phantoms; a red signal light from the skeleton of the elevated road
threw a glow as mellow as firelight across the mantelpiece. Mrs.
Ginsburg's canary rustled himself until he swelled up twice too fat and
performed the ever-amazing ritual of thrusting his head within himself
as if he would prey on his own vitals. The cooler breath of night; the
smells of neighboring food; the more frequent rushing of trains, and a
navy-blue sky, pit-marked with small stars, came all at once. In the
hallway Mrs. Ginsburg worked the hook of the telephone impatiently up
and down.
"Audubon 6879! Hello! Washeims' residence? Yetta? Yes, this is Carrie.
Ain't it awful? I'm nearly dead with it. Yetta, Abie ain't feeling so
well; so we won't be up to-night. No--it ain't nothing but the heat; but
I worry enough, I can tell you."
"Mamma, don't holler in the telephone so--she can't hear you when you
scream."
"It's always something, ain't it? That's what I tell him; but he's like
his poor papa before him--he's afraid no one can do nothing but him; his
little snip of a clerk he gives a vacation, but none for himself. I'm
glad we ain't going then; you always make yourself so much trouble. It's
too hot to eat, Abie says. Beef with horseradish sauce I had for supper,
too--and apple-pie I baked in the heat for him; but not a bite will that
boy eat! And when he don't eat I know he ain't feeling well. Who?
Beulah? Ain't that grand? Yes, cooking is always good for a girl to know
even if she don't need it. No; I go to work and thicken my gravy with
flour and horseradish. Believe me, I cried enough when I did it! _Ach_,
Yetta, why should I leave that boy? You can believe me when I tell you
that not one night except when he was took in at the lodge--not one
night since poor papa died--has that boy left me at home alone. Not one
step will he take without me."
"Aw, mamma!"
"Sometimes I say, 'Abie, go out like other boys and see the girls.' But
he thinks if he ain't home to fix the windows and the covers for my
rheumatism it ain't right. Yes; believe me, when your children ain't
feeling well it's worry enough."
"Aw, maw, I can take you up to the Washeims' if you want to go."
"You ought to hear him in there, Yetta--fussing because I want to keep
him laying down. Yes, I go with you; to-morrow at nine I meet you down
by Fulton Street. Up round here they're forty-two cents. Ain't it so?
And I used two whites and a yolk in my pie-dough. Yes; I hope so too. If
not I call a doctor. Nine o'clock! Good-by, Yetta."
"Maw, for me you shouldn't stay home."
Mrs. Ginsburg flopped into a rocker beside the flowered velvet couch.
"A little broth, Abie?"
"No."
"When you don't eat it's something wrong."
"You needn't fan me, mamma--I ain't hot now."
Insidious darkness crept into the room like a cool hand descending on
the feverish brow of day; the red glow shifted farther along the mantel
and lay vivid as blood across the blue vase and the photograph of a
grizzled head in a seashell frame. Mrs. Ginsburg rocked over a loose
board in the floor and waved a palm-leaf fan toward the reclining shadow
of her son until he could taste its tape-bound edge.
"Next week to-night five years since we lost poor papa, Abie--five
years! _Gott!_ When I think of it! Just like his picture he looked up to
the last, too--just like his picture."
"Yes, mamma."
"I ain't so spry as I used to be, neither, Abie--or, believe me, I would
never let you take on a clerk. Sometimes I think, when the rheumatism
gets up round my heart, it won't be long as I go too. Poor papa! If I
could have gone with him! How he always hated to go alone to places! To
the barber he hated to go, till I got so I could cut it myself."
"Mamma, you ain't got nothing to worry about."
"I worry enough."
"You can take it as easy as you want to now--I even want we should have
a better apartment. We got the best little business between here and One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street! If poor papa could see it now he
wouldn't know it from five years ago. Poor papa! He wasn't willing to
spend on improvements."
"Papa always said you had a good business head on you, Abie; but I ain't
one, neither, for funny businesses like a clerk. And what you needed
them new glass shoe-stands for when the old ones--"
"Now, mamma, don't begin on that again."
"When I was down in the store papa used to say to me: 'Wait till Abie's
grown up, mamma! By how his ears stand out from his head I can tell he's
got good business sense.' And to think that so little of you he had in
the store--such a man that deserved the best of everything! He had to
die just when things might have got easy for him."
"Don't cry, mamma; everything is for the best."
"You're a good boy, Abie. Sometimes I think I stand in your way enough."
"Such talk!"
"Any girl would do well enough for herself to get you. Believe me,
Beulah Washeim don't need a new pair of shoes every two weeks for
nothing! Her mother thinks I don't notice it--she's always braggin' to
me how hard her Beulah is on shoes and what a good customer she makes."
"Beulah Washeim! I don't even know what last she wears--that's how much
I think of Beulah Washeim."
"Don't let me stand in your way, Abie. Ain't I often told you, now since
you do a grand business and we're all paid up, don't let your old mother
stand in your way?"
"Like you could be in my way!"
"Once I said to poor papa, the night we paid the mortgage off and had
wine for supper: 'Papa,' I said, 'we're out of debt now--_Gott sei
Dank!_--except one debt we owe to some girl when Abie grows up; and
that debt we got to pay with money that won't come from work and
struggle and saving; we got to pay that debt with our boy--with
_blood-money_.' Poor papa! Already he was asleep when I said it--half a
glass of wine, and he was mussy-headed."
"Yes, yes, mamma."
"A girl like Beulah Washeim I ain't got so much use for neither--with
her silk petticoats and silk stockings; but Sol Washeim's got a grand
business there, Abie. They don't move in a nine-room house from a
four-room apartment for nothing."
"For Beulah's weight in gold I don't want her--the way she looks at me
with her eyes and shoots 'em round like I was a three-ringed circus."
"You're right--for money you shouldn't marry neither; only I always say
it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich one as a poor one. But I'm
the last one to force you. There's Hannah Rosenblatt--a grand,
economical girl!"
"Hannah Rosenblatt--a girl that teaches school, she pushes on me. I got
to get educated yet!"
Mrs. Ginsburg rocked and fanned rhythmically; her unsubtle lips curled
upward with the subtle smile of a zingaro. The placidity of peace on a
mountain-top, shade in a dell, and love in a garden crept into her
tones.
"I just want you to know I don't stand in your way, Abie. You ain't a
child no more; but while I'm here you got so good a home as you
want--not?"
"Sure!"
"Girls you can always get--not? Girls nowadays ain't what they used to
be neither. I'd like to see a girl do to-day for papa what I did--how I
was in the store and kitchen all at once; then we didn't have no
satin-shoe clerks! Girls ain't what they used to be; in my day
working-girls had no time for fine-smelling cologne-water and--"
"All girls ain't alike, mamma--satin shoes cost no more nowadays as
leather. We got a dollar-ninety-eight satin pump, you wouldn't believe
it--and such a seller! All girls ain't alike, mamma."
"What you mean, Abie?"
Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall,
and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.
"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't--ain't like the
rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of
'em, oughtn't there?"
Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment
fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its
pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity--a silence that
is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his
stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a
film of pity glazing his eyes.
"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand
in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.
"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what
comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for
you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to
give you. Ain't it?"
His hand crept out and rested lightly--ever so lightly--on his mother's
knee.
"Abie, you never talked like this before--I won't stand in your way,
Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt,
either would be--"
"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."
Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past
and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.
"Who--is--it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."
"Why, mamma, it ain't no one! Can't a fellow just talk? You started it,
didn't you? I was just talking 'cause you was."
"He scares me yet! No consideration that boy has got for his mother!
Abie, a little broth--you ain't got no fever, Abie--your head is cool
like ice."
"You ain't had no supper yet, mamma."
"I had coffee at five o'clock; for myself I never worry. I'm glad enough
you feel all right. It's eight o'clock, Abie--I go me to bed. To-morrow
I go to market with Yetta."
"Aw, mamma, now why for do you--"
"I ain't too proud--such high-toned notions I ain't got. For what I pay
forty-two cents for eggs up here when I can get 'em for thirty-eight?"
"Be careful, mamma; don't fall over the chair--you want a light?"
"No. Write me a note for the milkman, Abie, before you go to bed, and
leave it out with the bottles--half a pint of double cream I want. I
make you cream-potatoes for supper to-morrow. I laid your blue shirt on
your bed, Abie--don't go to bed on it. It's the last time I iron it; but
once more you can wear it, then I make dust-rags. I ironed it soft like
you like."
"Yes, mamma."
"Put the cover on the canary, too, Abie. That night you went to the
lodge he chirped and chirped, just like you was lost and he was crying
'cause me and him was lonely."
"Yes, mamma. Wait till I light the gas in your room for you--you'll
stumble."
"It's too hot for light; I can see by the Magintys' kitchen light across
the air-shaft. What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know--such
housekeeping! Yesterday with my own eyes I seen her shake a table-cloth
out the window with a hole like my hand in it. She should know what I
think of such ways."
Mrs. Ginsburg moved through the gloom, steering carefully round the
phantom furniture. From his place on the couch her son could hear her
moving about her tiny room adjoining the kitchen. A shoe dropped and,
after a satisfying interval, another; the padding of bare feet across a
floor; the tink of a china pitcher against its bowl; the slam of a
drawer; the rusty squeal of spiral bed-springs under pressure.
"Abie, I'm ready."
When Mr. Ginsburg groped into his mother's room she lay in the casual
attitude of sleep, but the yellow patch of light from the shaft fell
across her open eyes and gray wisps of hair that lay on her pillow like
a sickly aura.
"Good night, Abie. You're a good boy, Abie."
"Good night, mamma. A sheet ain't enough--you got to have the
blue-and-white quilt on you, too."
"Don't, Abie--do you want to suffocate me? I can't stand so much. Take
off the quilt."
"Your rheumatism, you know, mamma--you'll see how much cooler it will
get in the night."
"_Ach_, Abie, leave that window all the way up. So hot, and that boy
closes me up like--"
"When the lace curtain blows in it means you're in a draught,
mamma--half-way open you can have it, but not all. Without me to fuss
you'd have a fine rheumatism--like it ain't dangerous for you to sleep
where there's enough draught to blow the curtain in."
"Abie, if you don't feel good, in two minutes I can get up and heat the
broth if--"
"I'm grand, mamma. Here, I move this chair so the light from Magintys'
don't shine in your eyes."
"What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know. Good night, Abie. In
the dark you look like poor papa. How he used to fuss round the room at
night fixing me just like you--poor papa, Abie--not? Poor papa?"
"Good night, mamma."
Mr. Ginsburg leaned over and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.
"Double cream did you say I should write the milkman?"
"Yes--and, Abie, don't forget to cover the bird."
"Yes. Here, I leave the door half-way open, mamma. Good night."
"Abie! Abie!"
"Yes?"
"Oh, it ain't nothing at all, Abie--never mind."
"I'm right here, mamma. Anything you want me to do?"
"Nothing. Good night, Abie."
"Good night, mamma."
* * * * *
At eight-fifteen Monday morning Miss Ruby Cohn blew into the Ginsburg &
Son's shoe store like a breath of thirty-nine-cents-an-ounce perfume
shot from a strong-spray atomizer. The street hung with the strong
breath of Mayflower a full second after her small, tall-heeled feet had
crossed its soft asphalt.
At the first whiff Mr. Ginsburg drew the upper half of his body out from
a case of misses' ten-button welt soles he was unpacking and smiled as
if Aurora and spring, and all the heyday misses that Guido Reni and
Botticelli loved to paint, had suddenly danced into his shop.
"Well, well, Miss Ruby, are you back?"
Miss Cohn titillated toward the rear of the store, the tail of a
cockatoo titillated at a sharp angle from her hat, a patent-leather
handbag titillated from a long cord at her wrist, and a smile iridescent
as sunlight on spray played about her lips. She placed her hand
blinker-fashion against her mouth as if she would curb the smile.
"Don't tell anybody, Mr. Ginsburg, and I'll whisper you something.
Listen! I ain't back; I'm shooting porcelain ducks off the shelf in a
china shop."
"Ah, you're back again with your fun, ain't you? Miss Ruby--believe
me--I missed you enough. I bet you had a grand time at the farm!"
Mr. Ginsburg shook hands with her shyly, with a sudden red in his face,
and as if her fingers were holy with the dust of a butterfly's wings and
he feared to brush it off.
"Say, Mr. Ginsburg, you should have seen me! What I think of a shoe-tree
after laying all yesterday afternoon under a oak-tree next to a brook
that made a noise like playing a tune on wine-glasses, I'd hate to tell
you. Say, you're unpacking them ten-button welts, ain't you? Good! It
ain't too soon for the school stock."
Miss Cohn withdrew two super-long, sapphire-headed hat-pins from her
super-small hat, slid out of a tan summer-silk jacket, dallied with the
froth of white frills at her throat, ran her fingers through the flame
of her hair and turned to Mr. Ginsburg. Her skin was like thick cream
and smattered with large, light-brown freckles, which enhanced its
creaminess as a crescent of black plaster laid against a lady's cheek
makes fairness fairer.
"Well, how's business? I've come back feeling like I could sell storm
rubbers to a mermaid."
"You look grand for certain, Miss Ruby. They just can't look any
grander'n you. Believe me, I missed you enough! To-day it's cool; but
the day before yesterday you can know I was done up when I closed before
six."
"Can you beat it? And I was laying flat on the grass, with ants running
up my sleeves and down my neck and wishing for my sealskin--it was so
cool. I see Herschey's got cloth-tops in his windows. What's the matter
with us springing them patent-tip kids? Say, I got a swell idea for a
window comin' home on the train--lookin' at the wheat-fields made me
think of it."
"Whatta you know about that? Wheat-fields made her think of a shoe
window--like a whip she is--so sharp!"
"It's a yellow season, Mr. Ginsburg; and we can use them old-oak stands
and have a tan school window that'll make every plate-glass front
between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street look like a Sixth
Avenue slightly worn display."
"Good! You can have just what kind of a window you like, Miss Ruby--just
anything you--you like. After such a summer we can afford such a fall
window as we want. I see the Busy Bee's got red-paper poppies in
theirs--something like that, maybe, with--"
"Nix on paper flowers for us! I got a china-silk idea from a little
drummer I met up in the country--one nice little fellow! I wonder if you
know him? Simon Leavitt; he says he sold you goods. Simon Leavitt. Know
him?"
"No."
"One nice little fellow!"
Silence.
"I missed you lots, Miss Ruby. When Saturday came I said to mamma: 'How
I miss that girl! Only one month she's been with us, but how I miss that
girl!' Oh--eh, Miss Ruby!"
Miss Cohn adjusted a pair of tissue-paper sleevelets and smoothed her
smooth tan hips as if she would erase them entirely; then she looked up
at him delicately, and for the instant the pink aura of her hair and the
rise and fall of her too high bosom gave her some of the fleshly beauty
of a Flora.
"Like you had time to think of me! I bet the Washeim girl was in every
other day for a pair of--"
"Now, Miss Ruby, you--"
"'Sh! There's some one out front. It's that cashier from Truman's
grocery. You finish unpacking that case, Mr. Ginsburg. I'll wait on her.
I bet she wants tango slippers."
Miss Cohn flitted to the front of the store as rapidly as the span of
her narrow skirt would permit, and Mr. Ginsburg dived deep into the
depths of his wooden case. But in his nostrils, in the creases of his
coat, and in the recesses of his heart was the strong breath of the
Mayflower; and in the phantasmagoria of bonfire-colored hair and
cream-colored skin, and the fragrance of his own emotions, he bent so
dreamily over the packing-case that the blood rushed as if by capillary
attraction to his temples; and when he staggered to an upright posture
large black blotches were doing an elf dance before his eyes.
"Mr. Ginsburg! Oh, Mr. Ginsburg!"
"Yes, Miss Ruby."
From the highest rung of a ladder, parallel with the top row of a wall
of shoe-boxes, Miss Cohn poised like a humming-bird.
"Say, have we got any more of them 4567 French heel, chiffon rosette?"
"Yes, Miss Ruby--right there under the 5678's."
"Sure enough. Never mind coming out; I can find 'em--yes, here they
are."
From her height she smiled down at him, pushed her ladder leftward along
its track, clapped a shoe-box under her arm, and hurried down, her
shoe-buttoner jangling from a pink ribbon at her waist-line. Mr.
Ginsburg delved deeper.
"Mr. Ginsburg!"
"Yes, Miss Ruby."
"Just a moment, please--there's a lady out here wants low-cuts, and I'm
busy with a customer. Front, please--just this way, madam. I'll have
some one to wait on you in a moment."
Mr. Ginsburg clapped his hands dry of dust, wriggled into his unlined
alpaca coat, brushed his plush-like hair with his palms, and advanced to
the front of the store. His voice was lubricated with the sweet-oil of
willing servitude.
"What can I do for you, madam? Low-cuts for yourself?"
He straddled a stool and took the foot in the cup of his hand. Beside
him on a similar stool that brought their heads parallel Miss Ruby
smoothed her hand across her customer's instep.
"Ain't that effect great, Mr. Ginsburg, with that swell little rosette?
I was just telling this young lady if I had her instep I'd never wear
anything but our dancing-shoes."
"It certainly is swell," agreed Mr. Ginsburg, peering into the lining of
the shoe he removed to read its size.
The day's tide quickened; the yellow benches, with ceiling fans purring
over them, were filled with rows of trade who tamped the floor with
shiny, untried soles, bent themselves double to feel of toe and instep,
and walked the narrow strip of green felt as if on clay feet they feared
would break.
Came noon and afternoon. Miss Cohn ascended and descended the ladder
with the agility of a street vender's mechanical toy, shoes tucked under
each arm, and a pencil at a violent angle in the nest of her hair.
"Have we got any more of them 543 flat heels, Mr. Ginsburg?"
"Yes, Miss Ruby--right there in back of you."
"Say, you'd think I was using my eyes for something besides seeing,
wouldn't you? Wait on that lady next, Mr. Ginsburg. She wants white
kids."
"Certainly."
"Yes'm; we sell lots of them russet browns. It's a little shoe that
gives satisfaction every time. Mr. Ginsburg is always ordering more. I
wore a pair of them for two years myself. There ain't no wear-out to
them. We carry that in stock, too, and it keeps them like new--just rub
with a flannel cloth--fifteen cents a bottle. Just a moment, madam; I'll
be over to you as soon as I'm finished here. Mr. Ginsburg, take off that
lady's shoe and show her a pair of them dollar-ninety-eight elastic
sides while I finish with this lady. Sure, you can have 'em by five,
madam. Name? Hornschein, 3456 Eighth Avenue? Dollar-eighty out of two.
Thank you! Call again. Now, madam, what can I do for you? Yes, we have
them in moccasins in year-old size--sixty cents, and grand and soft for
their little feet. Wait; I'll see. Mr. Ginsburg, have we got those 672
infants' in pink?"
"Sure thing. Wait, Miss Ruby--I'll climb for you. I have to go up
anyway."
"Aw, you're busy with your own customers. Don't trouble."
"Nothing's trouble when it's for you, Miss Ruby. Show her those tassel
tops, too."
"Oh, Mr. Ginsburg, ain't you the kidder, though! Yes'm; the tassel tops
are eighty. Ain't they the cutest little things?"
At six o'clock a medley of whistles shrieked out the eventide--clarions
that ripped upward like sky-rockets in flight; hard-throated soprano
whistles that juggled with the topmost note like a colorature diva. The
oak benches emptied, Mr. Ginsburg raised the front awning and kicked the
carpet-covered brick away from the door, so that it swung quietly
closed; daubed at his wrists and collar-top with a damp handkerchief.
"First breathing space we've had to-day, ain't it, Miss Ruby?"
Miss Cohn flopped down on a bench and breathed heavily; her hair lay
damp on her temples; the ruffles at her neck were limp as the ruff of a
Pierette the morning after the costume ball.
"You should worry, Mr. Ginsburg! With such a business next year at this
time you'll have two clerks and more breathing space than you got
breath."
Mr. Ginsburg seated himself carefully beside her at a wide range, so
that a customer for a seven-E last could have fitted in between them.
"I've built up a good business here, Miss Ruby. The trouble with poor
papa was he was afraid to spend, and he was afraid of novelties. I
couldn't learn him that a windowful of satin pumps helps swell the
storm-rubber sale. Those little dollar-ninety-eights look swell on your
feet, Miss Ruby; you're a good advertisement for the stock--not?"
"Funny what a hit them pumps make! Mr. Leavitt was crazy about them,
too; but, say, what your mother thinks of these satin slippers I'd hate
to tell you. When she was down the day before I left she looked at 'em
till I got so nervous I tripped over the cracks between the boards. Say,
but wasn't she sore about the new glass fixtures! I kinda felt like it
was my fault, too; but I was strong for 'em because--"
"Mamma's the old-fashioned kind, Miss Ruby--her and poor papa like the
old way of doing things. She's getting old, Miss Ruby, but she means
well. She's a good mother--a good mother."
"She's sure a grand woman--carrying soup across to old Levinsky every
day, and all."
"She's more'n you know she is, too, Miss Ruby--little things that woman
does I could tell you about--when she didn't have it so good as now
neither."
Miss Ruby dropped her lids until her eyes were as soft as plush behind
the portieres of her lashes; her voice dropped into a throat that might
have been lined with that same soft plush.
"I had a mother for two days--like I said to Mr. Leavitt the other day
up in the country--we was talking about different things. I says to him,
I says, she quit when she looked at me--just laid down and died when I
was two days old. I must have been enough to scare the daylights out of
any one. Next to a pink worm on a fish-hook gimme a red-headed baby for
the horrors! Say, you ought to seen Mr. Leavitt fish! Six bass he caught
in one day--I sat next him and watched; we had 'em fried for supper.
He's some little--"
"What a pleasure you'd 'a' been to your mother, Miss Ruby! Such a girl
like you I could wish my own mother."
"That's just what Mr. Leavitt used to tell me; but, gee! he was a
kidder! I--I oughtta had a mother! Sometimes I--sometimes in the night
when I can't sleep--daytimes you don't care so much--but sometimes at
night I--I just don't care about nothing. With a girl like me, that
ain't even known a mother or father, it ain't always so easy to keep her
head above water."
"Poor little girl!"
"Since the day I left the Institootion I been dodging the city and
jumping its mud-holes like a lady trying to cross Sixth Avenue when it's
torn up. I--oh, ain't I the silly one?--treating you to my troubles!
Say, I got a swell riddle! I can't give it like Leavitt--like Simon
did; but--"