"In my own house, where I belong and can afford, I stay. I'm an old man,
and--"
"Not so fast, pa, not so fast! I only said that with forty dollars from
the house for three months this winter you can live almost as cheap in
the city as here. And for me to come out every Saturday night to take
Pearlie to the theater ain't such a cinch, neither. Take a boy like Max
Teitlebaum, he likes her well enough to take her to the theater hisself,
but by the time he gets out here for her he ain't go no enjoyment left
in him."
"When a young man likes well enough a young lady, a forty-five-minutes
street-car ride is like nothing."
"Aw, papa, in story-books such talk is all right, but when a young man
has got to change cars at Low Bridge and wait for the Owl going home it
don't work out so easy--does it Izzy, does it, mamma?"
"For three years, pa, even before I got my first job in the city, always
mamma and Pearlie been wantin' a few months away."
"With my son in the city losing every two months his job I got enough
city to last me so long as I live. When in my store I need so bad a good
young man for the new-fashioned advertising and stock, to the city he
has to go for a salesman's job. When a young man can't get along in
business with his old father I don't go running after him in the city."
"Pa, for heaven's sakes don't begin that! I'm sick of listening to it.
Newton ain't no place for a fellow to waste his time in."
"What else you do in the city, I like to know!"
"Julius, leave Izzy alone when one night a week he comes home."
"For my part you don't need to move to the city. I only said to Pearlie
and ma, when they asked me, that a few months in a family hotel like the
Wellington can't bust you. For me to come out home every Saturday night
to take Pearlie into the theater ain't no cinch. In town there's plenty
of grand boys that I know who live at the Wellington--Ignatz Landauer,
Max Teitlebaum, and all that crowd. Yourself I've heard you say how much
you like Max."
"For why, when everybody is moving out to Newton, we move away?"
"That's just it, papa, now with the interurban boom you got the chance
to sublet. Ain't it, mamma and Izzy?"
"Sure it--"
"Ya, ya; I know just what's coming, but for me Newton is good enough."
"What about your children, Julius? You ain't the only one in the
family."
"Twenty-five year I've lived in this one place since the store was only
so big as this room, and on this house we didn't have a second story. A
home that I did everything but build with my own hands I don't move out
of so easy. Such ideas you let your children pump you with, Becky."
"See, children, you say he can't never refuse me nothing; listen how he
won't let me get in a word crossways before he snaps me off. If we
sublet, Julius, we--"
"Sublet we don't neither! I should ride forty-five minutes into the city
after my hard day's work, when away from the city forty-five minutes
every one else is riding. My house is my house, my yard is my yard. I
don't got no ideas like my high-toned son and daughter for a hotel where
to stretch your feet you got to pay for the space."
"Listen to your papa, children, even before I got my mouth open good how
he talks back to a wife that nursed him through ten years of
bronchitis. All he thinks I'm good enough for is to make poultices and
rub on his chest goose grease."
"_Ach_, Becky, don't fuss so with your old man. Look, even the cat you
got scared. Here, Billy--here, kitty, kitty."
"Ain't I asked you often enough, Julius, not to feed on the carpet a
piece of meat to the cat? 'Sh-h-h-h, Billy, scat! All that I'm good
enough for is to clean up. How he talks to his wife yet!"
Miss Binswanger caught her breath on the crest of a sob and pushed her
untouched plate toward the center of the table; tears swam on a heavy
film across her eyes and thickened her gaze and voice.
"This--ain't--no--hole for--for a girl to live in."
"All I wish is you should never live in a worse."
"I ain't got nothin' here, papa, but sit and sit and sit on the porch
every night with you and mamma. When Izzy comes out once a week to take
me to a show, how he fusses and fusses you hear for yourselves. For a
girl nearly--twenty--it ain't no joke."
"It ain't, papa; it ain't no joke for me to have to take her in and out
every week, lemme tell you."
"Eat your supper, Poil; not eating don't get you nowheres with your
papa."
"I--I don't want nothin'."
A tear wiggle--waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she
fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief.
"I--I--I just wish sometimes I--was dead."
Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts
forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist
clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto.
"I--I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city."
"Now, Julius, don't begin."
"Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he
can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for
madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart
because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home
tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow
no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I
give all what I got. You should know how tight--how tight I got to
squeeze for it."
Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness.
"See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets
and right away puts on a poor mouth."
"Mad yet I shouldn't get with such nonsense. Too good they both got it.
Always I told you how we spoilt 'em."
"Don't holler so, pa."
"Don't tell me what to do! You with your pretty man suit and your hair
and finger-nails polished like a shoe-shine. You go to the city, and I
stay home where I belong in my own house."
"His house--always his house!"
"Ya, a eight-room house and running water she's got if she wants to have
company. Your mamma didn't have no eight rooms and finished attic when
she was your age. In back of a feed store she sat me. Too good you got
it, I say. New hard-wood floors down-stairs didn't I have to put in, and
electric light on the porch so your company don't break his neck? Always
something new, and now no more I can't eat a meal in peace."
"'Sh-h-h-h, Julius!"
"I should worry that the Teitlebaums and the Landauers live in a fine
family hotel in Seventy-second Street. Such people with big stores in
Sixth Avenue can buy and sell us. Not even if I could afford it would I
want to give up my house and my porch, where I can smoke my pipe, and my
comforts that I worked for all my life, and move to the city in rooms so
little and so far up I can't afford to pay for 'em. I should give up my
chickens and my comforts!"
"Your comforts, always your comforts! Do I think of _my_ comforts?"
"Ma, don't you and pa begin now with your fussing. Like cats you are one
minute and the next like doves."
"Don't boss me in my own house, Izzy! So afraid your papa is that he
won't get all the comforts what's coming to him. I wish you was so good
to me as you are to that cat, Julius--twice I asked you not to feed him
on the carpet. Scat, Billy!"
"Pass me some noodles, maw."
"Good ones, eh, Izzy?"
"Fine, maw."
"I ask you, is it more comfortable, Julius, for me to be cooped up in
the city in rooms that all together ain't as big as my kitchen? No, but
of my children I think too besides my own comforts."
"Ya, ya; now, Becky, don't get excited. Look at your mamma, Pearlie;
shame on her, eh? How mad she gets at me till blue like her wrapper her
face gets."
"My house and my yard so smooth like your hand, and my big porch and my
new laundry with patent wringer is more to me as a hotel in the city.
But when I got a young lady daughter with no attentions and no prospects
I can't think always of my own comforts."
"Ya, ya, Becky; don't get excited."
"Don't ya--ya me, neither."
"_Ach_, old lady, that only means how much I love you."
"We got a young lady daughter; do you want that she should sit and sit
and sit till for ever we got a daughter, only she ain't young no more. I
tell you out here ain't no place for a young goil--what has she got?"
"Yes, papa; what have I got? The trees for company!"
"Do you see, Julius, in the new bungalows any families moving in with
young ladies? Would even your son Isadore what ain't a young lady stay
out here when he was old enough to get hisself a job in the city?"
"That a boy should leave his old father like that!"
"Wasn't you always kickin' to me, pa, that there wasn't a future in the
business after the transaction came--wasn't you?"
"No more arguments you get with me!"
"What chance, Julius, I ask you, has a goil like Poil got out here in
Newton? To sit on the front porch nights with Meena Schlossman don't get
her nowheres; to go to the moving--pictures with Eddie Goldstone, what
can't make salt for hisself, ain't nothing for a goil that hopes to do
well for herself. If she only looks out of the corner of her eye at Mike
Donnely three fits right away you take!"
"_Gott_, that's what we need yet!"
"See, even when I mention it, look at him, Poil, how red he gets! But
should she sit and sit?"
"_Ach_, such talk makes me sick. Plenty girls outside the city gets
better husbands as in it. Na, na, mamma, did you find me in the city?"
"_Ach_, Julius, stop foolin'. When I got you for a husband enough
trouble I found for myself."
"In my business like it goes down every day, Becky, I ain't got the
right to make a move."
"See, the poor mouth again! Just so soon as we begin to talk about
things. A man that can afford only last March to take out a new
five-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy--"
"'Sh-h-h-h, Becky."
"For why shouldn't your children know it? Yes, up-stairs in my little
green box along with my cameo ear-rings and gold watch-chain I got it
put away, children. A new life-insurance policy on light-blue paper,
with a red seal I put only last week. When a man that never had any
insurance before takes it out so easy he can afford it."
"Not--not because I could afford it I took it, Becky, but with business
low I squeeze myself a little to look ahead."
"Only since we got the new store you got so tight. Now you got more you
don't let it go so easy. A two-story brick with plate-glass fronts now,
and always a long face."
"A long face! You should be worried like I with big expenses and big
stock and little business. Why you think I take out a policy so late at
such a terrible premium? Why? So when I'm gone you got something besides
debts!"
"Just such a poor mouth you had, Julius, when we wanted on the second
story."
"I ask you, Becky: one thing that you and the children ever wanted ain't
I found a way to get it for you? I ask you?"
"Ya, but a woman that was always economical like me you didn't need to
refuse. Never for myself I asked for things."
"_Ach_, ma and pa, don't begin that on the one night a week I'm home."
"So economical all my life I been. Till Izzy was ashamed to go to school
in 'em I made him pants out of yours. You been a good husband, but I
been just as good a wife, and don't you forget it!"
"Na, na, old lady; don't get excited again. But right here at my table,
even while I hate you should have to know it, Becky, in front of your
children I say it, I--I'm all mortgaged up, even on this house I'm--"
"On the old store you was mortgaged, too. In a business a man has got to
raise money on his assets. Didn't you always say that yourself? Business
is business."
"But I ain't got the business no more, Becky. I--I ain't said nothing,
but--but next week I close out the trimmed hats, Becky."
"Papa!"
"Trimmed hats! Julius, your finest department."
"For why I keep a department that don't pay its salt? I ain't like you
three; looks ain't everything."
"I know. I know. Ten years ago the biggest year what we ever had you
closed out the rubber coats, too, right in the middle of the season. A
poor mouth you'd have, Julius, if right now you was eating gold
dumplings instead of chicken dumplings."
"Na, na, Becky; don't pick on your old man."
"Since we been married I--"
"Aw, ma and pa, go hire a hall."
Suddenly Miss Binswanger clattered down her fork and pushed backward
from the table; tears streamed toward the corners of her mouth.
"That's always the way! What's the use of getting off the track? All we
want to say, papa, is we got a chance like we never had before to
sublet. Forty dollars a month, and no children. For three months we
could live in the city on family rates, and maybe for three months I'd
know I was alive. A--a girl's got feelings, papa! And, honest, it--it
ain't no trip, papa--what's forty-five minutes on the car with your
newspaper?--honest, papa, it ain't."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger drained a glass of water.
"Give 'er a chance, pa. The boys'll show her a swell time in the
city--Max Teitlebaum and all that crowd. It ain't no fun for me
traipsin' out after her, lemme tell you."
Mr. Binswanger pushed back his chair and rose from the table. His eyes,
the wet-looking eyes of age and asthma, retreated behind a network of
wrinkles as intricate as overhead wiring.
"I wish," he cried, "I was as far as the bottom of the ocean away from
such nonsense as I find in my own family. Up to my neck I'm full. Like
wolfs you are! On my neck I can feel your breath hot like a furnace.
Like wolfs you drive me till I--I can't stand it no more. All what I ask
is my peace--my little house, my little pipe, my little porch, and not
even my peace can I have. You--you're a pack of wolfs, I tell you--even
your fangs I can see, and--and I--I wish I was so far away as the bottom
of the ocean."
He shambled toward the door on legs bent to the cruel curve of
rheumatism. The sun had dropped into a bursting west, and was as red as
a mist of blood. Its reflection lay on the smooth lawn and hung in the
dark shadows of quiet trees, and through the fulvous haze of evening's
first moment came the chirruping of crickets.
"I wish I was so far away as the bottom of the ocean."
The tight-springed screen door sprang shut on his words, and his
footsteps shambled across the wide ledge of porch. A silence fell across
the little dining-table, and Miss Binswanger wiped at fresh tears, but
her mother threw her a confident gesture of reassurance.
"Don't say no more now for a while, children."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger inserted a toothpick between his lips and
stretched his limbs out at a hypotenuse from the chair.
"I'm done. I knew the old man would jump all over me."
"Izzy, you and Poil go on now; for the theater you won't catch the
seven-ten car if you don't hurry. Leave it to me, Poil; I can tell by
your papa's voice we got him won. How he fusses like just now don't make
no difference; you know how your papa is. Here, Poil, lemme help you
with your coat."
"I--I don't want to go, mamma!"
"_Ach_, now, Poil, you--"
"If you're coming with me you'd better get a hustle. I ain't going to
hang around this graveyard all evening."
Her brother rose to his slightly corpulent five feet five and shook his
trousers into their careful creases. His face was a soft-fleshed rather
careless replica of his mother's, with a dimple-cleft chin, and a
delicate down of beard that made his shaving a manly accomplishment
rather than a hirsute necessity.
"Here on the sideboard is your hat, Poil--powder a little around your
eyes. Just leave papa to me, Poil. _Ach_, how sweet that hat with them
roses out of stock looks on you! Come out here the side way--_ach_, how
nice it is out here on the porch! How short the days get--dark nearly
already at seven! Good-by, children. Izzy, take your sister by the arm;
the whole world don't need to know you're her brother."
"Leave the door on the latch, mamma."
"Have a good time, children. Ain't you going to say good-by to your
papa, Poil? Your worst enemy he ain't. Julius, leave Billy
alone--honest, he likes that cat better as his family. Tell your papa
good-by, Poil."
"I--said--good-by."
"She should say good-by to me only if she wants to. Izzy, when you go
out the gate drive back that rooster--I'll wring his little gallivantin'
neck if he don't stop roosting in that bush!"
"Good night, children; take good care of the cars."
"Good night, mamma...papa."
The gate clicked shut, and the two figures moved into the mist of
growing gloom; over their heads the trees met and formed across the
brick sidewalk a roof as softly dark as the ceiling of a church. Birds
chirped.
Mrs. Binswanger leaned her wide, uncorseted figure against a pillar and
watched them until a curve in the avenue cut her view, then she dragged
a low wicker rocker across the veranda.
"We can sit out on the porch a while yet, Julius. Not like midsummer it
is for your rheumatism."
"Ya, ya. My slippers, Becky."
"Here."
"Ya, ya."
"Look across the yard, will you, Julius. The Schlossmans are still at
the supper-table. Fruit gelatin they got. I seen it cooling on the
fence. We got new apples on the side-yard tree, you wouldn't believe,
Julius. To-morrow I make pies."
"Ya, ya."
The light tulle of early evening hung like a veil, and through it the
sad fragrance of burning leaves, which is autumn's incense, drifted from
an adjoining lawn.
"'Sh-h-h-h, chickey--sh-h-h-h! Back in the yard I can't keep that
rooster, Julius. And to-day for thirty cents I had that paling in the
garden fence fixed, too. Honest, to keep a yard like ours going is an
expense all the time. People in the city without yards is lucky."
"In all Newton there ain't one like ours. Look, Becky, at that
white-rose bush flowering so late just like she was a bride."
"When Izzy was home always, we didn't have the expense of weeding."
"Now when he comes home all he does is change neckties and make
trouble."
"_Ach_, my moon vines! Don't get your chair so close, Julius. Look how
those white flowers open right in your face. One by one like big stars
coming out."
"M-m-m-m and smell, Becky, how good!"
"Here, lemme pull them heavy shoes off for you, papa. Listen, there goes
that oriole up in the cherry-tree again. Listen to the thrills he's got
in him. Pull, Julius; I ain't no derrick!"
"Ah-h-h, how good it feels to get 'em off! Now light my pipe, Becky.
Always when you light it, better it tastes. Hold--there--make out of
your hand a cup--there--pu-pu-pu--there! Now sit down by me, Becky!"
"Move over."
"_Ach_, Becky, when we got our little home like this, with a yard so
smooth as my hand, where we don't need shoes or collars, and with our
own fruit right under our noses, for why ain't you satisfied?"
"For myself, Julius, believe me it's too good, but for Poil we--"
"Look all what you can see right here from our porch! Look there through
the trees at the river; right in front of our eyes it bends for us.
Look what a street we live on. We should worry it ain't in the booming
part. Quiet like a temple, with trees on it older as you and me
together."
"The caterpillars is bad this year, Julius; trees ain't so cheap,
neither. In the city such worries they ain't got."
"For what with a place like this, Becky, with running water and--"
"It's Poil, Julius. Not a thing a beau-ti-fool girl like Poil has out
here."
"Nonsense. It's a sin she should want a better place as this. Ain't she
got a plush parlor and a piano and--"
"It's like Izzy says, Julius: there's too many fine goils in the city
for the boys to come out here on a forty-five-minute ride. What boys has
she got out here, Mike Donnely and--"
"_Ach!_"
"That's what we need; just something like that should happen to us. But,
believe me, it's happened before when a girl ain't got no better to pick
from. How I worry about it you should know."
"Becky, with even such talk you make me sick."
"Mark my word, it's happened before, Julius! That's why I say, Julius, a
few months in the city this winter and she could meet the right young
man. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum. Yourself you said how grand and
steady he is. Twice with Izzy he's been out here, and not once his eyes
off Poil did he take."
"Teitlebaum, with a store twice so big as ours on Sixth Avenue, don't
need to look for us--twice they can buy and sell us."
"Is--that--so! To me that makes not one difference. Put Poil in the
city, where it don't take an hour to get to be, and, _ach_, almost
anything could happen! Not once did he take his eyes off her--such a
grand, quiet boy, too."
"When a young man's got thoughts, forty-five minutes' street-car ride
don't keep him away."
"Nonsense! I always say I never feel hungry till I see in front of me a
good meal. If I have to get dressed and go out and market for it I don't
want it. It's the same with marriage. You got to work up in the young
man the appetite. What they don't see they don't get hungry for. They
got to get eyes bigger as their stomachs first."
"Such talk makes me sick. Suppose she don't get married, ain't she got a
good home and--"
"An old maid you want yet! A beau-ti-fool goil like our Poil he wants to
make out of her an old maid, or she should break her parents' hearts
with a match like Mike Donnely--"
"Becky."
"Aw, Julius, now we got the chance to rent for three months. Say we live
them three months at the Wellington Hotel. Say it costs us a little
more; everybody always says what a grand provider you are, Julius; let
them say a little more, Julius."
"I--I ain't got the money, Becky, I tell you. For me to refuse what you
want is like I stick a knife in my heart, but I got poor business,
Becky."
"Maybe in the end, Julius, it's the cheapest thing we ever done."
"I can't afford it, Becky."
"For only three months we can go, Julius."
"I got notes, Becky, notes already twice extended. If I don't meet in
March God knows where--"
"Ya, ya, Julius; all that talk I know by heart!"
"I ain't getting no younger neither, Becky. Hardly through the insurance
examination I could get. I ain't so strong no more. When I get big
worries I don't sleep so good. I ain't so well nights, Becky."
"Always the imagination sickness, Julius."
"I ain't so well, I tell you, Becky."
"Last time when all you had was the neuralgia, and you came home from
the store like you was dying, Dr. Ellenburg told me hisself right here
on this porch that never did he know a man so nervous of dying like
you."
"I can't help it, Becky."
"If I was so afraid like you of dying, Julius, not one meal could I
enjoy. A healthy man like you with nothing but the rheumatism and a
little asthma. Only last week you came home pale like a ghost with a
pain in your side, when it wasn't nothing but where your pipe burnt a
hole in your pants pocket to give me some more mending to do."
"Just for five minutes you should have felt that pain!"
"Honest, Julius, to be a coward like you for dying it ain't
nice--honest, it ain't."
"Always, Becky, when I think I ain't always going to be with you and the
children such a feeling comes over me."
"_Ach_, Julius, be quiet! Without you I might just as well be dead,
too."
"I'm getting old, Becky; sixty-six ain't no spring chicken no more."
"That's right, Julius; stick knives in me."
"Life is short, Becky; we must be happy while we got each other."
"Life _is_ short, Julius, and for our children we should do all what we
can. We can't always be with them, Julius. We--we must do the right
thing by 'em. Like you say we--we're getting old--together, Julius. We
don't want nothing to reproach ourselves with."
"Ya, ya, Becky."
Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portieres swinging together, and
stars sprang out in a clear sky.
They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes
like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binswanger's arm.
"Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!"
"We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism."
"Ya, ya, Becky--hear how he purrs, like an engine."
"Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets."
He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours
on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's
outstretched arm.
"When--when we go--go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we--we
take him with us, not, Becky?"
"Yes, papa."
"Ya, ya, Becky."
* * * * *
The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge
whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the
housekeeper.
Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let
sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key
to the auctioneer.