, you promise me? How that child worries over little things. Shulif
from the agency called up just now. He don’t give me one more minute as
two this afternoon I--I should sign. How I been putting them off so many
weeks with this lease, it’s a shame. Always you know how in the back of
my head I’ve had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was
done, but, like I say, talk is cheap and moving ain’t so easy done,
ain’t it? If he puts in new plumbing in pantry and new hinges on the
doors and papers my second floor and Mrs. Suss’s alcove, like I said
last night, after all I could do worse as stay here another five year,
ain’t it, Mr. Vetsburg?”
“I--”
“A house what keeps filled so easy and such a location with the subway
less as two blocks. I--So you see, Mr. Vetsburg, if I don’t want I come
back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over my head, I got
to stay home for Shulif when he comes to-day.”
A rush of dark blood had surged up into Mr. Vetsburg’s face, and he
twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim.
“Mrs. Kaufman,” he cried, “Mrs. Kaufman, sometimes when for years a man
don’t speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a sudden right out.
I--oh--e-e-e!” And, immediately and thickly inarticulate, he made a
tremendous feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught
it, and rolled his eyes.
“Mr. Vetsburg?”
“A man, Mrs. Kaufman, can bust!”
“Bust?”
He was still violently dark but swallowing with less labor. “Yes, from
holding in. Mrs. Kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in
the world, and I can prove it--a woman, Mrs. Kaufman, who in her heart
and my heart and--Should such a woman not come to Atlantic City when I
got everything fixed like a stage set!”
She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. “Mr. Vetsburg, for
God’s sake, ain’t I just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--”
“Will you, Mrs. Kaufman, come or won’t you? Will you, I ask you, or
won’t you?” He threw a gesture now with mastery, one arm before and one
behind.
“I--I can’t, Mr.--”
“All right, then, I--I bust out now. To-day can be as good as to-morrow!
Not with my say in a tousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease! I
ain’t a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in
a tousand years you sign that lease.”
“Mr. Vetsburg, Ruby, I--”
“If anybody’s got a lease on you, Mrs. Kaufman, I--I want it! I want it!
That’s the kind of a lease would suit me. To be leased to you for
always, the rest of your life!”
She could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood
interrogating him with her heartbeats at her throat. “Mr. Vetsburg, if
he puts on the doors and hinges and new plumbing in--”
“I’m a plain man, Mrs. Kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can
give out her heart’s blood like it was so much water. But all these
years I been waiting, Mrs. Kaufman, to bust out, until--till things got
riper. I know with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last,
that first your girl must be fixed--”
“She’s a young girl, Mr. Vetsburg, you--you mustn’t depend--If I had my
say--”
“He’s a fine fellow, Mrs. Kaufman. With his uncle to help ’em, they got,
let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!”
She rose, holding on to the desk.
“I--I--” she said. “What?”
“Lena,” he uttered very softly.
“Lena, Mr. Vetsburg?”
“It ain’t been easy, Lenie, these years while she was only growing up,
to keep off my lips that name. A name just like a leaf off a rose.
Lena!” he reiterated and advanced.
Comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning.
“I--I, Mr. Vetsburg, you must excuse me,” she said and sat down
suddenly.
He crossed to the little desk and bent low over the back of her chair
with his hand, not on her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair. His
voice had a swift rehearsed quality.
“Maybe to-morrow, if you didn’t back out, it would sound finer by the
ocean, Lenie, but it don’t need the ocean a man should tell a woman
when she’s the first and the finest woman in the world. Does it, Lenie?”
“I--I thought Ruby. She--”
“He’s a good boy, Leo is, Lenie. A good boy what can be good to a woman
like his father before him. Good enough even for a fine girl like our
Ruby, Lenie--_our_ Ruby!”
“_Gott im Himmel_, then you--”
“Wide-awake, too. With a start like I can give him in my business, you
ain’t got to worry Ruby ain’t fixed herself with the man what she
chooses. To-morrow at Atlantic City all fixed I had it I should tell--”
“You!” she said, turning around in her chair to face him, “you--all
along you been fixing--”
He turned sheepish. “Ain’t it fair, Lenie, in love and war and business
a man has got to scheme for what he wants out of life? Long enough it
took she should grow up. I knew all along once those two, each so full
of life and gedinks, got together it was natural what should happen.
Mrs. Kaufman! Lenie! Lenie!”
From two flights up, in through the open door and well above the harsh
sound of scrubbing, a voice curled down through the hallways and in.
“Mrs. Kaufman, ice water--ple-ase!”
“Lenie,” he said, his singing, tingling fingers closing over her wrist.
“Mrs. Kauf-man, ice water, pl----!”
With her free arm she reached and slammed the door, let her cheek lie to
the back of his hand, and closed her eyes.