only, right on the sea, which they call it there Bognor Park. You must
come over and see us, Yetta. Such a _gemuetlich_ little house we got it
you wouldn't believe at all, and every Sunday my daughter Fannie and my
son-in-law comes down and stays with us."
"And are you going all the way home alone?" Elkan asked anxiously.
"Fannie is staying down with me to-night. She meets me on the corner of
the Boulevard, where the car stops, at ten o'clock already," Mrs.
Lesengeld replied.
"Then you must got to come right along with us," Elkan said, "and we'll
see you would get there on time."
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Lesengeld asked.
"Over to the Salisbury," Elkan answered, and Mrs. Lesengeld sank back on
to the bench.
"_Geh weg_, Mr. Lubliner," she cried. "I am now fifty years old and I
was never in such a place in my life, especially which under this shawl
I got only a plain cotton dress yet."
Elkan flapped his hand reassuringly.
"A fine-looking lady like you, Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, as he seized
her hands and drew her gently to her feet, "looks well in anything."
"And you'll have a water ice in the Hanging Gardens with us," Yetta
persisted as she slipped a hand under Mrs. Lesengeld's shawl and pressed
her arm affectionately. Ten minutes later they arrived at the stoop of
the New Salisbury, to the scandalization and horror of the three score
A to F first credit manufacturers and their wives. Moreover,
approximately a hundred and fifty karats of blue white diamonds rose and
fell indignantly on the bosoms of twenty or thirty credit-high
retailers' wives, when the little, toilworn woman with her shawl and
ritualistic wig entered the Hanging Gardens chatting pleasantly with
Elkan and Yetta; and as they seated themselves at a table the buzz of
conversation hushed into silence and then roared out anew with an
accompaniment of titters.
At the next table Sol Klinger plied with liquors and cigars the
surviving guests of his dinner, and when Elkan nodded to him, he ignored
the salutation with a blank stare. He raged inwardly, not so much at
Elkan's invasion of that fashionable precinct as at the circumstance
that his guest of honour had departed with Miss Feldman for a stroll on
the boardwalk some ten minutes previously, and he was therefore unable
to profit by Elkan's _faux pas_.
"The feller ain't got no manners at all," he said to Max Koblin, who
nodded gloomily.
"It's getting terrible mixed down here, Sol," Max commented as he
hiccoughed away a slight flatulency. "Honestly if you want to be in
striking distance of your business, Sol, so's you could come in and out
every day, you got to rub shoulders with everybody, ain't it?"
He soothed his outraged sensibilities with a great cloud of smoke that
drifted over Elkan's table, and Mrs. Lesengeld broke into a fit of
coughing which caused a repetition of the titters.
"And do you still make that brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Mrs.
Lesengeld?" Yetta asked by way of putting the old lady at her ease.
"Make it!" Mrs. Lesengeld answered. "I should say I do. Why you wouldn't
believe the way my son-in-law is crazy about it. We got it every Sunday
regular, and I tell you what I would do, Yetta."
She laid her hand on Yetta's arm and her face broke into a thousand tiny
wrinkles of hospitality.
"You should come Friday to lunch sure," she declared, "and we would got
some brown stewed fish sweet and sour and a good plate of _Bortch_ to
begin with."
Sol Klinger had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear
their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad
guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it
to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he
entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of
the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he
entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not
forego the pleasure of visiting Marcus Polatkin's table and relating it
to Polatkin himself.
Polatkin heard him through without a smile and when at its conclusion
Klinger broke into a hysterical appreciation of his own humour, Polatkin
shrugged.
"I suppose, Klinger," he said, "your poor mother, _olav hasholom_,
didn't wear a _sheitel_ neither, ain't it?"
"My mother, _olav hasholom_, would got more sense as to butt in to a
place like that," Klinger retorted.
"Even if you wouldn't of been ashamed to have taken her there, Klinger,"
he added.
Klinger flushed angrily.
"That ain't here or there, Polatkin," he said. "You should ought to put
your partner wise, Polatkin, that he shouldn't go dragging in an old
_Bube_ into a place like the Salisbury and talking such nonsense like
brown stewed fish sweet and sour."
He broke into another laugh at the recollection of it--a laugh that was
louder but hardly as unforced as the first one.
"What's the matter _mit_ brown stewed fish sweet and sour, Klinger?"
Polatkin asked. "I eat already a lot of _a-la's_ and _en cazzerolls_ in
a whole lot of places just so _grossartig_ as the Salisbury, understand
me, and I would _schenck_ you a million of 'em for one plate of brown
stewed fish sweet and sour like your mother made it from _zu Hause_
yet."
"But what for an interest does a merchant like Scharley got to hear such
things," Klinger protested lamely. "Honestly, I was ashamed for your
partner's sake to hear such a talk going on there."
"Did Scharley got any objections?" Polatkin asked.
"Fortunately the feller had gone away from the table," Klinger replied,
"so he didn't hear it at all."
"Well," Polatkin declared, taking up his knife and fork as a signal that
the matter was closed, "ask him and see if he wouldn't a whole lot
sooner eat some good brown stewed fish sweet and sour as a Chinese
Lantern Dinner--whatever for a bunch of poison that might be,
Klinger--and don't you forget it."
Nevertheless when Polatkin returned to his place of business he
proceeded at once to Elkan's office.
"Say, lookyhere Elkan," he demanded, "what is all this I hear about you
and Yetta taking an old _Bube_ into the Hanging Gardens already, and
making from her laughing stocks out of the whole place."
Elkan looked up calmly.
"It's a free country, Mr. Polatkin," he said, "and so long as I pay my
board _mit_ U. S. money, already I would take in there any of my friends
I would please."
"Sure, I know," Polatkin expostulated, "but I seen Klinger around at
Hammersmith's and he says----"
"Klinger!" Elkan exclaimed. "Well, you could say to Klinger for me, Mr.
Polatkin, that if he don't like the way I am acting around there,
understand me, he should just got the nerve to tell it me to my face
yet."
Polatkin flapped the air with his right hand.
"Never mind Klinger, Elkan," he said. "You got to consider you shouldn't
make a fool of yourself before Scharley and all them people. How do you
expect you should get such a merchant as Scharley he should accept from
you entertainment like a Chinese Lantern Dinner, if you are acting that
way?"
"Chinese Lantern Dinner be damned!" Elkan retorted. "When we got the
right goods at the right price, Mr. Polatkin, why should we got to give
a merchant dinners yet to convince him of it?"
"Dinners is nothing, Elkan," Polatkin interrupted with a wave of his
hand. "You got to give him dyspepsha even, the way business is
nowadays."
"_Aber_ I was talking to the room clerk last night," Elkan went on, "and
he tells me so sure as you are standing there, Mr. Polatkin, a Chinese
Lantern Dinner would stand us in twenty dollars a head."
"Twenty dollars a head!" Polatkin exclaimed and indulged himself in a
low whistle.
"So even if I _would_ be staying at the Salisbury, understand me," Elkan
said, "I ain't going to throw away our money out of the window exactly."
"_Aber_ how are you going to get the feller down here, if you wouldn't
entertain him or something?"
Elkan slapped his chest with a great show of confidence.
"Leave that to _me_, Mr. Polatkin," he said, and put on his hat
preparatory to going out to lunch.
Nevertheless when he descended from his room at the New Salisbury that
evening and prepared to take a turn on the boardwalk before dinner, his
confidence evaporated at the coolness of his reception by the assembled
guests of the hotel. Leon Sammet cut him dead, and even B. Gans greeted
him with half jovial reproach.
"Well, Elkan," he said, "going to entertain any more _fromme Leute_ in
the Garden to-night?"
"Seemingly, Mr. Gans," Elkan said, "it was a big shock to everybody here
to see for the first time an old lady wearing a _sheitel_. I suppose
nobody here never seen it before, ain't it?"
B. Gans put a fatherly hand on Elkan's shoulder.
"I'll tell yer, Elkan," he said, "if I would be such a _rosher_,
understand me, that I would hold it against you because you ain't
forgetting an old friend, like this here lady must be, y'understand, I
should never sell a dollar's worth more goods so long as I live, _aber_
if Klinger and Sammet would start kidding you in front of Scharley,
understand me, it would look bad."
"Why would it look bad, Mr. Gans?" Elkan broke in.
"Because it don't do nobody no good to have funny stories told about
'em, except an actor _oder_ a politician, Elkan," Gans replied as the
dinner gong began to sound, "which if a customer wouldn't take _you_
seriously, he wouldn't take your goods seriously neither, Elkan, and
that's all there is _to_ it."
He smiled reassuringly as he walked toward the dining room and left
Elkan a prey to most uncomfortable reflections, which did not abate when
he overheard Klinger and Sammet hail Gans at the end of the veranda.
"Well, Mr. Gans," Klinger said with a sidelong glance at Elkan, "what
are you going to eat to-night--brown stewed fish sweet _und_ sour?"
Elkan could not distinguish B. Gans' reply, but he scowled fiercely at
the trio as they entered the hotel lobby, and he still frowned as he
sauntered stolidly after them to await Yetta in the social hall.
"What's the matter, Mr. Lubliner," the room clerk asked when Elkan
passed the desk. "Aren't you feeling well to-day?"
"I feel all right, Mr. Williams," Elkan replied, "but this here place is
getting on my nerves. It's too much like a big hotel out on the road
somewheres. Everybody looks like they would got something to sell,
understand me, and was doing their level best to sell it."
"You're quite right, Mr. Lubliner," the clerk commented, "and that's the
reason why I came down here. In fact," he added with a guilty smile, "I
made a date to show some of my lots to-morrow to a prospective
customer."
At this juncture a porter appeared bearing a basket of champagne and
followed by two waiters with ice buckets, and the room clerk jerked his
head sideways in the direction toward which the little procession had
disappeared.
"That's for Suite 27, the Feldmans' rooms," he explained. "Miss Feldman
is giving a little chafing-dish dinner there to Mr. Scharley and a few
friends."
He accepted with a graceful nod Elkan's proffered cigar.
"Which goes to show that it's as you say, Mr. Lubliner," he concluded.
"If you have drygoods, real estate or marriageable relatives to dispose
of, Mr. Lubliner, Egremont's the place to market them."
* * * * *
"Yes, Mr. Williams," said Jacob Scharley at two o'clock the following
afternoon as they trudged along the sands of Bognor Park, one of
Egremont Beach's new developments, "I was trying to figure out how these
here Chinese Lantern Dinners stands in a sucker like Leon Sammet twenty
dollars a head, when by the regular bill of fare it comes exactly to
seven dollars and fifty cents including drinks."
"You can't figure on a special dinner according to the prices on the
regular bill of fare," said Mr. Williams, the room clerk, who in
his quality of real-estate operator was attempting to shift the
conversation from hotel matters to the topic of seaside lots. "Why, ice
cream is twenty-five cents on the bill of fare, but at one of those
dinners it's served in imitation Chinese lanterns, which makes it worth
double at least."
"For my part," Scharley broke in, "they could serve it in kerosene
lamps, Mr. Williams, because I never touch the stuff."
"It's a parallel case to lots here and lots on Mizzentop Beach, which is
the next beach below," Williams continued. "Here we have a boardwalk
extending right down to our property, and we are getting seven hundred
and fifty dollars a lot, while there, with practically the same transit
facilities but no boardwalk or electric lights, they get only four
hundred and----"
"_Aber_ you take a piece of tenderloin steak a half an inch thick and
about the size of a price ticket, understand me," Scharley interrupted,
"and even if you _would_ fix it up with half a cent's worth of peas and
spill on it a bottle cough medicine and glue, _verstehst du mich_, how
could you make it figure up more as a dollar and a quarter, Mr.
Williams? Then the clams, Mr. Williams, must got to have inside of 'em
at the very least a half a karat pink pearl in 'em, otherwise
thirty-five cents would be big yet."
"Very likely," Mr. Williams agreed as a shade of annoyance passed over
his well modelled features, "but just now, Mr. Scharley, I'm anxious to
show you the advantage of these lots of ours, and you won't mind if I
don't pursue the topic of Chinese Lantern Dinners any farther."
"I'm only too glad not to talk about it at all," Scharley agreed. "In
fact if any one else tries to ring in another one of them dinners on me,
Mr. Williams, I'll turn him down on the spot. Shaving-dish parties
neither, which I assure you, Mr. Williams, even if Miss Feldman would be
an elegant, refined young lady, understand me, she fixes something in
that shaving dish of hers last night, understand me, which I thought I
was poisoned already."
Williams deemed it best to ignore this observation and therefore made no
comment.
"But anyhow," Scharley concluded as they approached a little wooden
shack on the margin of the water, "I'm sick and tired of things to eat,
so let's talk about something else."
Having delivered this ultimatum, his footsteps lagged and he stopped
short as he began to sniff the air like a hunting dog.
"M-m-m-m!" he exclaimed. "What _is_ that?"
"That's a two-room shed we rent for twenty dollars a month," Williams
explained. "We have eight of them and they help considerably to pay our
office rent over in New York."
"Sure I know," Scharley agreed, "_aber_, m-m-m-m!"
Once more he expanded his nostrils to catch a delicious fragrance that
emanated from the little shack.
"_Aber_, who lives there?" he insisted, and Mr. Williams could not
restrain a laugh.
"Why, it's that old lady with the wig that Lubliner brought over to the
hotel the other night," he replied. "I thought I saw Sol Klinger telling
you about it yesterday."
"He started to tell me something about it," Scharley said, "when Barney
Gans butted in and wouldn't let him. What _was_ it about this here old
lady?"
"There isn't anything to it particularly," Williams replied, "excepting
that it seemed a little strange to see an old lady in a shawl and one of
those religious wigs in the Hanging Gardens, and there was something
else Klinger told me about Mrs. Lubliner and the old lady talking about
brown stewed fish sweet and----"
At this juncture Scharley snapped his fingers excitedly.
"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour!" he almost shouted. "I ain't smelled
it since I was a boy already."
He wagged his head and again murmured, "M-m-m-m-m!"
Suddenly he received an inspiration.
"How much did you say them shanties rents for, Mr. Williams?" he said.
"Twenty dollars a month," Williams replied.
"You don't tell me!" Scharley exclaimed solemnly. "I wonder if I could
give a look at the inside of one of 'em--this one here, for instance."
"I don't think there'd be any objection," Williams said, and no sooner
were the words out of his mouth than Scharley started off on a half trot
for the miniature veranda on the ocean side of the little house.
"Perhaps I'd better inquire first if it's convenient for them to let us
in now," Williams said, as he bounded after his prospective customer and
knocked gently on the doorjamb. There was a sound of scurrying feet
within, and at length the door was opened a few inches and the bewigged
head of Mrs. Lesengeld appeared in the crack.
"_Nu_," she said, "what _is_ it?"
"I represent the Bognor Park Company," Williams replied, "and if it's
perfectly convenient for you, Mrs.----"
"Lesengeld," she added.
"Used to was Lesengeld & Schein in the pants business?" Scharley asked,
and Mrs. Lesengeld nodded.
"Why, Lesengeld and me was lodge brothers together in the I. O. M. A.
before I went out to the Pacific Coast years ago already," Scharley
declared. "I guess he's often spoken to you about Jake Scharley, ain't
it?"
"Maybe he did, Mr. Scharley, _aber_ he's dead _schon_ two years since
already," Mrs. Lesengeld said, and then added the pious hope, "_olav
hasholom_."
"You don't say so," Scharley cried in shocked accents. "Why, he wasn't
no older as me already."
"Fifty-three when he died," Mrs. Lesengeld said. "Quick diabetes, Mr.
Scharley. Wouldn't you step inside?"
Scharley and Williams passed into the front room, which was used as a
living room and presented an appearance of remarkable neatness and
order. In the corner stood an oil stove on which two saucepans bubbled
and steamed, and as Mrs. Lesengeld turned to follow her visitors one of
the saucepans boiled over.
"Oo-ee!" she exclaimed. "_Mein fisch._"
"Go ahead and tend to it," Scharley cried excitedly; "don't mind us. It
might get burned already."
He watched her anxiously while she turned down the flame.
"Brown stewed fish sweet and sour, ain't it?" he asked, and Mrs.
Lesengeld nodded as she lowered the flame to just the proper height.
"I _thought_ it was," Scharley continued. "I ain't smelled it in forty
years already. My poor mother, _olav hasholom_, used to fix it something
elegant."
He heaved a sigh as he sat down on a nearby campstool.
"This smells just like it," he added. In front of the window a table
had been placed, spread with a spotless white cloth and laid for two
persons, and Scharley glanced at it hastily and turned his head away.
"Forty years ago come next _Shevuos_ I ain't tasted it already," he
concluded.
Mrs. Lesengeld coloured slightly and clutched at her apron in an agony
of embarrassment.
"The fact is we only got three knives and forks," she said, "otherwise
there is plenty fish for everybody."
"Why, we just had our lunch at the hotel before we started," Mr.
Williams said.
"_You_ did," Scharley corrected him reproachfully, "_aber_ I ain't
hardly touched a thing since last night. That shaving-dish party pretty
near killed me, already."
"Well, then, we got just enough knives and forks," Mrs. Lesengeld cried.
"Do you like maybe also _Bortch_, Mr. Scharley?"
"_Bortch!_" Mr. Scharley exclaimed, and his voice trembled with
excitement. "Do you mean a sort of soup _mit_ beets and--and--all that?"
"That's it," Mrs. Lesengeld replied, and Scharley nodded his head
slowly.
"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "would you believe me, it's so long since I
tasted that stuff I didn't remember such a thing exists even."
"And do you like it?" Mrs. Lesengeld repeated.
"Do I _like_ it!" Scharley cried. "_Um Gottes Willen_, Mrs. Lesengeld, I
_love_ it."
"Then sit right down," she said heartily. "Everything is ready."
"If you don't mind, Mr. Scharley," Williams interrupted, "I'll wait for
you at the office of the company. It's only a couple of hundred yards
down the beach."
"Go as far as you like, Mr. Williams," Scharley said as he tucked a
napkin between his collar and chin. "I'll be there when I get through."
After Mrs. Lesengeld had ushered out Mr. Williams, she proceeded to the
door of the rear room and knocked vigorously.
"Don't be foolish, Yetta, and come on out," she called. "It ain't nobody
but an old friend of my husband's."
A moment later Yetta entered the room, and Scharley scrambled to his
feet, a knife grasped firmly in one hand, and bobbed his head cordially.
"Pleased to meetcher," he said.
"This is Mrs. Lubliner, Mr. Scharley," Mrs. Lesengeld said.
"Don't make no difference, Mrs. Lesengeld," Scharley assured her, "any
friend of yours is a friend of mine, so you should sit right down, Mrs.
Lubliner, on account we are all ready to begin."
Then followed a moment of breathless silence while Mrs. Lesengeld dished
up the beetroot soup, and when she placed a steaming bowlful in front
of Scharley he immediately plunged his spoon into it. A moment later he
lifted his eyes to the ceiling.
"Oo-ee!" he exclaimed. "What an elegant soup!"
Mrs. Lesengeld blushed, and after the fashion of a _cordon bleu_ the
world over, she began to decry her own handiwork.
"It should ought to got just a _Bisschen_ more pepper into it," she
murmured.
"_Oser a Stueck_," Scharley declared solemnly, as he consumed the
contents of his bowl in great gurgling inhalations. "There's only one
thing I got to say against it."
He scraped his bowl clean and handed it to Mrs. Lesengeld.
"And that is," he concluded, "that it makes me eat so much of it,
understand me, I'm scared I wouldn't got no room for the brown stewed
fish."
Again he emptied the bowl, and at last the moment arrived when the brown
stewed fish smoked upon the table. Mrs. Lesengeld helped Scharley to a
heaping plateful, and both she and Yetta watched him intently, as with
the deftness of a Japanese juggler he balanced approximately a half
pound of the succulent fish on the end of his fork. For nearly a minute
he blew on it, and when it reached an edible temperature he opened wide
his mouth and thrust the fork load home. Slowly and with great smacking
of his moist lips he chewed away, and then his eyes closed and he laid
down his knife and fork.
"_Gan-eden!_" he declared as he reached across the table and shook hands
with Mrs. Lesengeld.
"Mrs. Lesengeld," he said, "my mother _olav hasholom_ was a good _cook_,
understand me, _aber_ you are a _good cook_, Mrs. Lesengeld, and that's
all there is to it."
Forthwith he resumed his knife and fork, and with only two pauses for
the necessary replenishments, he polished off three platefuls of the
fish, after which he heaved a great sigh of contentment, and as a
prelude to conversation he lit one of B. Gans' choicest cigars.
"There's some dessert coming," Mrs. Lesengeld said.
"Dessert after this, Mrs. Lesengeld," he replied, through clouds of
contented smoke, "would be a sacrilege, ain't it?"
"That's something I couldn't make at all," Mrs. Lesengeld admitted. "All
I got it here is some _frimsel kugel_."
"_Frimsel kugel!_" Scharley exclaimed, laying down his cigar. "Why ain't
you told me that before?"
A quarter of an hour later he again lighted his cigar, and this time he
settled back in his campstool for conversation, while Mrs. Lesengeld
busied herself about the oil stove. Instantly, however, he straightened
up as another and more delicious odour assailed his nostrils, for Mrs.
Lesengeld made coffee by a mysterious process, that conserved in the
flavour of the decoction the delicious fragrance of the freshly ground
bean.
"And are you staying down here with Mrs. Lesengeld?" Scharley asked
Yetta after he had finished his third cup.
"In this little place here?" Mrs. Lesengeld cried indignantly. "Well, I
should say not. She's stopping at the Salisbury, ain't you, Yetta?"
Yetta nodded and sighed.
"It ain't so comfortable as here," she said.
"I bet yer," Scharley added fervently. "I am stopping there too, and
them Chinese Lantern Dinners which they are putting up!"
He waved his hand eloquently.
"Poison ain't no word for it, Missus Er----" he concluded lamely as he
tried to remember Yetta's name, which after so much soup, fish and
coffee had completely escaped him.
"Lubliner," Yetta said. "I guess you know my husband, Mr. Scharley,
Elkan Lubliner of Polatkin, Scheikowitz & Company."
Scharley struck the table with his open hand.
"Zoitenly, I do," he cried. "Why, he is the feller which Sol Klinger is
telling me about."
Yetta coloured slightly and bit her lips.
"What did he tell you about him?" she asked.
"Why," Scharley said, drawing vigorously on his imagination, "he says to
me what a bright young feller he is and----"