"Telephoning."
"I ask you, is it a shame a child should hang on to the telephone an
hour at a time? Fifty minutes since she was interrupted from supper
she's been there."
"What's the harm in a young girl telephoning, I.W.? All young folks
like to gad over the wire."
"What can a girl have to say over the telephone for fifty minutes?
Altogether in my life I never talked that long into the telephone."
"Let the child alone, I.W."
"Who can she get to listen to her for fifty minutes?"
"Birdie Harberger usually calls up at this time."
"Always at supper-time! Never in my life has that child sat down at the
table it don't ring in our faces. The next time what it happens you can
take sides with her all you want, not one step does she move till she's
finished with her supper."
"As easy with her as you are, I.W., just as unreasonable you can get."
"On the stairs-landing for an hour a child should giggle into the
telephone! I'm ashamed for the operators. You take sides with her yet."
"I don't, I.W.; only--"
"You do!"
A patch of light from an upper window sprang then across their path.
"She's in her room now, I.W.!" cried Mrs. Goldstone. "She hasn't been
telephoning all this time at all. Now, crosspatch!"
"You know much! Can't you see she just lit up? Effie!"
A voice came down to them, clear and with a quality to it like the ring
of thin glass.
"Coming, pop!"
The light flashed out again, and in a length of time that could only
have meant three steps at a bound she was around the elbow of the
asphalt walk, a coat dangling off one arm, her summery skirts flying
backward and her head ardently forward.
"You'll never guess!"
She flung herself between the two of them, linking into each of their
elbows.
"By my watch, Effie, fifty minutes! If it happens again that you get
rung up supper-time, I--"
"It was Leon Kessler, pop; he didn't leave on the six-two. Can you beat
it? Down at the station he got to thinking of me and turned back. Oh, my
golly! how the boys love me!"
She was jumping now on the tips of her toes, her black curls bouncing.
"You don't tell me!" said Mr. Goldstone. "To-day in the store he says
he must be back in New York by Monday morning."
She thrust her face outward, its pink-and-white vividness very close to
his.
"Is my daddy's daughter going out in a seventy horse-power to Delmar
Garden? She is!"
"Them New York boys spend too much money on the girls when they come.
They spoil them for the home young men."
"Can I help it if he couldn't tear himself away?"
"S-ay, don't fool yourself! I said to him to-day he should stay over
Sunday. After the bill of goods I bought from him this morning, and the
way he only comes out to see his trade once in five or six years, he
should stay and mix with them a little longer. That fellow knows good
business."
She turned her face with a fling of curls to the right of her, linking
closer into the soft arm there.
"Listen to him, Mamma Hat! Let's shove a brick house over on him."
When Mrs. Goldstone finally spoke there was a depth to her voice that
seemed to create sudden quiet.
"Effie, Effie, why didn't you let him go?"
"Let him? Did I tie any strings to him? I said good-by to him in the
store this afternoon. Can I help it that the boys love me? Why didn't I
let him go, she says!"
Her father pinched her slyly at that. "_Echta_ fresh kid," he said.
To her right, the hand at her arm clung closer.
"Effie, you--you're so young, honey. Leon Kessler's an old-timer--"
"I hate kids. Give me a _man_ every time. I like them when they've got
enough sense to--"
"Why didn't you let him go, Effie? Ain't I right, I.W.? Ain't I right?"
"S-ay, what's the difference if he likes to show her a good time? If I
was a young man, I wouldn't pass her up myself."
"But, I.W., she's--so young!"
"Who's young? I'm nineteen, going on--"
"You've been running with him all the three days he's been here, honey.
What's the use getting yourself talked about?"
"Well, any girl in town would be glad to get herself talked about if
Leon Kessler was rushing her."
"Effie, I won't let you--I won't--"
Miss Goldstone unhinged her arm, jerking it free in anger.
"Well, I like that!"
"Effie, I--"
"You ain't my boss!"
"Effie!"
"But, papa, she--"
There was a booming in Mr. Goldstone's voice and a suddenly projected
vibrancy.
"You apologize to your mother--this minute! You talk to your mother the
way you know she's to be talked to!"
"I.W., she didn't--"
"You hear me!"
"I.W.! Don't holler at her; she--"
"She ain't your boss? Well, she just is your boss! You take back them
words and say you're sorry! You apologize to your mother!" Immediate
sobs were rumbling up through Miss Goldstone.
"Well, she--I--I didn't do anything. She's down on him. She--"
"Oh, Effie, would I say anything if it wasn't for your own good?"
"You--you were down on him from the start!"
"Effie darling, you must be mad! Would I say anything if it wasn't for
our girl's good to--"
"I--oh, Mamma Hat, I'm sorry, darling! I never meant a word. I didn't! I
didn't, darling!"
They embraced there in the shrouding darkness, the tears flowing.
"Oh, Effie--Effie!"
"I didn't mean one word I said, darling! I just get nasty like that
before I know it. I didn't mean it!"
"My own Effie!"
"My darling Mamma Hat!"
In the shadow of a flowering shrub Mr. Goldstone stood by, mopping. Mrs.
Goldstone took the small face between her hands, peering down into it.
"Effie, Effie, don't let--"
Just beyond the enclosing hedge, a motor-car drew up, honking, at the
curb, two far-flung paths of light whitening the street and a disused
iron negro-boy hitching-post. Miss Goldstone reared back.
"That's him!"
"Effie!"
"Let me go, dearie; let me go!"
"But, Effie--"
"Say, Hattie, I don't want to butt in, but it don't hurt the child
should go riding a little while out by Delmar Garden--a man that can
handle a car like Leon Kessler. Anyways, it don't pay to hurt the firm's
feelings."
There was a constant honking now at the curb, and violent throbbing of
engine.
"But, I.W.--"
"Popsie darling, I'll be back early. Mamma Hat, please!"
"Your mother says yes, baby. Tell Kess he should come for Sunday dinner
to-morrow."
She was a white streak across the grass, her nervous feet flying. Almost
instantly the honk of a horn came streaming back, faint, fainter.
Left standing there, Goldstone was instantly solicitous of his wife,
feeling along her arm up under the loose sleeve.
"It don't pay, Hattie, to hurt Kessler's feelings, and, anyhow, what's
the difference just so we know who she's running with? It's like this
house was a honey-pot and the boys flies."
She turned to him now with her voice full of husk, and even in the dark
her face bleached and shrunken from its plumpness.
"You oughtn't to let her! You--hadn't the right! She's too young and
too--sweet for a man like him. You oughtn't to let her!"
He stepped out in front of her, taking her by the elbows and holding
them close down against her sides.
"Why, Hattie, that child's own mother that loved her like an angel
couldn't worry no more foolishly about her than you do. Gad! I think you
wimmin love it! It was the same kind of worrying shortened her mother's
life. Always about nothing, too. 'Lenie,' I used to say to her, just to
quiet her, 'it was worry killed a Maltese cat; don't let it kill you.'
That child is all right, Hattie. What if he does like her pretty well?
Worse could happen."
"No, it couldn't! No!"
"Why not? He 'ain't seen her since a child, and all of a sudden he comes
West and finds in front of him an eye-opener."
"He's twice her age--more!"
"The way girls demand things nowadays, a man has got to be twice her age
before he can provide for her. Leon Kessler is big rich."
"He--he's fast."
"Show me the one that 'ain't sowed his wild oats. Them's the kind that
settle down quickest into good husbands."
"He--"
"S-ay, it 'ain't happened yet. I'm the last one to wish my girl off my
hands. I only say not a boy in this town could give it to her so good.
Fifteen years I've done business with that firm, and with his father
before him. A-1 house! S-ay, I should worry that he ain't a
Sunday-school boy. Show me the one that is. Your old man in his young
days wasn't such a low flier, neither, if anybody should ask you." He
made a whirring noise in his throat at that, pinching her cold cheek.
She was walking rapidly now toward the house. "Well, since our daughter
goes out riding in a six-thousand-dollar car, to show that we're sports,
lets her father and mother take themselves out for a ride in their
six-hundred-dollar car. I drive you out as far as Yiddle's farm for some
sweet butter, eh?"
"No, no; I'm cold. It's getting damp."
"S-ay, you can't hurt my feelings. On a cool night like this, a
brand-new sleeping-porch ain't the worst spot in the world."
They were on the veranda, the hall light falling dimly out and over
them.
"She's so young--"
"Now, now, Hattie; worry killed a Maltese cat. Come to bed."
"You go. I want to wait up."
"Hattie, you want to make of yourself the laughingstock of the
neighborhood. A grown-up girl goes out riding with a man like Leon
Kessler, and you wants to wait up and catch your death of cold. If we
had more daughters, I wouldn't have no more wife; I'd have a shadow from
worry. Come!"
"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
He regarded her in some concern.
"Why, Hattie, if there's anything in the world to worry about, wouldn't
I be the first? Ain't you well?"
"Yes."
"Then come. I'll get a pitcher of ice-water to take up-stairs."
"I'll be up in a minute."
"I don't want, Hattie, you should wait up for that child and take your
death of cold. Because I sleep like a log when I once hit the bed,
don't you play no tricks on me."
"I'll be up in a minute, I.W."
He moved into the house and, after a while, to the clinking of ice
against glass, up the stairs.
"Come, Hattie; and be sure and leave the screen door unhooked for her."
"Yes, I.W."
An hour she sat in the shrouded darkness of the elbow of the veranda.
Street noises died. The smell of damp came out. Occasionally a motor-car
sped by, or a passer-by, each step clear on the asphalt. The song of
crickets grated against the darkness. An infant in the right-side house
raised a fretful voice once or twice, and then broke into a sustained
and coughy fit of crying. Lights flashed up in the windows, silhouettes
moving across drawn shades. Then silence again. The university clock, a
mile out, chimed twelve, and finally a sonorous one. Mrs. Goldstone lay
huddled in her chair, vibrant for sound. At two o'clock the long,
high-power car drew up at the curb again, this time without honking. She
sat forward, trembling.
There followed a half-hour of voices at the curb, a low voice of
undeniable tensity, high laughter that shot up in joyous geysers. It was
a fifteen-minute process from the curb to the first of the porch steps,
and then Mrs. Goldstone leaned forward, her voice straining to keep
its pitch.
"Effie!"
The young figure sprang around the porch pillar.
"Mamma Hat! Honey, you didn't wait up for me?"
Mr. Kessler came forward, goggles pushed up above his cap-visor.
"Well, I'm hanged! What did you think--that I was kidnapping the kid?"
"How--how dared you! It's after two, and--"
Miss Goldstone began then to jump again upon her toes, linking her arm
in his.
"Tell her, Leon! Tell her! Oh, Mamma Hat! Mamma Hat!"
She was suddenly in Mrs. Goldstone's arms, her ardent face burning
through the white wrapper.
Mr. Kessler removed his cap, flinging it upward again and catching it.
"Tell her, Leon!"
"Well, what would you say, Becker, what would you say if I was to come
out here and swipe that little darling there?"
"Oh, Leon--kidder!"
"If--what?"
"I said it!"
"Tell her, Kess; tell it out! Oh, mommie, mommie!"
He leaned forward with his hand on the back of the turbulent head of
curls.
"You little darling, I'm going to put you on my back and carry you off
to New York."
"Oh, mommie," cried Miss Goldstone, flinging back her head so that her
face shone up, "he asked me in Delmar Garden! We're going to live in New
York, darling, and Rockaway in summer. He don't care a rap about the
New York girls compared to me. We're going to Cuba on our honeymoon. I'm
engaged, darling! I got engaged to-night!"
"That's the idea, Twinkle-pinkle. I'd carry you off to-night if I
could!"
"Mommie Hat, ain't you glad?"
"Effie--Effie--"
"Mommie, what is it? What's the matter, darling? What?"
"I--it's just that I got cold, honey, sitting here waiting--the surprise
and all. Run, honey, and get me a drink. Crack some ice, dearie, and
then run up-stairs in the third floor back and see if there's some
brandy up there. Be sure to look for--the brandy. I--I'll be all right."
"My poor, darling, cold mommie!"
She was off on the slim, quick feet, the screen door slamming and
vibrating.
Then Mrs. Goldstone sprang up.
"You wouldn't dare! Such a baby--you wouldn't dare!"
"Dare what?"
"You can't have the child! You can't!"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean?"
He advanced a step, his voice and expression lifted in incredulity.
"Say, look here, Becker, are you stark, raving crazy? Is it possible you
don't know that, in your place, nobody but a crazy woman would open
her mouth?"
"Maybe; but I don't care. Just leave her alone, Kess, please! That
little baby can stand nothing but happiness."
"Why, woman, you're crazy with the heat. If you want to know it, I'm
nuts over that little kid. Gad! never ran across anything so full of zip
in my life! I'm going to make life one joy ride after another for that
joy baby. That kid's the showpiece of the world. She's got me so hipped
I'm crazy, and the worst of it is I like it. You don't need to worry. As
the boys say, when I settle down, I'm going to settle hard."
"You ain't fit to have her!"
"Say, the kind of life I've lived I ain't ashamed to tell her own
father. He's a man, and I'm a man, and life's life."
"You--"
"Now look here, Becker. That'll be about all. If you're in your right
senses, you're going to ring the joy bells louder than any one around
here. What you got on your chest you can just as well cut your throat as
tell; so we'll both live happy ever after. There's not one thing in my
life that any jury wouldn't pass, and--"
"I've seen you drunk."
"Well, what of it? It took three of us to yank old I.W. out from under
the table at my sister's wedding."
"You--What about you and Cissie and--"
The light run of feet, and almost instantly Miss Goldstone was
pirouetting in between them.
"Here, dearie! There wasn't anything like brandy up in the third floor.
I found some cordial in the pantry. Drink it down, dearie; it'll
warm you."
They hovered together, Miss Goldstone trembling between solicitude and
her state of intensity.
"Kessie darling, you've got to go now. I want to get mommie up-stairs to
bed. You got to go, darling, until to-morrow. Oh, why isn't it tomorrow?
I want everybody to know. Don't let on, Mamma Hat. I'll pop it on popsie
at breakfast while I'm opening his eggs for him. You come for breakfast,
Leon. You're in the family now." He lifted her bodily from her feet,
pressing a necklace of kisses round her throat.
"Good night, Twinkle-pinkle, till to-morrow."
"Good night, darling. I won't sleep a wink, waiting for you."
"Me, neither."
"One more, darling--a French one."
"Two for good measure."
"Sleep tight, beautiful! Good night!"
"Good night, beautifulest!"
She stood poised forward on the topmost step, watching him between
backward waves of the hand crank, throw his clutch, and steer off. Then
she turned inward, a sigh trembling between her lips.
"Oh, Mamma Hat, I--"
But Mrs. Goldstone's chair was empty. Into it with a second and more
tremulous sigh sank Miss Goldstone, her lips lifted in the smile that
had been kissed.
When Mr. Goldstone slept, every alternate breath started with a rumble
somewhere down in the depths of him and, drawn up like a chain from a
well, petered out into a thin whistle before the next descent. Beside
him, now, on her knees, Mrs. Goldstone shook at his shoulder.
"I.W.! I.W.! Quick! Wake up!"
He let out a shuddering, abysmal breath.
"I.W.! Please!"
He moaned, turning his face from her.
She tugged him around again, now raising his face between her hands from
the pillow.
"I.W.! Try to wake up! For God's sake, I.W.!" He sprang up in a
terrified daze, sitting upright in bed.
"My God! Who? What's wrong? Effie! Hattie."
"No, no; don't get excited, I.W. It's me--Hattie!"
"What?"
"Nothing, I.W. Nothing to get excited about. Only I got to tell you
something."
"Where's Effie?"
"She's home."
"What time is it?"
"Three."
"Come back to bed, then; you got the nightmare."
"No, no!"
"You ain't well, Hattie? Let me light up."
"No, no; only, I got to tell you something! I 'ain't been to bed; I been
waiting up, and--"
"And what?"
"She just came home--engaged!"
"My God! Effie?"
He blinked in the darkness, drawing up his knees to a hump under the
sheet.
"Engaged--how?"
"I.W., don't you remember? Wake up, honey. To Kess, to Leon Kessler that
she went automobiling with."
"Our Effie engaged--to Leon Kessler?"
"Yes, I.W.--our little Effie!"
A smile spread over his face slowly, and he clasped his hands in an
embrace about his knees.
"You don't tell me!"
"Oh, I.W., please--"
"Our little girl. S-ay, how poor Lenie would have loved this happiness!
Our little girl engaged to get married!"
"I.W., she--"
"We do the right thing by them--eh, Hattie? Furnish them up as many
rooms as they want. But, s-ay, they don't need help from us. He's a
lucky boy who gets her, I don't care who he is. Her papa's little Effie,
a baby--old enough to get engaged!"
"I.W., she's too--young. Don't give him our little Effie; she's too
young!"
"I married her mother, Hattie, when she wasn't yet eighteen."
"I know, I.W., but not to Leon Kessler. She's such a baby, I.W.
He--didn't I work for him nine years, I.W.--don't I know what he is!"
"I'm surprised, Hattie, you should hold so against a man his wild oats."
"Then why ain't oats for the man oats for the woman? It's the men that
sow the wild oats and the women--us women that's got to reap them!"
"S-ay, life is life. Do you want to put your head up against a brick
wall?"
"A wall that men built!"
"It's always hard, Hattie, for good women like you and like poor Lenie
was to understand. It's better you don't. You shouldn't even think
about it."
"But, I.W.--"
"If I didn't know Leon Kessler was no worse than ninety-nine good
husbands in a hundred, you think I would let him lay a finger on the
apple of my eye? I don't understand, Hattie; all of a sudden this
evening, you're so worked up. Instead of happiness, you come like with a
funeral. Is that why you wake me up out of a sleep? To cry about it?
Don't think, Hattie, that just as much as you I haven't got the good of
my child at heart. Out of a sound sleep she wakes me to cry because a
happiness has come to us. Leon Kessler can have any girl in this town he
wants. Maybe he wasn't a Sunday-school boy in his day--but say, show me
one that was."
She drew herself up, grasping him at the shoulders.
"I.W., don't let him have our little Effie!"
"Nonsense!" he said, in some distaste for her voice choked with tears.
"Cut out this woman foolishness now and come to bed. Is this something
new you're springing on me? I got no patience with women who indulge
themselves with nervous breakdowns. I never thought, Hattie, you had
nothing like that in you."
Her voice was rising now in hysteria, slipping up frequently beyond her
control.
"If you do, I can't stand it! I can't stand it, I.W.!"
He peered at her in the starlight that came down through the screened-in
top of the sleeping-porch.
"Why?" he said, suddenly awake, and shortly.
"I worked for him nine years, I.W. I--I know him."
"How?"
"I know him, I.W. She's too good for him."
"How do you know him?"
"I--the girls, I.W. One little girl now, Cissie--I--I hear it all from
my friend Delehanty--sometimes she--she writes to me. I--the models
and--the girls and--and the lady buyers--they--they used to gossip in
the factory and--I--I used to hear about it. I.W., don't! Let go! You
hurt!" His teeth and his hands were very tight, and he hung now over the
side of the bed and toward her.
"He--I.W.--he--"
"He what? He what?"
"He--ain't good enough."
"I say he is!"
"But he--I.W.--she--she's such a baby and he--he--. You hurt!"
"Then tell me, he what?"
"I.W., you're hurting me!"
"He what--do you hear?--he what?"
"Don't make me say it! Don't! It--it just happened--with him meaning one
thing all the time and--me another. I was thrown with that kind of a
crowd, I.W., all my life. All the girls, they--It don't make me worse
than it makes him. With me it was once; with him it's--it's--I didn't
know, I.W. My mother she died that year before, and--I needed the job,
and I swear to God, I.W., I--kept hoping even if he never put it in
words he'd fix it. Kill me, if you want to, I.W., but don't throw our
Effie to him! Don't! Don't! Don't!"
She was pounding the floor with her bare palms, her face so distorted
that the mouth drawn tight over the teeth was as wide and empty as a
mask's, and sobs caught and hiccoughed in her throat.
"I didn't know, I.W.! Don't kill me for what I didn't know!"
She crouched back from his knotted face, and he sprang then out of bed,
nightshirt flapping about his knees, and his fists and his bulging eyes
raised to the quiet stars.
"God," he cried, "help me to keep hold of myself! Help me! You--you--"
His voice was so high and so tight in his throat that it stuck, leaving
him in inarticulate invocation.
"I.W.!"
"My child engaged to--to her mother's--you--you--"
"I.W.! Do you see now? You wouldn't let him have her! You wouldn't,
I.W.! Tell me you wouldn't!"
"I want him if he touches her to be struck dead! I want him to be struck
dead!"
"Thank God!" said Mrs. Goldstone, weeping now tears that eased her
breathing.
Suddenly he leaned toward her, his voice rather quieter, but his
forefinger waggling out toward the open door.
"You go!" he said, and then in a gathering hurricane of fury, "go!"
"I.W., don't yell! Don't! Don't!"
"Go--while I'm quiet. Go--you hear?"
She edged around him where he stood, in fear of his white, crouched
attitude.
"I.W.!"
He made a step toward her, and, at the sound in his throat, she ran out
into the hallway and down the stairs to the porch. In the deep shade of
the veranda's elbow a small figure lay deep in sleep in the wicker
rocker, one bare arm up over her head and lips parted.
In a straight chair beside her Mrs. Goldstone sat down. She was
shuddering with chill and repeating to herself, quite aloud and over and
over again:
"What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?"
She was suddenly silent then, staring out ahead, her hands clutching the
chair-arms.
To her inflamed fancy, it was as if, beyond the hedge, the old disused
hitching-post had become incarnate and, in the form of her naive and
horned conception, was coming toward her with the whites of his eyes
bloodshot.