Chapter VI: Part 6

"That picture don't half do her justice. If I do say it, Mr. Feist--if that child had to make her living, she'd be a fortune in pictures. 'No, mamma,' she always says; 'God forbid if I have to make my living some day, I want to be a famous writer.' I want you to read sometime, Mr. Feist, some of that girl's poetry. I cry like a baby over the sad ones. And stories! There's one about a poor little girl who could look out of her window into the house of a rich girl and--"

"Feist, her mother just hates that child!"

"Say, old man, I don't see any medals on you for hating her."

"He's worse than I am, Mr. Feist; only, he hides it behind making fun of me. I always say if Bleema Pelz wanted the moon, her father would see to it that his property-man got the real one for her."

"You--you've got a beautiful, sweet little girl there, Pelz. I don't blame you."

"Feist, if I didn't know it, I'd be an ungrateful dog."

"Her papa can't realize, Mr. Feist, we haven't got a baby any more."

"I--realize it, Mrs. Pelz."

"You--you see, Roody?"

"I--I--guess I'm the old-fashioned kind of a fellow, Pelz, when it comes to girls. I--I guess I do it the way they used to do it--the parents first--but--but--now that we--we're on the subject--I--I like your daughter, Pelz--my God! Pelz, but--but I like your little daughter!"

An Augsburg clock ticked into a suddenly shaped silence, Mr. Pelz rising, Mr. Feist already risen.

"I haven't got much besides a clean record and all that love or money can buy her, Pelz, but--well--you know me for what I am, and--"

"Indeed we do, Mr. Feist! I always say to my husband my favorite of all the young men who come here is--"

"You know what my standing--well, with men and in business is, Pelz, and as far as taking care of her goes, I can make her from a little princess into a little queen--"

"The young man that is lucky enough to get Bleema, Mr. Feist--"

"Not that the money part is everything, but if what I am suits you and Mrs. Pelz, I want to enter the ring for her. I might as well come out with it. I wouldn't for anything on earth have her know that I've spoken to you--yet--not till after I've spoken with her--but--well, there's my cards on the table, Pelz."

Mr. Pelz held out a slow and rigid arm, one hand gripping, the other cupping Mr. Feist at the elbow.

"It's the finest compliment I could pay to any man on God's earth to say it, Feist, but if it's got to be that my little baby girl has grown up to an age where she--"

"She's already a year older than me when I married you, Roody."

"If it's got to be, then there's one man on earth I can give her up to with happiness. That man is you, Feist."

Into this atmosphere so surcharged that it had almost the singing quality of a current through it entered Miss Bleema Pelz, on slim silver heels that twinkled, the same diaphanous tulle of the photograph enveloping her like summer, her hair richer, but blending with the peach-bloom of her frock, the odor of youth her perfume.

"Bleema darling, you're just in time!"

"Hello, moms!"--in the little lifted voice trained to modulation, and kissing Mrs. Pelz in light consideration of powdered areas. "Hello, dads!"--tiptoeing and pursing her mouth into a bud. "Good evening, Mr. Feist."

"Looks like I'm the left-over in this party," said Mr. Feist, slow to release her hand and wanting not to redden.

"Naughty-naughty!" said Miss Pelz, with a flash of eyes to their corners, a flouncing of tulle, and then landing ever so lightly on her father's knee and at the immediate business of jerking open his tie. "Bad, bad dad! Didn't let Sato dress him to-night."

"You little red head, you!"

"Stop it! Hold up your chin."

"Honey, we're all starvationed."

"Lester'll be here any minute now."

"Lester Spencer coming for dinner, Bleema?"

"Surely. I dropped him just now at the Lions' Club to change his clothes. Now, don't get excited, dads; he's leaving right after dinner to catch his train for Horseshoe Bend."

"I must tell Williams to lay another--"

"I've already told him, mamma. Here he is now! Come on in, Lester; you're holding up the family. You've never met Mr. Feist, have you, the film king? You two ought to get acquainted--one makes the films and the other makes them famous."

There was a round of greetings, Mr. Spencer passing a hand that had emerged white and slim through the ordeal of thousands of feet of heroics.

"How do you do, Mrs. Pelz? Boss! Mr. Feist, glad to know you!"

What hundreds of thousands of men, seeming to despise, had secretly, in the organ-reverberating darkness of the motion-picture theater, yearned over Mr. Lester Spencer's chest expansion, hair pomade, and bulgeless front and shirt-front! When Lester Spencer, in a very slow fade-out, drew the exceedingly large-of-eye and heaving-of-bosom one unto his own immaculate bosom, whole rows of ladies, with the slightly open-mouthed, adenoidal expression of vicarious romance, sat forward in their chairs. Men appraised silently the pliant lay of shirt, the uncrawling coat-back, and the absence of that fatal divorce of trousers and waistcoat.

"I was telling my husband, Lester, my manicurist just raved to-day about you and Norma Beautiful in 'The Lure of Silk.'"

"Isn't that just the sweetest picture, moms?"

"It certainly is! Mr. Pelz took me down to the projection-room to see its first showing, and I give you my word I said to him and Sol--didn't I, Roody?--'That picture is a fortune.' And never in my life did I fail to pick a winner--did I, Roody? I got a knack for it. Mr. Feist, have you seen 'The Lure of Silk'?"

"Sorry to say I have not."

"If you think that is a riot, Mrs. Pelz, you wait until you see the way they're going to eat me up in the court scene in 'Saint Elba.' I had the whole studio crying down there to-day--didn't I, Mr. Pelz? Crying like babies over the scene where I stand like this--so--overlooking--"

"Say, Rosie, that's twice already Williams announced dinner is served."

"Overlooking the--"

"I hear Friedman & Kaplan made an assignment, Feist."

"Come, Lester; you take me in to dinner. Rudolph, you go and get mamma. Bleema, you and Mr. Feist be escorts."

In a dining-room so unswervingly Jacobean that its high-back chairs formed an actual enclosure about the glittering, not to say noble, oval of table, the dinner-hour moved through the stately procession of its courses. At its head, Mrs. Miriam Sopinsky, dim with years and the kind of weariness of the flesh that Rembrandt knew so well, her face even yellower beneath the black wig with the bold row of machine-stitching down its center, the hands veiny and often uncertain among the dishes.

"Roody, cut up mamma's chicken for her. She trembles so."

"Moms, let Williams."

"No; she likes it when your father does it."

Mr. Pelz leaned over, transferring his own knife and fork. In Yiddish:

"Grandmother, I hear you've been flirting with Doctor Isadore Aarons. Now, don't you let me hear any more such nonsense. The young girls in this house got to walk the straight line."

The old face broke still more furiously into wrinkle, the hand reaching out to top his.

"Don't tease her, Roody; she likes to be let alone in public."

MR. FEIST: The old lady certainly holds her own, don't she? Honest, I'd give anything if I knew how to talk to her a little.

"No, Mr. Feist, mamma's breaking. Every day since her stroke I can see it more. It nearly kills me, too. It's pretty lonesome for her, up here away from all her old friends. Outside of my husband and Bleema, not a soul in the house talks her language except Sol and Etta when they come over."

"She's my nice darling grandma," said Miss Pelz, suddenly pirouetting up from her chair around the table, kissing the old lips lightly and then back again, all in a butterfly jiffy.

MRS. PELZ (_sotto to Mr. Feist_). Ain't she the sweetest thing with her grandmother?

"Umh!" said Mr. Spencer, draining his wine-glass to the depth of its stem. "Mr. Pelz, believe me if the Atlantic Ocean was made out of this stuff, you wouldn't have to engage passage for me; I'd swim across."

"You better learn how first," said Mr. Pelz. "You've cost me a fortune already in dummies for the water scenes."

"It's a riot, Mr. Pelz, the way they go mad over me in that Pelham Bay scene in 'The Marines Are Coming.' I dropped into the Buckingham to see it last night, and before I knew it the house had it that I was present and was going wild over me. They had to throw the spotlight on the box."

"I love that scene, too, Lester! Honest, I just squeeze up with excitement where you stand there at the edge of the deck and take the plunge into the water to rescue Norma Beautiful."

"You mean a super for five a day takes the plunge."

"Tell you another scene where I simply raise the roof off the house in--"

MR. PELZ: Williams, pass Mr. Feist some more of them little cabbages.

"Brussels sprouts, dad."

MRS. PELZ: I guess you miss Norma Beautiful not playing with you in "Saint Elba," don't you, Lester? You and her are so used to playing with each other.

"I was the one first suggested she wouldn't be the type to play Josephine, Mrs. Pelz. Too thin. I've got to be contrasted right or it kills me--"

"Williams, a little more of that chicken stuffing. It's almost good enough to remind me how you and grandma used to make it, Rosie."

"Speaking of 'Saint Elba,' Mr. Pelz, somebody must speak to Mabel Lovely about the way she keeps hogging center-stage in that scene with me on--"

"There's no center-stage left to hog with you in the picture, Spencer."

"She crowds me to profile. They want me full-face. If you'd put in a word to Sol to direct it that way! Other night, at the Buckingham, it was a riot every time I turned full-face. Just because a fellow happens to have a good profile is no reason why--"

"Well, Feist, how does the war look to-day?"

"Ugly, Pelz, ugly. Every hour this country lets pass with Belgium unavenged she is going to pay up for later."

"It's not our fight, Mr. Feist."

"Maybe it's not our fight, Mr. Spencer, but if ever there was a cause that is all humanity's fight, it is those bleeding and murdered women and children of Belgium. You're sailing over there yourself next week, Mr. Spencer, and I hope to God you will see for yourself how much of our fight it is."

"Ain't things just simply terrible? Honest, I said to Roody, when I picked up the paper this morning, it gives me the blues before I open it."

"Nobody can tell me that this country is going to sit back much longer and see autocracy grind its heel into the face of the world."

"You're right, Feist! I think if there is one thing worse than being too proud to fight, it is not being proud enough to fight."

"Lester Spencer, if you don't stop making eyes!"

"Mr. Pelz, every time I drink to your daughter only with my eyes she slaps me on the wrist. You put in a good word for me."

"Little more of that ice-cream, Feist?"

"Thanks, Pelz; no."

"You, Lester?"

"Don't care if I do, Miss Bleema Butterfly."

Mr. Pelz flashed out a watch. "Don't want to hurry you, Spencer, but if you have to catch that ten-o'clock train, by the time you get back and change clothes--"

"You're right, Mr. Pelz; I'd better be getting on."

Miss Pelz danced to her feet. "Mamma and papa will excuse us, Lester, if we leave before coffee. Come; I'll shoot you to the club."

"Why, Bleema! George will bring the limousine around and--"

"I promised! Didn't I promise you, Lester, that if you came up to dinner I'd drive you back to the club myself?"

"She sure did, Mrs. Pelz."

"Bleema, you stay right here and finish your supper. There's two chauffeurs on the place to drive Spencer around to his club."

"But, dad, I promised."

"Why, Bleema, ain't you ashamed? Mr. Feist here for dinner and you to run off like that. Shame on you!"

"Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Pelz. I'll stay around and be entertained by you and Mr.--"

"I'll be back in twenty minutes, moms. Surely you'll excuse me that long! I want to drive him down in my new runabout. I promised. Please, moms! Dad?"

"Ask your papa, Bleema; I--I don't know--"

"Dad?"

"You heard what I said, Bleema. No!"

A quick film of tears formed over Miss Pelz's eyes, her lips quivering. "Oh, well--if--if you're going to be that mean--oh, you make me so mad--. Come on, Lester--I--I guess I can take you as far as the front door without the whole world jumping on me. Oh--oh--you make me so mad!" And pranced out on slim feet of high dudgeon.

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Pelz, stirring into her coffee. "She's so high strung."

"She's got to quit wasting her time on that conceited jackass," said Mr. Pelz, swallowing off his demi-tasse at a gulp. "Won't have it!"

"It makes her papa mad the way the boys just kill themselves over that girl," said Mrs. Pelz, arch of glance toward Mr. Feist, who was stirring also, his eyes lowered.

"Me, too," he said, softly.

"Jealous!" flashed Mrs. Pelz.

After an interval, and only upon despatching a servant, Miss Pelz returned, the tears frank streaks now down her cheeks.

"Sit down, baby, and drink your coffee."

"Don't want any."

"Williams, bring Miss Bleema some hot coffee."

"I'm finished, mother--please!"

"I was telling Mr. Feist a while ago, Bleema, about your ambition to be a writer, not for money, but just for the pleasure in it. What is it you call such writing in your French, honey? Dilytanty?"

"Please, mamma, Mr. Feist isn't interested."

"Indeed I am, Miss Bleema! More interested than in anything I know of."

"She's mad at her papa, Feist, and when my little girl gets mad at her papa there's nothing for him to do but apologize with a big kiss."

Suddenly Miss Pelz burst into tears, a hot cascade of them that flowed down over her prettiness.

"Why, Bleema!"

"Now, now, papa's girl--"

The grandmother made a quick gesture of uplifted hands, leaning over toward her, and Miss Pelz hiding her face against that haven of shrunken old bosom.

"Oh, grandma, make 'em let me alone!"

"Why, Bleema darling, I'm surprised! Ain't you ashamed to act this way in front of Mr. Feist? What'll he think?"

"Please, Mrs. Pelz, don't mind me; she's a little upset--that's all."

"You--you made me look like--like thirty cents before Lester Spencer--that--that's what you did."

"Why, Bleema, do you think that if papa thought that Lester Spencer was worth bothering that pretty red head of yours about that he would--"

"There you go again! Always picking on Lester. If you want to know it, next to Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt he's the biggest money-maker your old corporation has got."

"What's that got to do with you?"

"And he'll be passing them all in a year or two, you see if he don't--if--if--if only you'd stop picking on him and letting Uncle Sol crowd him out of the pictures and everybody in the company take advantage of him--he--he's grand--he--"

"He's a grand conceited fool. If not for the silly matinee women in the world he couldn't make salt."

"That shows all you know about him, papa! He's got big ideals, Lester has. He got plans up his sleeve for making over the moving-picture business from the silly films they show nowadays to--"

"Yes--to something where no one gets a look-in except Lester Spencer. They're looking for his kind to run the picture business!"

"Roody--Bleema--please! Just look at poor grandma! Mr. Feist, I must apologize."

"He's a nix, an empty-headed--"

"He is--is he? Well, then--well, then--since you force me to it--right here in front of Mr. Feist--Lester Spencer and I got engaged to-day! He's the only man in my life. We're going to be married right off, in time for me to sail for France with the company. He's going to talk to you when he gets back from Horseshoe Bend. We're engaged! That's how much I think of Lester Spencer. That's how much I know he's the finest man in the world. Now then! Now then!"

There was a note in Miss Pelz's voice that, in the ensuing silence, seemed actually to ring against the frail crystal. She was on her feet, head up, tears drying.

"Blee-Bleema!"

"Moms darling, aren't you happy? Isn't it wonderful--moms?"

"Roody! For God's sake, Bleema, you're choking your father to death! Roody, for God's sake, don't get so red! Williams--some water--quick! Roody!"

"I'm all right. All right, I tell you. She got me excited. Sit down, Bleema--sit down, I said."

"Pelz, if you don't mind, I think maybe I'd better be going."

"You stay right here, Feist. I want you to hear every word that I'm going to say. If my daughter has no shame, I haven't, either. Williams, call Mrs. Sopinsky's maid, and see that she gets to her room comfortable. Sit down, Bleema!"

"My God!--I can't believe my ears--Bleema and such a _goy_ play-actor--"

"Please, Rosie!"

"A _goy_ that--"

"Rosie, I said, 'Please!' Bleema, did you hear me? Sit down!"

Miss Pelz sat then, gingerly on the chair-edge, her young lips straight. "Well?"

Her father crunched into his stiff damask napkin, holding a fistful of it tense against bringing it down in a china-shivering bang. Then, with carefully spaced words, "If I didn't think, Bleema, that you are crazy for the moment, infatuated with--"

"I'm not infatuated!"

"Bleema, Bleema, don't talk to your father so ugly!"

"Well, I guess I know my own mind. I guess I know when I'm in love with the finest, darlingest fellow that ever--"

"You hush that, Bleema! Hush that, while I can hold myself in. That I should live to hear my child make herself common over a loafer--"

"Papa, if you call him another name, I--I--"

"You'll sit right here and hear me out. If you think you're going to let this loafer ruin your own life and the lives of your parents and poor grandmother--"

"Papa, papa, you don't know him! The company are all down on him because they're jealous. Lester Spencer comes from one of the finest old Southern families--"

"Roody, Roody, a _goy_ play-actor--"

"'A _goy_ play-actor'! I notice, mamma, you are the one always likes to brag when the girls and fellows like Norma Beautiful and Allan Hunt and Lester and--and all come up to the house. It's the biggest feather in your cap the way on account of papa the big names got to come running when you invite them."

"Your mother's little nonsenses have got nothing to do with it."

"She reproaches me with having brought about this _goy_ mix-up! Me that has planned each hour of that girl's life like each one was a flower in a garden, A young man, a grand young man like Mr. Feist, crazy in lo--"

"Mrs. Pelz, for God's sake! Mrs. Pelz, please!"

"Rosie, we'll leave Feist out of this."

"Lester Spencer, papa, is one of the finest characters, if only you--"

"I ask you again, Bleema, to cut out such talk while I got the strength left to hold in. It's a nail in my coffin I should live to talk such talk to my little daughter, but it's got to where I've got to say it. Lester Spencer and the fine character you talk about--it's free gossip in all the studios--is one of the biggest low-lifes in the picture-world. He has a reputation with the women that I'm ashamed to mention even before your mother, much less her daughter--"

"Oh, I know what you mean! Oh, you're like all the rest--down on him. You mean that silly talk about him and Norma Beautiful--"

"Oh my God, Roody, listen to her!"

"I can clear that up in a minute. He never cared a thing for her. It was just their always playing in the same pictures, and that silly matinee public, first thing he knew, got to linking their names together."

"Bleema--for God's sake--baby--what do you know about such?"

"Bleema, you're killing your mother! Your mother that used to rock you in your cradle while she stitched on the machine to buy you more comforts--a mother that--"

"Oh, if you're going to begin that!"

"Your poor old grandmother--don't she mean nothing? You saw how she looked just now when they took her out, even before she knows what it's all about--"

"I hope she never has a worse trouble than for me to marry the best--"

Then Mr. Pelz came down with crashing fist that shattered an opalescent wine-glass and sent a great stain sprawling over the cloth.

"By God, I'll kill him first! The dirty hou--"

"Pelz, for God's sake, control yourself!"

'I'll kill him, I tell you, Feist!"

"Roody!"

"You can't scare me that way, dad. I'm no baby to be hollered at like that. I love Lester Spencer, and I'm going to marry him!"

"I'll kill him; I'll--"

"Roody, Roody, for God's sake! 'Sh-h-h, the servants! Williams, close quick all the doors. Roody, for my sake, if not your child's! Mr. Feist, please--please make him, Mr. Feist!"

"Pelz, for God's sake, man, get yourself together! Excitement won't get you anywheres. Calm down. Be human."

Then Mr. Pelz sat down again, but trembling and swallowing back with difficulty. "She got me wild, Feist. You must excuse me. She got me wild --my little girl--my little flower--"

"Papa--dad darling! Don't you think it kills me, too, to see you like this? My own darling papa that's so terribly good. My own darling sweet mamma. Can't you see, darlings, a girl can't help it when--when--life just takes hold of her? I swear to you--I promise you that, when you come to know Lester as I know him you'll think him as fine and--and gorgeous as I do. Mamma, do you think your little Bleema would marry a man who doesn't just love you, and dad, too? It isn't like Lester is a nobody--a high-salaried fellow like him with a future. Why, the best will be none too good! He loves you both--told me so to-day. The one aim in his life is to do big things, to make you both proud, to make his name the biggest--"

"Feist--Feist--can't you talk to her? Tell her it's madness--tell her she's ruining herself."

"Why, Miss Bleema, there's nothing much a--a stranger like me can say at a time like this. It's only unfortunate that I happened to be here. If I were you, though, I think I'd take a little time to think this over. Sometimes a young girl--."

"I have thought it over, Mr. Feist. For weeks and weeks I've thought of nothing else. That's how sure I am--so terribly sure."

"I won't have it, I tell you! I'll wring his--"

"'Sh-h-h, Pelz. If you'll take my advice, you'll handle this thing without threats. Why not, Miss Bleema, even if you do feel so sure, give yourself a little more time to--"

"No! No! No!"

"Just a minute now. If you feel this way so strongly to-night, isn't it just possible that to-morrow, when you wake up, you may see things differently?"

"I tell you I'm going to France with him--on our honeymoon. It's all fixed if--moms--dad--won't you please--darlings--can't you see--my happiness--"

"O God, Roody, were ever parents in such a fix?"

"Listen to me, Miss Bleema, now: I'm an old friend of the family, and you don't need to take exception to what I'm going to suggest. If your heart is so set on this thing, all right then, make up your mind it's an engagement and--"

"By God, Feist, no!"

"Wait, Pelz, I tell you you're making a mistake with your state of excitement."

"Let Mr. Feist talk, Roody."

"Make up your mind as I was saying, Miss Bleema, that this engagement exists between you and--and this young man. Then, instead of doing the hasty thing and marrying next week, you remain here a happy, engaged girl until the company returns in three weeks, and meanwhile you will have time to know your own mind and--"

"No! No! No! I do know it! It's all fixed we're--"

"That's a fine idea of Mr. Feist's, Bleema darling. For mamma's sake, baby. For grandma's. If it's got to be an engagement, hold it until after he gets back. Don't go rushing in. Take time to think a little. France is no place for a honeymoon now--submarines and all."

"Oh, I know! You hope he'll get sunk with a submarine."

"Shame, Miss Bleema; shame!"

"All mamma means, darling, is take a little time and get a--a trousseau like a girl like you has to have. If your heart is so set on it, can't you do that much to please mamma? That much?"

"There's a trick. You want me to wait and then--"

"Miss Bleema, is my promise to you enough that there's no trick? On my respect for your parents and grandmother, there's no trick. If it is only to please them, wait those few weeks and do it more dignified. If it's got to be, then it's got to be. Am I right, Pelz?"

Mr. Pelz turned away, nodding his head, but with lips too wry to speak.

"O my God, yes! Mr. Feist, you're right. Bleema, promise us! Promise!"

"Just a matter of a few weeks more or less, Miss Bleema. Just so your parents are satisfied you know your own mind."

"I do!"

"Then, I say, if you still feel as you do, not even they have the right to interfere."

"Promise us, Bleema; promise us that!"

"I--I'll be engaged on your word of honor--without any fussing about it?"

"An engaged girl, Miss Bleema, like any other engaged girl."

"But dad--look at him--he won't--p-promise," trembling into tears.

"Of course he will--won't you, Pelz? And you know the reputation your father has for a man of his word."

"Will--will he promise?"

"You do; don't you, Pelz?"

Again the nod from the bitter inverted features.

"Now, Miss Bleema?"

"Well then, I--I--p-promise."

On a May-day morning that was a kiss to the cheek and even ingratiated itself into the bale-smelling, truck-rumbling pier-shed, Mr. Lester Spencer, caparisoned for high seas by Fifth Avenue's highest haberdasher, stood off in a little cove of bags and baggage, yachting-cap well down over his eyes, the nattiest thing in nautical ulsters buttoned to the chin. Beside him, Miss Norma Beautiful, her small-featured pink-and-whiteness even smaller and pinker from the depths of a great cart-wheel of rose-colored hat, completely swathed in rose-colored veiling.

"For a snap of my finger I'd spill the beans--that's how stuck on this situation I am!"

Mr. Spencer plunged emphatic arms into large patch-pockets, his chin projecting beyond the muffle of collar.

"Just you try it and see where it lands you!"

Then Miss Beautiful from the rosy depths of hat began to quiver of voice, jerky little sobs catching her up.

"I can't stand it! I b-bit off a b-bigger piece than I can swallow."

"Now, Darling Beautiful, I ask you would your own Lester do anything that wasn't just going to be the making of his girl as well as himself? Is it anything, Angel Beautiful, he is asking you to do except wait until--"

"I can't bear it, I tell you! A little red-haired kike like her! How do I know what I'm letting myself in for? There's only one ground for divorce in this state. What guarantee have I you'll get free on it?"

"My guarantee, Pussy. You're letting yourself in for a pink limousine to match that pink sweetness of yours and a jumping-rope of pearls to match those sweet teeth of yours and--"

"I want black pearls, Lester, like Lucille Du Pont's."

"Black, then. Why, Angel Beautiful, you just know that there's not a hair on any head in the world, much less a red one, I'd change for one of my girl's golden ones. You think I'd ever have known the little Reddie was on earth if she hadn't just flung herself at my head! She could have been six Rudolph Pelz's daughters, and I wouldn't have had eyes for her."

"But, Lester--she--she's right cute. What guarantee have I got?"

"Cross my heart and swear to die, Angel! Haven't I already sworn it to you a thousand thousand times? You wouldn't want me to close my eyes to the chance of a lifetime--you know you wouldn't, Beautiful, when it's your chance as much as mine. Both ours!"

"I--if only it was--over, Lester--all--over!"

"What's three weeks, Angel Beautiful? The very day I'm back I'll pull the trick with the little red head, and then I'm for letting things happen quick."

"And me, what'll I--"

"I'm going to move you into the solid-goldest hotel suite in this here town, Pussy. I'm going to form the Norma Beautiful Film Corporation in my own girl's name, the first pop out of the box. Why, there's just nowhere Rudolph Pelz's son-in-law can't get his girl in the little while I'm going to stick."

"How do I know? How do I know they won't find a way to hold you?"

"Why, Darling Beautiful, when they're through with me, they'll pay me off in my weight in gold. Haven't you said things often enough about your boy's temper when he lets it fly? You think they're going to let me cut up nonsense with that little Reddie of theirs? Why, that old man would pay with his right eye to protect her!"

"O God, it's rotten--a nice fellow like Pelz--a--"

"It's done every day, Gorgeous Beautiful. Anyway, there's no way to really hurt the rich. Look at Warren Norton--the Talcott family paid Warren two hundred cool thousand to give her back quietly. It's done every day, Gorgeousness. Many a fellow like me has gotten himself roped into a thing he wanted to get out of quietly. That little girl lassoed me. I should have eyes for a little Reddie like her with the Deep-Sea Pearl of the world my very own. I'm going to marry you, too, Gorgeousness. I'm going to see you right through, this time. Jump right out of the frying-pan into the hottest, sweetest fire!"

"I tell you I can't stand it! Promising to marry me with another one to see through before you get to me. It--it's terrible! I--"

"There you go again! The Norma Beautiful Film Corporation doesn't tickle my pink rose on the eardrums! She doesn't want it! Wouldn't have it!"

"I do, Lester; I do--only--only--I--the little Reddie--it's not right. She's a sweet little thing. I'm afraid, Lester--I think I must be going crazy! I wish to God I could hate you the way you ought to be hated. I tell you I can't stand it. You sailing off like this. The coming back--her--I'll kill myself during the ceremony. I--"

"You create a scene down here and you'll be sorry!"

"Lester--please!"

"They'll be here any minute now. They're late as it is. Look-- everybody's on board already! One more blast, and I'll have to go, too. You just kick up nasty at the last minute and watch me!"

"I won't, Lester; I won't! I swear to God! Only, be good to me; be sweet to me, darling! Say good-by before they--she comes. I'm all right, darling. Please--please--"

He caught her to him then, and back in the sheltering cove of baggage thrust back her head, kissing deep into the veiling.

"Beautiful! Angel Beautiful!"

"Swear to me, Lester, you'll see me through."

"I swear, Beautiful."

"Swear to me, or hope to die and lose your luck!"

He kissed her again so that her hat tilted backward, straining at its pins.

"Hope to die and lose my luck."

"My own preciousness!" she said, her eyes tear-glazed and yearning up into his.

"'Sh-h, Pussy; here comes Sol Sopinsky to hurry me on board. Funny the Pelz crowd don't show up. Quit it! Here they come! That's their car. Cut it--quick!"

With noiselessly thrown clutch, the Pelz limousine drew up between an aisle of bales, its door immediately flung open. First, Mr. Pelz emerging, with an immediate arm held back for Mrs. Pelz. Last, Miss Pelz, a delightful paradox of sheer summer silk and white-fox furs, her small face flushed and carefully powdered up about the eyes.

"There he is, dad! Over there with Norma and Uncle Sol!"

"Don't run so, Bleema; he'll come over to you."

But she was around and through the archipelago of baggage.

"Lester darling! There was a tie-up at Thirty-third Street. I thought I'd die! Here's a little package of letters, love, one for each day on the steamer. Lester, have you got everything--are you all ready to leave your girlie--Hello, Norma--Uncle Sol! Lester are you--you sorry to leave you--your--"

"Now, now--no water-works!"

"My all! My own boy!" She drew him, to hide the quickening trembling of her lips, back behind the shelter of piled baggage.

"Lester darling--I--I didn't sleep a wink all night! I--I'm so nervous, dear. What if a submarine should catch you? What if you meet a French girl and fall in--"

"Now, now, Reddie! Is that what you think of your boy?"

"I don't, dearest; I don't! I keep telling myself I'm a silly--What's three weeks? But when it means separation from the sweetest, dearest--"

"'Sh-h-h, Angel darling! There's the last blast, and your father's angry. See him beckoning! The company's been on board twenty minutes already. Look--there's the sailors lined up at the gangplank--Bleema--"

"Promise me, Lester--"

"I do! I do promise! Anything! Look, girlie: Miss Beautiful will feel hurt the way we left her standing. It isn't nice--our hiding this way."

"I can't bear, dearest, to see you go--"

"Look! See--there's David Feist come down, too. You don't want him to see my girl make a cry baby of herself over a three weeks' trip--"

"You'll write, Lester, and cable every day?"

"You just know I will!"

"You won't go near the war?"

"You just know I won't!"

"You--"

"Your father, Bleema--let's not get him sore, hiding back here. Come; they'll draw up the plank on me."

"I'll be waving out from the edge of the pier, darling. I've got a special permit to go out there. I just couldn't stand not seeing my boy up to the last second. It's terrible for you to sneak off on a boat like this, darling, without flags and music the way it was before the war. I want music and flags when my boy goes off. Oh, Lester, I'll be working so hard on the sweetest little trousseau and the sweetest little--"

"Bleema, please! There's Miss Beautiful overhearing every word. Please!" "Well, good-by, Miss Beautiful; don't walk off with the studio while we're gone--take care of yourself--"

"Good-by--Mr. Spencer--_b-bon voyage_!"

"Hi, Mr. Feist, mighty handsome of you to come down to see me off!"

"Safe journey, Spencer! Remember you've got a precious piece of anxiety waiting back here for you."

"Oh, Mr. Feist--isn't--isn't--it awful--submarine-time and all? I--I just can't bear it!"

"Now! Now! Is that the way for a brave little girl to talk?"

"Bleema, if you can't control yourself, you had better go sit in the car. I'm ashamed before the company."

"Roody, the poor child!"

"He--that's the only way papa talks to me these days--fault-finding!"

"Now, now, Miss Bleema! Here--take mine; yours is all wet."

Another blast then, reverberating into the din.

"All aboard!"

"Good-by, Lester--good-by, darling--cable every day--by--good-by--boy!"

"Good-by, little Reddie! Thanks for the beautiful fruits and letters. Good-by, Mr. Pelz!"

"Play fair in the picture, Spencer. Don't hog the scenes. Help instead of hinder Sopinsky."

"Indeed I will, sir! Good-by, Mrs. Pelz!"

"Good-by, Lester! God bless you, my boy! Take care of yourself, and remember my little girl is--"

"Lester--Lester, a cable every day!"

"Bleema, will you please let the man catch his boat? It's an embarrassment to even watch you."

"Lester--Lester--"

"Yes, yes; good-by, everybody!"

"I'll be out at the pier-edge--wave back, darling!"

"Yes, yes! Good-by, Miss Beautiful! By, all!" And then, from an upper deck, more and more shouted farewells.

"They're moving! Come, Mr. Feist--please--with me--I've got the permit--don't let papa see us--come--the pier-edge!"

"Sure! This way, Miss Bleema--here--under--quick!"

Out in the open, May lay with Italian warmth over a harbor that kicked up the tiniest of frills. A gull cut through the blueness, winging it in festoons.

"Over this way, Miss Bleema; we can see her steaming out."

"Lester--good-by--Lester--a cable every day! I'll be waiting. Good-by!"

All this unavailingly flung to the great hulk of boat moving so proud of bow and so grandly out to sea, decks of faces and waving kerchiefs receding quickly.

"Good-by--darling--oh--oh--"

"'Sh-h--'sh-h-h, Miss Bleema. Here--take another of mine. Yours is all wet again. My--what a rainy day! Here--let me dry them for you. Hold still!"

"Oh--oh--cable every day, darling--write--oh, Mr. Feist--he don't see us--he's out of sight--don't wipe 'em so hard, Mr. Feist--you--you h-hurt!"

Out toward the blue, the billowing fields sailed away the gray steamer, cutting a path that sprayed and sang after. Sunlight danced and lay whitely as far as the eye could reach. It prolonged for those on shore the contour of the line of faces above each deck; it picked points of light from off everywhere--off smokestacks and polished railings, off plate-glass and brass-bound port-holes and even down the ship's flank, to where gilt letters spelled out shiningly:

"_LUSITANIA._"

A BOOB SPELLED BACKWARD

How difficult it is to think of great lives in terms of the small mosaics that go to make up the pattern of every man's day-by-day--the too tepid shaving-water; the badly laundered shirt-front; the three-minute egg; the too-short fourth leg of the table; the draught on the neck; the bad pen; the neighboring rooster; the misplaced key; the slipping chest-protector.

Richelieu, who walked with kings, presided always at the stitching of his red robes. Boswell says somewhere that a badly starched stock could kill his Johnson's morning. It was the hanging of his own chintzes that first swayed William Morris from epic mood to household utensils. Seneca, first in Latin in the whole Silver Age, prepared his own vegetables. There is no outgrowing the small moments of life, and to those lesser ones of us how often they become the large ones!

To Samuel Lipkind, who, in a span of thirty years, had created and carried probably more than his share of this world's responsibilities, there was no more predominant moment in all his day, even to the signing of checks and the six-o'clock making of cash, than that matinal instant, just fifteen minutes before the stroke of seven, when Mrs. Lipkind, in a fuzzy gray wrapper the color of her eyes and hair, kissed him awake, and, from across the hall, he could hear the harsh sing of his bath in the drawing.

There are moments like that which never grow old. For the fifteen years that Samuel Lipkind had reached the Two Dollar Hat Store before his two clerks, he had awakened to that same kiss on his slightly open mouth, the gray hair and the ever-graying eyes close enough to be stroked, the pungency of coffee seeming to wind like wreaths of mundane aroma above the bed, and always across the aisle of hallway that tepid cataract leaping in glory into porcelain.

Take the particular morning which ushers in our story, although it might have been any of twelve times three hundred others.

"Sammy!" This upon opening his door, then crossing to close the conservative five inches of open window and over to the bedside for the kissing him awake. "Sammy, get up!"

The snuggle away into the crotch of his elbow.

"Sammy! _Thu, thu_! I can't get him up! Sammy, a quarter to seven! You want to be late? I can't get him up!"

"M-m-m-m-m-m!"

"You want your own clerks to beat you to business so they can say they got a lazy boss?"

"I'm awake, ma." Reaching up to stroke her hair, thin and gray now, and drawn back into an early-morning knob.

"Don't splash in the bath-room so this morning, Sammy; it's a shame for the wall-paper."

"I won't"--drawing the cord of his robe about his waist, and as if they did not both of them know just how faithfully disregarded would be that daily admonition.

Then Mrs. Lipkind flung back the snowy sheets and bed-coverings, baring the striped ticking of the mattress.

"Hurry, Sammy! I'm up so long I'm ready for my second cup of coffee."

"Two minutes." And off across the hall, whistling, towel across arm.

It was that little early moment sublimated by nothing more than the fusty beginnings of a workaday, the mere recollecting of which was one day to bring a wash of tears behind his eyes and a twist of anguish into his heart.

Next breakfast, and to dine within reach of the coal-range which brews it is so homely a fashion that even Mr. Lipkind, upon whom such matters of bad form lay as a matter of course, was wont to remonstrate.

"What's the matter with the dining-room, ma? Since when have dining-rooms gone out of style?"

Pouring his coffee from the speckled granite pot, Mrs. Lipkind would smile up and over it.

"All I ask is my son should never have it worse than to eat all his lifetime in just such a kitchen like mine. Off my kitchen floor I would rather eat than off some people's fine polished mahogany."

The mahogany was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it--the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white sink, hand-polished; the bland row of blue-and-white china jars spicily inscribed to nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. That such a kitchen could be within the tall and brick confines of an upper-Manhattan apartment-house was only another of the thousand thousand paradoxes over which the city spreads her glittering skirts. The street within roaring distance, the highway of Lenox Avenue flowing dizzily constantly past her windows, the interior of Mrs. Lipkind's apartment, from the chromos of the dear dead upon its walls to the upholstery of another decade against those walls, was as little of the day as if the sweep of the city were a gale across a mid-Victorian plain and the flow past the windows a broad river ruffled by wind.

"You're right, ma; there's not a kitchen in New York I'd trade it for. But what's the idea of paying rent on a dining-room?"

"Sa-y, if not for when Clara comes and how in America all young people got extravagant ideas, we was just as well off without one in our three rooms in Simpson Street."

"A little more of that mackerel, please."

You to whom the chilled grapefruit and the eggshell cup of morning coffee are a gastronomic feat not always easy to hurdle, raise not your digestive eyebrows. At precisely fifteen minutes past seven six mornings in the week, seven-thirty, Sundays, Mrs. Lipkind and her son sat down to a breakfast that was steamingly fit for those only who dwell in the headacheless kingdom of long, sleepful nights and fur-coatless tongues.

"A few more fried potatoes with it, Sammy?"

"Whoa! You want to feed me up for the fat boys' regiment!"

Mrs. Lipkind glanced quickly away, her profile seeming to quiver. "Don't use that word, Sam--even in fun--it's a knife in me."

"What word?"

"'Regiment.'"

He reached across to pat the vein-corduroyed back of her hand.

"My little sweetheart mamma," he said.

She, in turn, put out her hand over his, her old sagging throat visibly constricting in a gulp, and her eyes as if they could never be finished with yearning over him. "You're a good boy, Sammy."

"Sure!"

"I always say no matter what it is bad my life has had for me with my twenty-five years a widow, my only daughter to marry out six hundred miles away from me, my business troubles when I had to lose the little store what your papa left me, nothing ain't nothing, Sammy, when a mother can raise for herself a boy like mine."

"You mean when a fellow can pick out for himself a little sweetheart mamma like mine."

"Sammy, stop it with your pinching-me nonsense like I was your best girl!"

"Well, ain't you?"

She paused, her cup of coffee half-way to her lips, the lines of her face seeming to want to lift into what would be a smile. "No, Sammy; your mother knows she ain't, and if she was anything but a selfish old woman, she would be glad that she ain't."

"'Sh! 'Sh!" said Mr. Lipkind, reaching this time half across the table for a still steaming muffin and opening it so that its hot fragrance came out. '"Sh! No April showers! Uh! Uh! Don't you dare!"

"I ain't," said Mrs. Lipkind, smiling through her tear and dashing at it with the back of her hand. "For why should I when I got only everything to be thankful for?"

"Now you're shouting!"

"How you think, Sammy, Clara likes a cheese pie for supper to-night? Last week I could see she didn't care much for the noodle pudding I baked her."

Mr. Lipkind, who was ever so slightly and prematurely bald and still more slightly and prematurely rotund, suffered a rush of color then, his ears suddenly and redly conspicuous.

"That's--that's what I started to tell you last night, ma. Clara telephoned over to the store in the afternoon she--she thought she wouldn't come to supper this Wednesday night, ma."

"Sammy--you--you and Clara 'ain't got nothing wrong together, the way you don't see each other so much these two months?"

"Of course not, ma; it's just happened a few times that way. The trade's in town; that's all."

"How is it all of a sudden a girl in the wholesale ribbon business should have the trade to entertain like she was in the cloak-and-suit chorus?"

"It's not that Clara's busy to-night, ma. She--she only thought she--for a change--there's a little side table for two--for three--where she boards--she thought maybe if--if you didn't mind, I'd go over to her place for Wednesday-night supper for a change. You know how a girl like Clara gets to feeling obligated."

"Obligated from eating once a week supper in her own future house!"

"She asked I should bring you, too, ma, but I know how bashful you are to go in places like that."

"In such a place where it's all style and no food--yes."

"That's it; so we--I thought, ma, that is, if you don't mind, instead of Clara here to-night for supper, I--I'd go over to her place. If you don't mind, ma."

There was a silence, so light, so slight that it would not have even held the dropping of a pin, but yet had a depth and a quality that set them both to breathing faster.

"Why, of course, Sammy, you should go!"

"I--we thought for a change."

"You should have told me yesterday, Sammy, before I marketed poultry."

"I know, ma; I--just didn't. Clara only 'phoned at four."

"A few more fried potatoes?"

"No more."

"Sit up straight, Sam, from out your round shoulders."

"You ain't--mad, ma?"

"For why, Sammy, should I be mad that you go to Clara for a change to supper. I'm glad if you get a change."

"It's not that, ma. It's just that she asked it. You know how a person feels, her taking her Wednesday-night suppers here for more than five years and never once have I--we--set foot in any of her boarding-houses. She imagines she's obligated. You know how Clara is, so independent."

"You should go. I hear, too, how Mrs. Schulem sets a good table."

"I'll be home by nine, ma--you sure you don't mind?"

"I wouldn't mind, Sammy, if it was twelve. Since when is it that a grown-up son has to apologize to his mother if he takes a step without her?"

"You can believe me, ma, but I've got so it don't seem like theater or nothing seems like going out without my little sweetheart mamma on one arm and Clara on the other."

"It's not right, Sammy, you should spoil me so. Don't think that even if you don't let me talk about it, I don't know in my heart how I'm in yours and Clara's way."

"Ma, now just you start that talk and you know what I'll do--I'll get up and leave the table."

"Sammy, if only you would let me talk about it!"

"You heard what I said."

"To think my son should have to wait with his engagement for five years and never once let his mother ask him why it is he waits. It ain't because of to-night I want to talk about it, Sam, but if I thought it was me that had stood between you and Clara all these five years, if--if I thought it was because of me you don't see each other so much here lately, I--"

"Ma!"

"I couldn't stand it, son. If ever a boy deserved happiness, that boy is you. A boy that scraped his fingers to the bone to marry his sister off well. A boy that took the few dollars left from my notion-store and made such a success in retail men's hats and has given it to his mother like a queen. If I thought I was standing in such a boy's way, who ain't only a grand business man and a grand son and brother, but would make any girl the grandest husband that only his father before him could equal, I couldn't live, Sammy, I couldn't live."

"You should know how sick such talk makes me!"

"I haven't got hard feelings, Sammy, because Clara don't like it here."

"She does."

"For why should an up-to-date American girl like Clara like such an old-fashioned place as I keep? Nowadays, girls got different ideas. They don't think nothing of seventy-five-dollar suits and twelve-dollar shoes. I can't help it that it goes against my grain no matter how fine a money-maker a girl is. In the old country my sister Carrie and me never even had shoes on our feet until we were twelve, much less--"

"But, ma--"

"Oh, I don't blame her, Sam. I don't blame her that she don't like it the way I dish up everything on the table so we can serve ourselves. She likes it passed the way they did that night at Mrs. Goldfinger's new daughter-in-law's, where everything is carried from one to the next one, and you got to help yourself quick over your shoulders."

"Clara's like me, ma; she wants you to keep a servant to do the waiting on you."

"It ain't in me, Sam, to be bossed to by a servant, just like I can't take down off the walls pictures of your papa _selig_ and your grandma, because it ain't stylish they should be there. It's a feeling in me for my own flesh and blood that nothing can change."

"Clara don't want you to change that, ma."

"She's a fine, up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such terrible fears for my boy and--and how things are now on the other side and--and--"

"Now, now, ma; no April showers!"

"An old woman that can't even be happy with a good daughter like Ruby, but hangs always on her son like a stone around his neck!"

"You mean like a diamond."

"A stone, holding him down."

"Ma!" Mr. Lipkind pushed back, napkin awry at his throat and his eyes snapping points of light. "Now if you want to spoil my breakfast, just say so and I--I'll quit. Why should you be living with Ruby out in Marietta if you're happier here with me where you belong? If you knew how sore these here fits of yours make me, you'd cut them out--that's what you would. I'm not going over to Clara's at all now for supper, if that's how you feel about it."