Silence.
"Re-nie!"
"Yes, mamma."
"Why you got your door locked?"
Silence.
"Huh?"
"I--I--"
"Come right away out in the dining-room. If you 'ain't got no more
regards for your parents than not to stay home for supper, anyways you
got to fix for the table the flowers what I brought home from market."
"Yes, mamma." She darted to her feet, drying the tears on her cheeks
with the palm of her hand. "Coming, mamma." And she slipped through the
door of her room, scarcely opening it.
In the dining-room, beside the white-spread table, Mrs. Shongut unwound
a paper toot of pink carnations; but the flavor of her spirit was bitter
and her thin, pressed-looking lips hung at the corners.
"Maybe you can stop pouting long enough to help with things a little,
even if you won't be here. I tell you it's a pleasure when papa comes
home for supper with company, to have children like mine."
"Listen, mamma. I--"
"Sounds like somebody's going out of the house, Renie. Who--"
"No, no. No one has been here, mamma. It's just the breeze."
"I tell you it's a pleasure to have a daughter like mine! What excuses
to make to Max Hochenheimer, a young man what comes all the way from
Cincinnati to see her--"
"Listen, mamma; I--I've only been fooling--honest, I have."
"What?"
"I--aw, mamma."
Miss Shongut's face was suddenly buried in the neat lace yoke of her
mother's dimity blouse, and her arms crept up about her neck.
"I've been only fooling about to-night, mamma. Don't you think I know it
is just like he was sent from heaven? I've only been fooling, mamma, so
that--so that you shouldn't know how happy I am."
The soul peeped out suddenly in Mrs. Shongut's face, hallowing it.
"Renie! My little Renie!"
* * * * *
On Wasserman Avenue the hand that rocks the cradle oftener than not
carves the roast. Behind her platter, sovereign of all she surveyed, and
skilfully, so that beneath her steel the red, oozing slices curled and
fell into their pool of gravy, reigned Mrs. Shongut. And her suzerainty
rested on her as lightly as a tiara of seven stars.
"Mr. Hochenheimer, you ain't eating a thing!" Mrs. Shongut craned her
neck round the centerpiece of pink carnations. "Not a thing on your
plate! Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more salad."
"No, no, Mrs. Shongut; just don't you worry about me."
"I hope you ain't bashful, Mr. Hochenheimer. We feel toward you just
like home folks."
"Indeed, what I don't see I ask for, Mrs. Shongut."
"Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more of that red cabbage."
"No, no--please, Mrs. Shongut; I got plenty."
"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, you eat so little you must be in love."
"Mamma!"
"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer knows that I only fool. Renie, pass the
dumplings."
"No, no--please! I--"
"Mamma, don't force. You're not bashful, are you, Mr. Hochenheimer?"
Miss Shongut inclined her head with a saucy, birdlike motion, and showed
him the full gleaming line of her teeth. He took a large mouthful of
ice-water to wash down the red of confusion that suddenly swam high in
his face, tingeing even his ears.
"For more dumplings I ain't bashful, Miss Renie; but there--there's
other things--I am bashful to ask for."
From his place at the far end of the table Mr. Shongut laughed deep, as
though a spiral spring was vibrating in the recesses of his throat.
"Bashful with the girls--eh, Hochenheimer?"
"I ain't much of a lady's man, Shongut."
"Well, I wish you was just so bashful in business--believe me! I wish
you was."
"Shongut, I never got the best of you yet in a deal."
"With my girl he's bashful yet, mamma; but down to the last
sausage-casing I have to pay his fancy prices. Nun, look mamma, how red
she gets! What you get so red for, Renie--eh?"
"Aw, papa!"
"A little teasing from her old father she can't take. Look at her,
mamma! Look at both of them--red like beets. Neither of them can stand a
little teasing from an old man."
"Adolph, you mustn't! All people don't like it when you make fun. Mr.
Hochenheimer, you must excuse my husband; a great one he is to tease and
make his little fun."
Mr. Shongut's ancient-looking face, covered with a short, grizzled
growth of beard and pale as a prophet's beneath, broke into a smile, and
a minute network of lines sprang out from the corners of his eyes.
"I was bashful in my life once, too--eh, mamma?"
"Papa!"
"Please, you must excuse my husband, Mr. Hochenheimer; he likes to have
his little jokes."
Mr. Hochenheimer pushed away his plate in high embarrassment; nor would
his eyes meet Miss Shongut's, except to flash away under cover of
exaggerated imperturbability.
"My husband's a great one to tease, Mr. Hochenheimer. My Izzy too, takes
after him. I'm sorry that boy ain't home, so you could meet him again.
We call him the dude of the family. Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer the
toothpicks."
A pair of deep-lined brackets sprang out round Mr. Shongut's mouth. "Why
ain't that boy home for supper, where he belongs?"
"Ach, now, Adolph, don't get excited right away. Always, Mr.
Hochenheimer, my husband gets excited over nothing, when he knows how it
hurts his heart. Like that boy ain't old enough to stay out to supper
when he wants, Adolph! 'Sh-h-h!"
Mrs. Shongut smiled to conceal that her heart was faint, and the saga of
a mother might have been written round that smile.
"Now, now, Adolph, don't you begin to worry."
"I tell you, Shongut, it's a mistake to worry. I save all my excitement
for the good things in life."
"See, Adolph; from a young man like Mr. Hochenheimer you can get
pointers."
"I tell you, Shongut, over such a nice little home and such a nice
little family as you got I might get excited; but over the little things
that don't count for much I 'ain't got time."
Mrs. Shongut waved a deprecatory hand. "It's a nice enough little home
for us, Mr. Hochenheimer, but with a grand house like I hear you built
for your mother up on the stylish hilltop in Cincinnati, I guess to you
it seems right plain."
"That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Shongut. Like I says to Shongut coming
out on the street-car with him to-night, if it hadn't been that I
thought maybe my mother would like a little fanciness after a hard life
like hers, for my own part a little house and a big garden is all I ask
for."
"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, with such a grand house like that is--sunk-in
baths Mrs. Schwartz says you got! To see a house like that, I tell you
it must be a treat."
"It's a fine place, Mrs. Shongut, but too big for me and my mother. When
I got into the hands of architects, let me tell you, I feel I was lucky
to get off with only twenty-five rooms. Right now, Mrs. Shongut, we got
rooms we don't know how to pronounce."
"Twenty-five rooms! Did you hear that, Adolph? Twenty-five rooms! I bet,
Mr. Hochenheimer, your mother is proud of such a son as can give her
twenty-five rooms."
"We don't say much about it to each other, my mother and me; but--you
can believe me or not--in our big, stylish house up there on the hill,
with her servants to take away from her all the pleasure of work and her
market and old friends down on Richmond Street yet, and nothing but
gold furniture round her, she gets lonesome enough. If it wasn't for my
garden and the beautiful scenery from my terraces, I would wish myself
back in our little down-town house more than once, too. I tell you, Mrs.
Shongut, fineness ain't everything."
"You should bring your mother some time to Mound City with you when you
come over on business, Mr. Hochenheimer. We would do our best to make it
pleasant for her."
"She's an old woman, Mrs. Shongut, and in a train or an automobile I
can't get her. I guess it would be better, Mrs. Shongut, if I carry off
some of your family with me to Cincinnati."
And, to belie that his words had any glittering import, he lay back in
his chair in a state of silent laughter, which set his soft-fleshed
cheeks aquiver; and his blue eyes, so ready yet so reluctant,
disappeared behind a tight squint.
"Adolph, I guess Mr. Hochenheimer will excuse us--eh? Renie, you can
entertain Mr. Hochenheimer while me and papa go and spend the evening
over at Aunt Meena's. Mr. Shongut's sister, Mr. Hochenheimer, 'ain't
been so well. Anyways, I always say young folks 'ain't got no time for
old ones."
"You go right ahead along, Mrs. Shongut. Don't treat me like company. I
hope Miss Renie don't mind if I spend the evening?"
"I should say not."
"Hochenheimer, a cigar?"
"Thanks; I don't smoke."
"My husband, with his heart trouble, shouldn't smoke, neither, Mr.
Hochenheimer; it worries me enough. What me and the doctors tell him
goes in one ear and out of the other."
"See, Hochenheimer, when you get a wife how henpecked you get!"
"A henpeck never drew much blood, Shongut."
"Come, Adolph; it is a long car-ride to Meena's."
They pushed back from the table, the four of them, smiling-lipped. With
his short-fingered, hairy-backed hands Mr. Hochenheimer dusted at his
coat lapels, then shook his bulging trousers knees into place.
The lamp of inner sanctity burns in strange temples. A carpenter in
haircloth shirt first turned men's hearts outward. Who can know, who
does not first cross the plain of the guide with gold, that behind the
moldy panels at Ara Coeli reigns the jeweled bambino, robed in the
glittering gems of sacrifice?
Who could know, as Mr. Hochenheimer stood there in the curtailed dignity
of his five feet five, that behind his speckled and slightly rotund
waistcoat a choir sang of love, and that the white flame of his spirit
burned high?
"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, it is a pleasure to be invited out to your
house. You should know how this old bachelor hates hotels."
"And you should know how welcome you always are, Mr. Hochenheimer.
To-morrow night you take supper with us too. We don't take 'no'--eh,
Adolph? Renie?"
"I appreciate that, Mrs. Shongut; but I--I don't know yet--if--if I stay
over."
Mr. Shongut batted a playful hand and shuffled toward the door. "You
stay, Hochenheimer! I bet you a good cigar you stay. Ain't I right,
Renie, that he stays? Ain't I right?"
Against the sideboard, fingering her white dress, Miss Shongut regarded
her parents, and her smile was as wan as moonlight.
"Ain't I right, Renie?"
"Yes, papa."
* * * * *
On the bit of porch, the hall light carefully lowered and cushions from
within spread at their feet, the dreamy quiet of evening and air as
soft as milk flowed round and closed in about Miss Shongut and Mr.
Hochenheimer.
They drew their rocking-chairs arm to arm, so that, behind a bit of
climbing moonflower vine, they were as snug as in a bower. Stars shone
over the roofs of the houses opposite; the shouts of children had died
down; crickets whirred.
"Is the light from that street lamp in your eyes, Renie?"
"No, no."
The wooden floor reverberated as they rocked. A little thrill of breeze
fluttered her filmy shoulder scarf against his hand. To his fermenting
fancy it was as though her spirit had flitted out of the flesh.
"Ah, Miss Renie, I--I--"
"What, Mr. Hochenheimer?"
"Nothing. Your--your little shawl, it tickled my hand so."
She leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair and cupped her chin in her
palm. Her eyes had a peculiar value--like a mill-pond, when the wheel is
still, reflects the stars in calm and unchurned quiet.
"You look just like a little princess to-night, Miss Renie--that pretty
shawl and your eyes so bright."
"A princess!"
"Yes; if I had a tin suit and a sword to match I'd ride up on a horse
and carry you off to my castle in Cincinnati."
"Say, wouldn't it be a treat for Wasserman Avenue to see me go loping
off like that!"
"This is the first little visit we've ever had together all by
ourselves, ain't it, Miss Renie? Seems like, to a bashful fellow like
me, you was always slipping away from me."
"The flowers and the candies you kept sending me were grand, Mr.
Hochenheimer--and the letter--to-day."
"You read the letter, Miss Renie?"
"Yes, I--I--You shouldn't keep spoiling me with such grand flowers and
candy, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"If tell you that never in my life I sent flowers or candy, or wrote a
letter like I wrote you yesterday, to another young lady, I guess you
laugh at me--not, Miss Renie?"
"You shouldn't begin, Mr. Hochenheimer, by spoiling me."
"Ah, Miss Renie, if you knew how I like to spoil you, if you would let
me--Ach, what's the use? I--I can't say it like I want." She could hear
him breathing. "It--it's a grand night, Miss Renie."
"Yes."
"Grand!"
"And look over those roofs! It seems like there's a million stars
shining, don't it?"
"You're like me, Miss Renie; so many times I've noticed it. Nothing is
so grand to me as nature, neither."
"Up at Green Springs, in the Ozarks, where we went for ten days last
summer, honest, Mr. Hochenheimer, I used to lie looking out the window
all night. The stars up there shone so close it seemed like you could
nearly touch them."
"Ain't that wonderful, Miss Renie, you should be just like me again!"
She smiled in the dark. "When I was a boy always next to the attic
window I liked to sleep. When I built my house, Miss Renie, the
first thing after I designed my rose-garden I drew up for myself a
sleeping-garden on my roof. The architects fussed enough about spoiling
the roof-line, but that's one of the things I wanted which I stood pat
for and got--my sleeping-garden."
"Sleeping-garden!"
"Miss Renie, I just wish you could see it--all laid out in roses in
summer, and a screened-in pergola, where I sleep, right underneath the
stars and roses. I sleep so close to heaven I always say I can smell
it."
She turned her little face, white as a spray of jasmine against a dark
background of night, toward him. "Underneath a pergola of roses! I guess
it's the roses you must smell. How grand!"
"Sometimes when--if you come to Cincinnati I want to show you my place,
Miss Renie. If I say so myself, I got a wonderful garden; flowers I can
show you grown from clippings from every part of the world. If I do say
so, for a sausage-maker who never went to school two years in his life
it ain't so bad. I got a lily-pond, Miss Renie, they come from all over
to see. By myself I designed it."
"It must be grand, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"On Sunday, Miss Renie, I like for my boys and girls from the factory to
come up to my place and make themselves at home. You should see my old
mother how she fixes for them! I wish you could see them boys and girls,
and old men and women. In a sausage-factory they don't get much time to
listen to birds and water when it falls into a fountain. I wish, Miss
Renie, you could see them with the flowers. I--well, I don't know how to
say it; but I wish you could see them for yourself."
"They like it?"
"Like it! I tell you it's the greatest pleasure I get out of my place. I
wish, instead of my fine house, the city would let me build my factory
for them right in the garden."
"On such a stylish street they wouldn't ever let you, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"Me and my mother ain't much for style, Miss Renie. Honest, you'd be
surprised, but with my fine house I don't even keep an automobile. My
mother, she's old, Miss Renie, and won't go in one. Alone it ain't no
pleasure; and when I don't walk down to my factory the street-cars is
good enough."
"You should take it easier, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"All our lives, Miss Renie, we've been so busy, my mother and me, I tell
her we got to be learnt--like children got to be learnt to walk--how to
enjoy ourselves. We--we need somebody young--somebody like you in the
house, Miss Renie--young and so pretty, and full of life, and--and so
sweet."
She gave a gauzy laugh. "Honest, it must seem like a dream to have a
rose-garden right on the place you live."
"I wish you could see, Miss Renie, a new Killarney my gardener showed me
in the hothouse yesterday before I left--white-and-pink blend; he got
the clipping from Jamaica. It's a pale pink in the heart like the first
minute when the sun rises; and then it gets pinker and pinker toward
the outside petals, till it just bursts out as red as the sun when it's
ready to set."
"And those beautiful little tan roses you sent me, Mr. Hochenheimer;
I--"
"Ah, Miss Renie, the clipping from those sunset roses comes from Italy;
but now I call them Renie Roses, if--if you'll excuse me. I tell you,
Miss Renie, you look just enough like 'em to be related. Little satiny
gold-looking roses, with a pink blush on the inside of the petals and
a--a few little soft thorns on the stem."
"Aw, Mr. Hochenheimer, I ain't got thorns."
Out from the velvet shadows his face came closer. "It's thorns to me,
Miss Renie, because you're so pretty and sweet, and--and seem so far
away from a--plain fellow like me."
"I--"
"I'm a plain man, Miss Renie, and I don't know how to talk much about
the things I feel inside of me; but--but I _feel_, all-righty."
"Looks ain't everything."
"I tell you, Miss Renie, now since I can afford it, I just don't seem to
know how to do the things I got the feeling inside of me for. Even in my
grand house sometimes I feel like it--it's too late for me to live like
I feel."
"Nothing's ever too late, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"Just since I met you I can feel that way, Miss Renie, if you'll excuse
me for saying it--just since I met you."
"Me?"
"For the first time in my life, Miss Renie, I got the feeling from a
girl that, for me, life--maybe my life--is just beginning. Like a vine,
Miss Renie, you got yourself tangled round my feelings."
"Oh, Mr. Hochenheimer!"
"Like I told your papa to-night on the car, I 'ain't got much to offer a
beautiful young girl like you; money, I can see, don't count for so much
with a fine girl like you, and I--I don't need to be told that my face
and my ways ain't my fortune."
"It's the heart that counts, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"If--if you mean that, Miss Renie--if love, just love, can bring
happiness, I can make for you a life as beautiful as my rose-garden. For
the first time in my life, Miss Renie, I got the feeling I can do that
for a woman--and that woman is you. I--Will you--will you be my wife,
Miss Renie?" She could feel his breath now, scorching her cheek. "Will
you, Miss Renie?"
And even as she leaned over to open her lips a figure, swift as a Greek,
dashed to the veranda--up the steps three at a bound.
"Renie!"
"Izzy!" She rose, pushing back her chair, and her hand flew to her
breast.
"Just a minute. Inside I gotta see you quick, Renie. Howdy,
Hochenheimer? You excuse her a minute. I got to see her."
His voice was like wine that sings in the pouring.
"Yes, yes, Izzy; I'm coming." Hers was trembling and pizzicato. "Excuse
me a minute, Mr. Hochenheimer--a minute."
Mr. Hochenheimer rose, mopping his brow. "It's all right, Miss Renie. I
wait out here on the porch till it pleases you."
In her tiny bedroom, with the light turned up, she faced her brother;
and he grasped her shoulders so that, through the sheer texture of her
dress, his hands left red prints on the flesh.
"Renie, you 'ain't done it, have you?"
"No, no, Izzy; I've done nothing. Where you been?"
He gave a great laugh and sank into a chair, limp. "You don't have to,
Renie. It's all right! I've fixed it. Everything is all right!"
"What do you mean?"
Then, as though the current of his returning vigor could know no bounds,
he scooped her in a one-armed embrace that fairly raised her from the
floor.
"All of a sudden, when you went out, Renie, I remembered Aunt Becky. You
remember she was the one who made Uncle Isadore fork over to papa that
time about the mortgage?"
"Yes, yes."
"All of a sudden it came over me that she was the only one who could do
anything with him. I ran over to the house--all the way I ran, Renie.
She was up in her room, and--and it's all right, Renie. I told her, and
she's fixed it--fixed it!"
"Oh, Izzy!"
"She's fixed it. When he came home to supper we got him right away up
in her room before he had his hat off. Like a mother she begged for me,
Renie--like a mother. God! I--I tell you I couldn't go through it again;
but she got him, Renie--she got him!"
"Go on, Izzy--go on!"
"She told him I wouldn't face the shame; she told him I--I'd kill my own
father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd
let me go to the devil without another chance--me that had been named
after him--that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give
in to her--he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and
she knew how to get inside of him--she knew how. They're going to send
me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, where
it'll make a new man of me; where I can begin over--start right, Renie.
Start right!"
"Oh, Izzy darling!"
"I can pay up when I earn the money like a man, Renie. It would have
killed me if you had sold yourself to him for me. I'd have gone to the
stripes first. But I got a man's chance now, Renie, and I don't have to
do that rotten thing to you and Squash. A man's chance, Renie, and--and
I'm going to take it."
She sat down on the bed suddenly, as though the blood had flowed out of
her heart, weakening her.
"A sister like you that would have stuck; and--and I'm going to make
good to a sister like you, Renie. I am, this time. Please believe me,
Renie. I am! I am!"
Her hand lay pressed to his cheek and she could feel the warm course of
his tears. "Izzy, I knew you wasn't yellow; I--I knew you wasn't."
Sobs shook him suddenly and he buried his face in the pillow beside her.
"Why, Izzy! Why, Izzy darling, what--what is it, Izzy darling?"
"It's nothing. You--you get out, Renie. I'm all right; only--only
it's--it's--Now that it's all over, I--I--Just let me alone a minute,
Renie. Go--you--please--please!"
She closed the door behind her and fumbled through the gloom of the
hallway, her hand faltering as she groped ahead.
From the recesses of the moonflower vine Mr. Hochenheimer rose to meet
her; and, because her limbs would tremble, she slid quickly into her
chair.
"You--you must excuse me, Mr. Hochenheimer."
"It's all right, Miss Renie. I take up where we left off. It ain't so
easy, Miss Renie, to begin all over again to say it, but--but will you
be my--will you be my--"
She was suddenly in his arms, burrowing against the speckled waistcoat a
little resting-place for her head.