Part 12

She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery, and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.

"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann, answer like a good girl. Love me?"

"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."

"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to answer--love me?"

"Aw, now--"

"One--two--three--four--five--"

"Yes."

THE GOOD PROVIDER

Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and motor-cars.

Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.

The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.

Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed. Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring. Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the flower-seed catalogue.

The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.

For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until one year the interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the city.

Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large, light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign across the sidewalk and instituted a trading-stamp system. But in spite of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising space in the Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binswanger felt the suction of the city drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took invoice and frowned at what he saw.

The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binswanger observed it across the family table one Saturday, and paused in the epic rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large, soft-fleshed face.

"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I get the blues."

Mr. Binswanger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design like coarse lace across his inquiring features.

"Right away you get what, Becky?"

"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't remember."

"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she puts on me yet, children."

"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"

Mr. Isadore Binswanger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed backward the mane of his black pompadour.

"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."

Mr. Binswanger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.

"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in stock ain't--"

"See, ma, you started something."

"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"

Miss Pearl Binswanger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin. The same scarf of sunshine fell like a Spanish shawl across her shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which was small and dark as Giaconda's.

"I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa about--about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the store was on fire."

"Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses."

"No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pass your papa the dumplings, Poil. Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?"

"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at me no more."

"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more _Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?"

"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet, that's the latest."

"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him since he's in the new store I don't know."

"_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"

"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."

"A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!"

"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."

"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."

"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this hole."

"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--"

"For a young girl can you blame her? She feels like if she lived in the city she would meet people and Izzy's friends. Talk for yourself, Poil."

"I--"

"Boys like Ignatz Landauer and Max Teitlebaum, what he meets at the Young Men's Association. Talk for yourself, Poil."

"I--"

"Poil's got a tenant for the house, Julius. I ain't afraid to tell you."

"I don't listen to such nonsense."

"From the real-estate offices they sent 'em, Julius, and Poil took 'em through. Furnished off our hands they take it for three months, till their bungalow is done for 'em. Forty dollars for a house like ours on the wrong side of town away from the improvements ain't so bad. A grand young couple, no children. Izzy thinks it's a grand idea, too, Julius. He says if we move to the city he don't have to live in such a dark little hall-room no more. To the hotel he can come with us on family rates just so cheap. Ain't it, Izzy?"

Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously.

"I said, pa, that with forty dollars a month rent from the house, and--"

"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."