Chapter 14

Her upper lip lifted slightly. "Yes," she said; "I've heard that before."

"We're going to be mighty happy some day, just the same, and don't you let yourself forget it. We've got good times ahead."

"Oh dear!" she sighed out.

"What?"

"Nothing."

He patted her arm. "You'll never know, Clara, the torture it's been for me even your going out those few times with Eddie Leonard has put me through. You're mine, Clara; a hundred Eddies couldn't change that."

"Who said anybody wanted to change it?"

He patted her arm again very closely. "You're a wonderful girl, Clara."

They turned up the stoop of Mrs. Schulem's boarding-house, strictly first-class. How they flourish in the city, these institutions of the Not Yet, the Never Was, the Never Will Be, and the Has Been! They are the half-way houses going up and the mausoleums coming down life's incline, and he who lingers is lost to the drab destiny of this or that third-floor-back hearthstone, hot and cold running water, all the comforts of home. That is why, even as she moved up from the rooming to the boarding-house and down from the third-floor back to the second-story front, there was always under Clara Bloom's single bed the steamer-trunk scarcely unpacked, and in her heart the fear that, after all, this might not be transiency, but home. That is why, too, she paid her board by the week and used printed visiting-cards.

And yet, if there exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem's was of it. None of the boiled odors lay on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor. The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two more of him were also genii of the basement dining-hall, two low rooms made into one and entirely bisected by a long-stemmed T of dining-table, and between the lace-curtained windows a small table for two, with fairly snowy napkins flowering out of its water-tumblers, and in its center a small island of pressed-glass vinegar-cruet, bottle of darkly portentous condiment, glass of sugar, and another of teaspoons.

It was here that Miss Bloom and Mr. Lipkind finally settled themselves, snugly and sufficiently removed from the T-shaped battalion of eyes and ears to insure some privacy.

"Well," said Mr. Lipkind, unflowering his napkin, spreading it across his knees, and exhaling, "this is fine!"

There was an aura of authoritativeness seemed to settle over Miss Bloom.

This to one of the black-faced genii: "Take care of us right to-night, Johnson, and I'll fix it up with you. See if you can't manage it in the kitchen to bring us a double portion of those banana fritters I see they're eating at the big table. Say they're for Miss Bloom. I'll fix it up with you."

"Now, Clara, don't you go bothering with extras for me. This is certainly fine. Sorry you never asked me before."

"You know why I never asked you before."

"Why, you never saw the like how pleased ma was. She was the first one to fall in with the idea of my coming to-night."

She dipped into a shallow plate of amber soup. "I know," she said, "all about that."

"Ma's a good sport about being left at home alone."

"How do you know? You never tried it until to-night. I'll bet it's the first time since that night you first met me, five years ago, at Jerome Fertig's, and it wouldn't have been then if she hadn't had the neuralgia and it was your own clerk's wedding."

He laid down his spoon, settling back a bit from the table, pulling the napkin across his knees out into a string.

"I thought we'd gone all over that, Clara."

"Yes; but where did it get us? That's why we're here to-night, Sam--to get somewheres."

He crumbed his bread. "What do you mean, Clara?"

She forced his slow gaze to hers calmly, her hands outstretched on the table between them. "I've made up my mind, Sam. Things can't go on this way no longer between us."

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"I mean that we've either got to act or quit."

He was rolling the bread pills again, a flush rising. "You know where I stand, Clara, on things between us."

"Yes, Sam, and now you know where I stand." The din of the dining-room surged over the pause between them. Still in the purple hat, and her wrap thrown back over her chair, she held that pause coolly, level of eye. "I'm thirty-one now, Sam, three weeks and two days older than you. I don't see the rest of my days with the Arnstein Ribbon Company. I'm not getting any younger. Five years is a long time out of a girl's life. Five of the best ones, too. She likes to begin to see her future when she reaches my age. A future with a good providing man. You and me are just where we started five years ago."

"I know, Clara, and I'd give my right hand to change things."

"If I'd been able to save a cent, it might be different. But I haven't--I'm that way. I make big and spend big. But you can't blame a girl for wanting to see her future. That's me, and I'm not ashamed to say it."

"If only, Clara, I could get you to see things my way. If you'd be willing to try it with ma. Why, with a little diplomacy from you, ma'd move heaven and earth to please you."

"There's no use beginning that, Sam; it's a waste of time. Why--why, just the difference in the way me and--and your mother feel on money matters is enough. There's no use to argue that with me; it's a waste of time."

He lifted and let droop his shoulders with something of helplessness in the gesture. "What's the use, then? I'm sure I don't know what more to say to you, Clara. Oh, don't think my mother don't realize how things are between us--it's all I can do to keep denying and denying."

"Well, you can't say she knows from my telling."

"No; but there's not a day she don't say to me, particularly these last few times since you been breaking your dates with us pretty regular--I--well she sees how it worries me, and there's not a day she don't say to me, 'Sammy,' she said to me, only this morning, 'if I thought I was keeping you and Clara apart--'"

"A blind man could see it."

"There's not a day passes over her head she don't offer to go to live with my sister in Ohio, when I know just how that one month of visiting her that time nearly killed her."

"Funny visiting an own daughter could nearly kill anybody."

"It's my brother-in-law, Clara. My mother couldn't no more live with Isadore Katz than she could fly. He's a fine fellow and all that, but she's not used to a man in the house that potters around the kitchen and the children's food and things like Isadore loves to. She's used to her own little home and her own little way."

"Exactly."

"If I want to kill my mother, Clara, all I got to do is put her away from me in her old age. Even my sister knows it. 'Sammy,' she wrote to me that time after ma's visit out there, 'I love our mother like you do, but I got a nervous husband who likes his own ways about the housekeeping and the children and the cooking, and nobody knows better than me that the place for ma to be happy is with you in her own home and her own ways of doing.'"

"I call that a nerve for a sister to let herself out like that."

"It's not nerve, Clara; it's the truth. Ruby's a good girl in her way."

"What about you--ain't your life to be thought of? Ain't it enough she was married off with enough money for her husband to buy a half-interest in a ladies' ready-to-wear store out there?"

"Why, if I was to bring my little wife to that flat of ours, Clara, or any other kind further down-town that she'd want to pick out for herself, I think my mother would just walk on her hands and knees to make things pleasant for her. Maybe you don't know it, but on your Wednesday nights up at the house, she is up at five o'clock in the morning fixing around and cooking the things she thinks you'll like."

"I'm not saying a word against your mother, Sam. I think she's a grand woman, and I admire a fellow that's good to his mother. I always say, 'Give me a fellow every time that is good to his mother and that fellow will be good to his wife.'"

"I'm not pretending to say ma mayn't be a little peculiar in her ways, but you never saw an old person that wasn't, did you? Neither am I saying it's exactly any girl's idea to start out married life with a third person in--"

"I've always swore to myself, Sam, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, that if I can't marry to improve myself, I'm going to stay single till I can. I'm not a six-dollar-a-week stenog that has to marry for enough to eat. I can afford to buy a seventy-five dollar suit every winter of my life and twelve-dollar shoes every time I need them. The hat on my head cost me eighteen-fifty wholesale, without having to be beholding to nobody, and--"

"Ma don't mean those things, Clara. It's just when she hears the price girls pay for things nowadays she can't help being surprised the way things have changed."

"I'm not a small potato, Sam. I never could live like a small potato."

"Why, you know there's nothing I like better than to see you dressed in the best that money can buy. You heard what I said about that hat just now, didn't you? Whatever it cost, it's worth it. I can afford to dress my little wife in the best that comes. There's nothing too good for her."

"Yes; but--"

"All ma needs, Clara, is a little humoring. She's had to stint so all her life, it's a little hard to get her used to a little prosperity. Take me. Why, if I bring her home a little shawl or a pockabook that cost, say, ten dollars, you think I tell her? No. I say, 'Here's a bargain I picked up for three ninety-eight,' and right away she's happy with something reduced."

"Your mother and me, Sam, and, mind you, I'm not saying she isn't a grand old lady, wasn't no more made to live together than we was made to fly. I couldn't no more live her way than she could live mine. I've got a practical head on my shoulders--I don't deny it--and I want to improve ourselves in this world when we marry, and have an up-to-date home like every young couple that starts out nowadays."

"Sure, we--"

"That flat of yours up there or any other one under the conditions would be run like the ark. I'm an up-to-date girl, I am. There's not a girl living would be willing to marry a well-off fellow like you and go huck herself in a place she couldn't even have the running of herself or have her own say-so about the purse-strings. It may sound unbecoming, but when I marry I'm going to better myself, I am."

"I--why--"

"If she can't even stand for her own son-in-law walking into his own kitchen in his own house--Oh, you don't find me starting my married life that way at this late date. I haven't held off five years for that."

Mr. Lipkind pushed back his but slightly tasted food, lines of strain and a certain whiteness out in his face. "It--it just seems awful, Clara, this going around in a circle and not getting anywheres."

"I'm at the end of my rope, I am."

"I see your point in a way, Clara, but, my God! a man's mother is his mother! It's eating up my life just as it's eating yours, but what you going to do about it? It just seems the best years of our life are going, waiting for God knows what."

Hands clasped until her finger-nails whitened, Miss Bloom leaned across the table, her voice careful and concentrated. "Now you said something! That's why you and me are here alone together to-night. There's not going to be a sixth year of this kind of waiting between us. Things have got to come to a head. I've got a chance, Sam, to marry. Eddie Leonard has asked me."

"I--thought so."

"Eddie Leonard ain't a Sam Lipkind, but after the war his five-thousand-dollar job is down at Arnstein's waiting for him, and he's got a good stiff bank-account saved as good as yours and--and no strings to it. I believe in a girl facing those facts the same as any other facts. Why, I--this war and all--why, if anything was to happen to you to-morrow--us unmarried this way--I'd be left high and dry without so much as a penny to show for the best five years of my life. We've got to do one thing or another, Sam. I believe in a girl being practical as well as romantic."

"I--see your point, Clara."

"I'm done with going around in this circle of ours."

"You mean--"

"You know what I mean."

The lower half of Mr. Lipkind's face seemed to lock, as it were, into a kind of rigidity which shot out his lower jaw. "I'll see Eddie Leonard burning like brimstone before I let him have you!"

"Well?"

"God! I don't know what to say--I don't know what to say!"

"That's your trouble, Sam; you're so chicken-hearted you--"

"My father died when I was five, Clara, and no matter what my feelings are to you, there's no power on earth can make me quit having to be him as well as a son to my mother. Maybe it sounds softy to you--but if I got to pay with her happiness for--ours--then I never want happiness to the day I die."

"In other words, it's the mother first."

"Don't put it that way--it's her--age--first. It ain't what she wants and don't want; it's what she's got to have. My mother couldn't live away from me."

"She could if you were called to war."

There was something electric in the silence that followed, something that seemed to tighten the gaze of each for the other.

"But I haven't been--yet."

"The next draft will get you."

"Maybe."

"Well, what'll you do then?"

"That's something me and ma haven't ever discussed. The war hasn't been mentioned in our house for two years--except that the letters don't come from Germany, and that's a grief to her. There's enough time for her to cross that bridge when we come to it. She worries about it enough."

"If I was a man I'd enlist, I would!"

"I'd give my right hand to. Every other night I dream I'm a lieutenant."

"Why, there's not a fellow I know that hasn't beaten the draft to it and enlisted for the kind of service he wants. I know a half a dozen who have got in the home guard and things and have saved themselves by volunteering from being sent to France."

"I wouldn't dodge the front thataway. I'd like to enlist as a private and then work myself up to lieutenant and then on up to captain and get right into the fray on the front. I--"

"You bet, if I was a fellow, I'd enlist for the kind of home service I wanted--that's what Eddie and all the fellows are doing."

"So would I, Clara, if I was what you call a--free man. There's nobody given it more thought than me."

"Well, then, why don't you? Talk's cheap."

"You know why, Clara, to get back to going around in a circle again."

"But you've got to go, sooner or later. You've got a comfortable married sister and independent circumstances of your own to keep your mother; you haven't got a chance for exemption."

"I don't want exemption."

"Well, then, beat the draft to it."

"I--Most girls ain't so anxious to--to get rid of their best fellows, Clara."

"Silly! Can't you see the point? If--if you'd enlist and go off to camp, I--I could go and live near you there like Birdie Harberger does her husband. See?"

"You mean--"

"Then--God forbid anything should happen to you!--I'm your wife. You see, Sam?"

"Why, Clara--"

"You see what I mean. But nothing can happen this way, because if you try to enlist in some mechanical department where they need you in this country--you see, Sam? See?"

"I--see."

"Your mother would have to get used to things then, Sam--it would be the easiest for her. An old lady like her couldn't go trailing around the outskirts of a camp like your wife could. Think of the comfort it'll be to her to have me with you if she can't be. She'll get so used to--living alone--"

"I--You mustn't talk that way to me, Clara. When I'm called to serve my country, I'm the first one that will want to go. I've given more money already than I can afford to help the boys who are at the front. So far as I'm concerned, enlisting like this with--with you--around, would be the happiest thing ever happened to me, but--well, you see for yourself."

"You mean, then, you won't?"

"I mean, Clara, I can't."

She was immediately level of tone again and pushed back, placing her folded napkin beside her place, patting it down.

"Well, then, Sam, I'm done."

"'Done,' Clara?"

"Yep. That lets me out. I've given you every chance to make this thing possible. Your mother is no better and no different than thousands and thousands of other mothers who are giving their sons, only, she is better off than most, because she's provided for. It's all right for a fellow's mother to come first, maybe, but if his wife isn't even to come second or third or tenth, then it's about time to call quits. I haven't made up my mind to this in a day. I'm done."

"Clara--"

"Ed has asked me. I don't pretend he's my ideal, but he's more concerned about my future than he is about anybody else's. If I'm ready to leave with him on that twelve-o'clock train for Boston to-morrow, where he's going to be put in the clerical corps at Camp Usonis, we'll be married there to-morrow night, and I'll settle down somewhere near camp as long as I can. He's got a good nest-egg if--God forbid!--anything should happen. That's the whole thing in a nutshell."

"My God! Clara, this is awful! Eddie Leonard he's not your kind; he--"

"I've given you first chance, Sam. That proves how you stand with me. A one! Ace high! First! Nobody can ever take your place with me. Don't be a boob coming and going, Sam; you're one now not to see things and you'll be another one spelled backward if you don't help yourself to your chance when it comes. You've got your life in front of you, and your mother's got hers in back of her. Now choose."

"My God! Clara, this is--terrible! Why--I'd rather be a thousand boobs than take my mother's heart and tear it to pieces."

"You won't?"

"I can't."

"Don't say that, Sam. Go home and--sleep on it. Think it over. Please! Come to your senses, honey. Telephone me at eleven to keep me from catching that twelve-o'clock train. Don't let me take it with Eddie. Think it over, Sam. Honey--our--future--don't throw it away! Don't let me take that twelve-o'clock train!"

There were tears streaming from her eyes, and her lips, so carefully firm, were beginning to tremble. "You can't blame a girl, Sam, for wanting to provide for her future. Can you, Sam? Think it over. Please! I'll be praying when eleven o'clock comes to-morrow morning for you to telephone me. Please, Sam--think!"

He dropped his face low, lower toward the table, trembling under the red wave that surged over him and up into the roots of his hair. "I'll think it over, Clara--my girl--my own girl!"

As if the moments themselves had been woven by her flying amber needles into a whole cloth of meditation, Mrs. Lipkind, beside a kitchen lamp that flowed in gracious light, knitted the long, quiet hours of her evening into fabric, her face screwed and out of repose and occasionally the lips moving. Age is prone to that. Memories love to be mumbled and chewed over--the unconscious kind of articulation which comes with the years and for which youth has a wink and a quirk.

A tiger cat with overfed sides and a stare that seemed to doze purred on the window-ledge, gold and unswerving of eye. The silence was like the singing inside of a shell, and into it rocked Mrs. Lipkind.

By nine o'clock she was already glancing up at the clock, cocking her head to each and every of night's creaks.

By half after nine there were small and frequent periods of peering through cupped hands down into a street so remote that its traffic had neither shape nor identity. Once she went down a long slit of hallway to the front door, opening it and gazing out upon a fog-filled corridor that was papered in embossed leatherette, one speckled incandescent bulb lighting it sadly. There was something impregnable, even terrible to her in the featureless stare of the doors of three adjoining apartments. She tiptoed, almost ran, poor dear! with the consciousness of some one at her heels, back to the kitchen, where at least was the warm print of the cat's presence; fell to knitting again, clacking her needles for the solace of explainable sound.

Identically with the round moment of ten Mr. Lipkind entered, almost running down the hallway.

"Hello, ma! Think I got lost? Just got to talking and didn't realize. Haven't been worried, ma? Afraid?"

She lifted her head from his kiss. "'Afraid!' What you take me for? For why should I be worried at only ten o'clock? Say, I'm glad if you stay out for recreation."

He kissed her again, shaking out of his coat and unwinding his muffler. "I could just see you walking the floor and looking out of the window."

"Sa-y, I been so busy all evening I didn't have time to think. I'm not such a worrier no more like I used to be. Like the saying is--life is too short."

He drew up beside her, lifting her needles off her work. "Little sweetheart mamma, why don't you sit on the big sofa in the front room where it's more comfortable?"

"You can't make, Sammy, out of a pig's ear a silk stocking."

He would detain her hands, his eyes puckered and, so intent upon her.

"You had a good time, Sammy?"

"You'd be surprised, ma, what a nice place Clara boards at."

"What did they have to eat? Good cooking?"

"Not for a fellow that's used to my boarding-house."'

"What?"

"I couldn't tell if it was soup or finger-bowls they served for the first course."

"I know--stylish broth. Let me warm you up a little of my thick barley soup that's left over from--"

He pressed her down. "Please, ma! I'm full up. I couldn't. They had pink ice-cream, too, with pink cake and--"

"Such mess-food what is bad for you. I'm surprised how Clara keeps her good complexion. Let me fix you some fried--"

"Ma, I tell you I couldn't. It's ten o'clock. You mustn't try to fatten me up so. In war-time a man has got to be lean."

She sat back suddenly and whitely quiet. "That's--twice already to-day, Sam, you talk like that."

He took up her lax hand, moving each separate finger up and down, eyes lowered. "Why not? Doesn't it ever strike you, mamma, that you and me are--are kidding ourselves along on this war business, pretending to each other there ain't no war?"

She laid a quick hand to her breast. "What you mean, Sammy?"

"Why, you know what I mean, ma. I notice you read the war news pretty closely, all right."

"Sammy, you mean something!"

"Now, ma, there's no need to get excited right away. Think of the mothers who haven't even got bank-accounts whose sons have got to go."

"Sammy--you 'ain't been--"

"No, no; I haven't."

"You have! I can see it in your face! You've come home with some news to break. You been drafted!"

He held her arms to her sides, still pressing her down to her chair. "I tell you I haven't! Can't you take my word for it?"

"Swear to me, Sammy!"

"All right; I swear."

"Swear to me on your dead father who is an angel in heaven!"

"I swear--thataway."

She was still pressing against her breathing. "You're keeping something back. Sammy, is it that we got mail from Germany? From Aunt Carrie? Bad news--O my God!"

"No! No! Who could I get mail from there any more than you've been getting it for the last two years? Mamma, if you're going to be this excitable and get yourself sick, I won't talk over anything with you. I'll quit."

"You got something, Sammy, to break to me. I can read you like a book."

"I'm done. If I can't talk facts over with you without your going to pieces this way, I'm done. I quit."

She clasped her hands, her face pleading up to him. "Sammy, what is it? If you don't tell me, I can't stand it. Sammy?"

"Will you sit quiet and not get excited?"

"Please, Sammy, I will."