Chapter 5

"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.

A PETAL ON THE CURRENT

Were I only swifter and more potent of pen, I could convey to you all in the stroke of a pestle the H2O, the pigment of the red-cheeked apple, the blue of long summer days, and the magnesia of the earth for which Stella Schump was the mortal and mortar receptacle.

She was about as exotic as a flowering weed which can spring so strongly and so fibrously from slack. And yet such a weed can bleed milk. If Stella Schump was about fourteen pounds too plump, too red of cheek, and too blandly blue of eye, there was the very milk of human kindness in her morning punching up of her mother's pillows and her smoothing down of the gray and poorly hair. She could make a bed freshly, whitely, her strong young arms manoeuvering under but not even jarring the poor old form so often prone there.

There was a fine kind of virile peasantry in the willing hands, white enough, but occasionally broken at the nails from eight hours of this box in and that box out in a children's shoe department.

Differing by the fourteen pounds, Watteau would have scorned and Rubens have adored to paint her.

She was not unconscious of the rather flaxen ripple of her hair, which she wore slickly parted and drawn back, scallop by scallop, to a round and shining mat of plaits against the back of her head. But neither was she unconscious that she thereby enhanced the too high pitch of her cheek-bones and the already too generous width between them. It was when Stella Schump opened wide her eyes that she transcended the milky fleshliness and the fact that, when she walked rapidly, her cheeks quivered in slight but gelatinous fashion. Her eyes--they were the color of perfect June at that high-noon moment when the spinning of the humming-bird can be distilled to sound. Laura and Marguerite and Stella Schump had eyes as blue as Cleopatra's, and Sappho's and Medea's must have been green.

For reading and occasional headaches, she wore a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles prescribed but not specially ground by the optical department, cater-corner from the children's shoes. Upon the occasion of their first adjustment, Romance, for the first time, had leaned briefly into the smooth monotony of Miss Schump's day-by-day, to waft a scented, a lace-edged, an elusive kerchief.

"You ought to heard, mamma, that fellow over in the specs, when he gimme the test for the glasses."

"What?"

"Tee-hee!--it sounds silly to repeat it."

"You got the Schump eyes, Stella. I always used to say, with his big blue ones, your poor father ought to been a girl, too."

"'Say,' he said to me, he said, just like that, 'I know a society who will pay you a big fat sum if you'll sign over them eyes for post-mortem laboratory work. Believe me, Bettina,' he said, just like that, 'those are some goo-goos!'"

"'Goo-goos'?"

"Yes, ma--the way I look out of them."

"See, Stella, if you'd only mix with the young men and not be so stiff-like with them. See! Is he the sober, genteel kind who could sit out an evening in a self-respectin' girl's front parlor?"

"I--I can't ask a fellow if he didn't ask me, can I? I can't make a pusher out of myself."

"A girl don't have to make a pusher out of herself to have beaus; it's natural for her to have them in moderation. I don't want my girl shut out of her natural pleasures."

"'Believe me, Bettina,' he said, 'those are some goo-goos'--just like that, he said it."

"Before I'd let a girl like Cora Kinealy have all the beaus! I bet _she'd_ ask him."

"It--it just ain't in me, ma. The other girls do, I know--you ought to heard the way Mabel Runyan was kiddin' a fellow in the silks to-day--it just ain't in me to."

"Nowadays, young men got to be made to feel welcome."

"I just don't seem to take."

"'I'll be pleased to have you call of a Saturday night, Mr. So-and-so.' No one could say there's anything but the genteel in that. Those are just the words I used to say to your poor father when he was courtin'."

"If only I--I wouldn't turn all red!"

"I bet Cora Kinealy would have asked him." "I--I'll ask him, ma."

When Stella Schump was adjusting her black sleevelets next morning, somewhat obviously oblivious of the optical department across the aisle, a blond, oiled head leaned out at her.

"Mornin'. Goo-goo!"

A flush that she could feel rush up and that would not be controlled threw her into a state of agitation that was almost abashing to behold.

"Tee-hee!"

"Believe me, Bettina, those are some goo-goos!"

"I'd be pleased to have you--come--to--"

"I told the little wifey last night, 'Angel Face, I've found a pair of goo-goos that are a close runner-up to yours.'"

Miss Schump turned to her first customer of the day, the flush receding as suddenly as it had come to scorch.

"Copper toes for the little boy? Just be seated, please."

Thus did the odor of romance lay for the merest moment upon the stale air of Miss Schump's routine.

Evenings, in the high-ceilinged, long-windowed, and inside-shuttered little flat in very West Thirteenth Street, tucked up in the top story of one of a row of made-over-into-apartments residences that boasted each a little frill of iron balcony and railed-in patch of front lawn, they would sit beside an oil-lamp with a flowered china shade, Mrs. Schump, gnarled of limb and knotted of joint, ever busy, except on the most excruciatingly rheumatic of her days, at a needlework so cruel, so fine that for fifteen years of her widowhood it had found instant market at a philanthropic Woman's Exchange.

Very often Miss Cora Kinealy, also of the children's shoes, would rock away an evening in that halo of lamplight, her hair illuminated to copper and her hands shuttling in and out at the business of knitting. There were frank personal discussions, no wider in diameter than the little circle of light itself.

MISS KINEALY (_slumped in her chair so that her knee rose higher than her waist-line_): I always say of Stella, she's one nut too hard for me to crack, and I've cracked a good many in my life. Why that girl 'ain't got beaus galore--well, I give up!

MRS. SCHUMP (_stooped for an infinitesimal stab of needle_): She don't give 'em a chance, Cora. You can't tell me there is not many a nice, sober young man wouldn't be glad to sit out a Saturday evening with her. She's that bashful she don't give 'em a chance. I tell her it's almost as much ruination to a girl to be too retiring as to be too forward. She don't seem to have a way with the boys.

MISS SCHUMP (_in a pink, warm-looking flannelette kimono and brushing out into fine fluff her flaxen-looking hair, and then, in the name of to-morrow's kink, plaiting it into a multitude of small, tight-looking braids_): You can talk, mamma. You, too, Cora, with a boy like Archie Sensenbrenner and your wedding-day in sight. But what's a girl goin' to do if she don't take; if she ain't got an Archie?

Mrs. Schump (_riding her glasses down toward the end of her nose to look up sharply over them_): Get one.

"There you go again! Honest, you two make me mad. I can't go out and lasso 'em, can I?"

"She doesn't give 'em a chance, Cora; mark my word! The trouble is, she's too good for most she sees. They ain't up to her."