Chapter 19

"Then let me go! Whatta you holding me here for? Let me go back, Mrs.--mother! Let me go! I don't deny it, you're too good for me round here. I don't fit! Let me go back to the old room and--my old room-mate where--where I belong with my--my crowd. You tell what you just said to Herm! Get him to let me go back with him on his trip to-morrow night. Please, Mrs.--mother--please!"

"You mean to New York with him on his business trip for a visit?"

"Call it that if you want to, only let me go! You--you can tell them later that--that I ain't coming back. I--I've begged him so! I don't belong here. You just said as much yourself. I don't belong here. Let me go, Mrs. Loeb. Let me go! You tell him, Mrs. Loeb, to let me go."

Mrs. Bertha Loeb suddenly sat down, and the color flowed out of her face.

"That I should live to see this day! My Herman's wife wants to leave him! Oh, my son, my son! What did you do to yourself! A di--a separation in the Loeb family! I knew last night when I heard through the door and how worried my poor boy has looked for months, that it didn't mean no good. Since her first month here I've seen it coming. I did my part to--"

"Yes, Mrs. Loeb, and I done my part!"

"Oh--oh--oh, and how that boy of mine has catered to her! Humored her every whim to keep her contented! I always say it's the nix-nux wives get the most attentions and thanks from their husbands. I--"

"I done my part. I've tried as much as you to make myself fit in out here. I--I just ain't your kind, Mrs. Loeb. Yours and--Etta's. I--I can't be saving and economical when I see there's plenty to spend. I--I was raised with my brother down in Shefsky's theater, where nobody cares about monogramed guest towels and about getting up before noon if they don't want to. The evenings here kill me! Kill me! I hate pinochle! I gotta have life, Mrs. Loeb. I hate Kaffee Klatsches with a lot of--I--I tell you I got different blood in my veins, Mrs. Loeb, I--"

"No, no, Sadie Mosher Loeb, that kind of talk don't go. You got just the same _shabbos_ like us. Saturday is your--"

"Yes, yes, I'm in the right church, all right, Mrs. Loeb, but I'm in the wrong pew. Mrs. Loeb, please can't you understand I'm in the wrong pew!"

And all her carefully confined curls, springing their pins, she fell forward a shivering mass.

In that surcharged moment and brisky exuding a wintry out-of-doors, Mr. Herman Loeb entered and stood for a moment in the open doorway, in the act of removing his greatcoat.

"Herman, my son! Oh, my son!"

"What's wrong, ma? Sadie!"

"It's come, Herman, like I always predicted to Etta it would. Your wife, my poor boy, she wants to leave you. This should happen to a Loeb yet--a separation in the family! My poor boy! My poor boy!"

"Why, ma, what--what's Sadie been telling you?"

At that Mrs. Herman Loeb raised her streaming face, her eyes all rid of their roguery and stretched in despair.

"I didn't want to let out to her, Herman. I wanted to make a quiet get-away, you know I did. But she nagged me! She nagged me!"

"Ma, you shouldn't--"

"She heard us last night and Heaven knows how many nights before that. She's wise. She knows. She knows it's been a year of prison here for--"

"Oh, my poor boy! Prison! A girl like her finds herself married into one of the most genteel families in St. Louis, a girl what never in her life was used to even decent sheets to sleep on!"

"Ma!"

"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and such a mess!"

"Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you? Ma! Sadie!"

"My poor boy! My poor boy!"

"I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm, is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let me go, Herm, for--for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and it ain't your mother or your sister and---and it ain't you--it ain't any one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here! There ain't none!"

"I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York, where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri--"

"No, no, he knows I don't want that!"

"If she did, ma, we'd go!"

"Herm knows it was all a mistake with me. I didn't know my own mind. I wanna go back along where I came from and where I belong! It ain't like I was the kind of a girl with another man in the case--"

"We should thank her, Hermie, that there ain't more scandal mixed up in it yet!"

"Ma!"

"My poor boy, what could have had his pick from the first girls in St.--"

"Ma!"

There was an edge to Mr. Loeb's voice that had the bite of steel. He tossed his greatcoat to the snowy bed, walking between the bed-end and the mantel, round to the crouched figure of his wife.

"There, there, Sadie!" he said in his throat, and, stooping over her: "I give in! I give in!"

Her head flew up.

"Herm!"

"My son!"

"No, no, ma, it's no use trying to put anything but a jingle-bell harness on poor little Jingle Bells. She don't understand us any more than we--we can understand her!"

"That's it, Herm; that's why I say if you'll only let me go!"

"Oh, my God! A separation in the Loeb family? My poor dead husband! My daughter Etta, president of the Ladies' Auxiliary! Grandma--"

"'Sh-h-h, ma! You want grandma to hear?"

"My son, the cleanest, finest--"

"Ma!" There were lines in his face as if a knot at his heart were tightening them. "You mustn't blame her, ma; and, Sadie, you mustn't feel this way toward my mother. Nobody's to blame. I've been thinking this thing over more than you think, Sadie, and I--I give in. She's a poor little thing, ma, that's been trapped into something she can't fit into."

"Yes, Herm, that's it."

"It's natural. My fault, too. I carried her off like a partridge. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells! To-morrow night we leave for New York, and when I come back you're going to stay on with--"

"Sylvette says--"

"With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't! 'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"

With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap of a cane.

Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end.

"Nothing is the matter, grandma."

"Come and get me, Herman."

"Yes, grandma."

He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust.

"Bertha?"

"Yes, mamma."

"Here, grandma, by the window is your chair."

He lowered her to the red-velvet arm-chair, placing her cane gently alongside.

"So!"

She moved her sightless face from one to the other, interrogating each presence.

"Sadie?"

"Yes, grandma."

"How you holler, children! Everything ain't right?"

"Yes, grandma. Ma and Sadie and me been making plans. To-morrow night Sadie goes with me to New York on my trip. A little pleasure trip."

The little face, littler with each year, broke into smile.

"So, little Sadie-sha, you got good times, not? A good husband and good times? New York! To New York she goes, Bertha?"

"Yes, mamma."

Mrs. Schulien fell to crooning slightly, redigesting with the senility of years.

"To New York! Nowadays young wives got it good. How long you stay, Hermie?"

"It's just my Pittsburgh-New York trip, grandma."

"Sadie, come here by grandma."

She approached with the tears drying on her face, her bosom heaving in suppressed jerks.

"Yes, grandma." And patted the little clawlike hand, and the bit of white hair beneath the fluted cap, and a bit of old lace fastened with an old ivory cameo and covering the old throat.

"You got good times, not?"

"Yes, grandma."

"And you'm a good girl, Sadie. Eh? Eh?"

"Y-yes, grandma."

"When you come back from New York, you bring grandma a fine present, not?"

"Yes, yes, grandma."

"A quilted under jacket wholesale, for when grandma rides out in the wheel-chair."

"Y-yes, grandma."

To the saturnine, New York of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his enveloping hand over that of his wife,

"Well, Sadie, you take good care of yourself, girl. No matter how we decide to--to end this thing, remember you're my wife--yet."

"Yes, Herman," said Mrs. Loeb, through a gulp.

"Don't stint, and remember how easily you get cold from draughts."

"I won't. I will."

"If you find yourself too crowded in that room with your friend, get a better one farther away from the theaters, where it isn't so noisy--maybe by yourself."

"I'll see."

"You won't be afraid to go back to that room now, with Sylvette still at the show?"

"N-no."

"If I was you--now mind, I'm only suggesting it--but if I was you I wouldn't be in such a hurry about getting back in that roof show, Sadie. Maybe in a few days something better may show up or--or you'll change your mind or something."

"I gotta get back to work to keep from thinking. Anyway, I don't want to be sponging on you any longer than I can help."

"You're my wife, aren't you?"

She sat, a small cold huddle in the center of the cab seat, toward him her quivering face flashing out as street lamps bounced past. They were nearing the great marble facade of the Seventh Avenue Terminal.

"Herman, I--I hate to see everything bust up like this--you--you such a prince and all--but like Syl says, I--I guess all fools ain't dead yet!"

"You've had time to work this thing out for yourself now, Sadie, but like I was saying before, anybody can play stubborn, but--but it's a wise person who ain't ashamed to change his mind. Eh, Sadie? Eh?"

They were sliding down a runway and drew up now alongside a curb. A redcap, wild for fee, swung open the cab door, immediately confiscating all luggage.

"No, no, not that! You carry that box, Herm. It's the padded underjacket for grandma. Tell her I--I sent it to her, Herm--with--with love."

"Yes, Sadie."

She was frankly crying now, edging her way through the crowd, running in little quick steps to match her pace to his.

At the trainside, during the business of ticket inspection, she stood by, her palm pat against her mouth and tears galumphing down. With a face that stood out whitely in the gaseous fog, Mr. Loeb fumbled for the red slip of his berth reservation.

"Well, Sadie girl, three minutes more and--"

"Oh--oh, Herm!"

"If you feel as bad as that, it's not too late, Sadie. I--you--it takes a wise little girlie to change her mind. Eh? Eh?"

"No--no, Herm, I--"

He clenched her arm suddenly and tightly.

"If you want to come, girl, for God's sake now's your time. Sadie honey, you want to?"

She shook him off through gasps.

"No, no. Herm, I--I can't stand it--it's only that I feel so bad at seeing you--No--no--not--not now."

The all-aboard call rang out like a shout in a cave.

He was fumbling at his luggage for the small pasteboard box, haste fuddling his movements.

"I'll be in Pittsburgh to-morrow till seven, honey. Sleep over it, and if you change your mind, catch the eleven-forty-five St. Louis flyer out of here to-morrow morning, and that train'll pick me up at Pittsburgh--eleven forty-five."

"Oh, I--"

"You be the one to bring this box home, with your own little hands, to poor grandma, honey, and--and if you don't change your mind, why--why, you can send it. You be the one to bring it to her, honey. Remember, it's a wise girlie knows when to change her mind!"

"Oh, Hermie--Hermie!"

"All--aboard!"

With her hands clasped and her uncovered face twisted, she watched the snakelike train crawl into oblivion.

When she re-entered the taxicab she was half swooning of tears.

"Don't cry, baby," said the emboldened chauffeur, placing the small pasteboard box up beside her.

* * * * *

In the great old-fashioned room in Fortieth Street--of two beds and two decades ago--she finally in complete exhaustion slid into her white iron cot against the wall, winding an alarm-clock and placing it on the floor beside her.

Long before Miss Sylvette de Long, with her eyelids very dark, tiptoed in, and, rubbing the calves of her legs in alcohol, undressed in the dark, she was asleep, her mouth still moist and quivering like a child's.

At nine-thirty and with dirty daylight cluttering up the cluttered room, the alarm-clock, full of heinous vigor, bored like an awl into the morning.

THE END