Part 15

"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."

"She should say good-by to me only if she wants to. Izzy, when you go out the gate drive back that rooster—I'll wring his little gallivantin' neck if he don't stop roosting in that bush!"

"Good night, children; take good care of the cars."

"Good night, mamma...papa."

The gate clicked shut, and the two figures moved into the mist of growing gloom; over their heads the trees met and formed across the brick sidewalk a roof as softly dark as the ceiling of a church. Birds chirped.

Mrs. Binswanger leaned her wide, uncorseted figure against a pillar and watched them until a curve in the avenue cut her view, then she dragged a low wicker rocker across the veranda.

"We can sit out on the porch a while yet, Julius. Not like midsummer it is for your rheumatism."

"Ya, ya. My slippers, Becky."

"Here."

"Ya, ya."

"Look across the yard, will you, Julius. The Schlossmans are still at the supper-table. Fruit gelatin they got. I seen it cooling on the fence. We got new apples on the side-yard tree, you wouldn't believe, Julius. To-morrow I make pies."

"Ya, ya."

The light tulle of early evening hung like a veil, and through it the sad fragrance of burning leaves, which is autumn's incense, drifted from an adjoining lawn.

"'Sh-h-h-h, chickey—sh-h-h-h! Back in the yard I can't keep that rooster, Julius. And to-day for thirty cents I had that paling in the garden fence fixed, too. Honest, to keep a yard like ours going is an expense all the time. People in the city without yards is lucky."

"In all Newton there ain't one like ours. Look, Becky, at that white-rose bush flowering so late just like she was a bride."

"When Izzy was home always, we didn't have the expense of weeding."

"Now when he comes home all he does is change neckties and make trouble."

"Ach, my moon vines! Don't get your chair so close, Julius. Look how those white flowers open right in your face. One by one like big stars coming out."

"M-m-m-m and smell, Becky, how good!"

"Here, lemme pull them heavy shoes off for you, papa. Listen, there goes that oriole up in the cherry-tree again. Listen to the thrills he's got in him. Pull, Julius; I ain't no derrick!"

"Ah-h-h, how good it feels to get 'em off! Now light my pipe, Becky. Always when you light it, better it tastes. Hold—there—make out of your hand a cup—there—pu-pu-pu—there! Now sit down by me, Becky!"

"Move over."

"Ach, Becky, when we got our little home like this, with a yard so smooth as my hand, where we don't need shoes or collars, and with our own fruit right under our noses, for why ain't you satisfied?"

"For myself, Julius, believe me it's too good, but for Poil we—"

"Look all what you can see right here from our porch! Look there through the trees at the river; right in front of our eyes it bends for us. Look what a street we live on. We should worry it ain't in the booming part. Quiet like a temple, with trees on it older as you and me together."

"The caterpillars is bad this year, Julius; trees ain't so cheap, neither. In the city such worries they ain't got."

"For what with a place like this, Becky, with running water and—"

"It's Poil, Julius. Not a thing a beau-ti-fool girl like Poil has out here."

"Nonsense. It's a sin she should want a better place as this. Ain't she got a plush parlor and a piano and—"

"It's like Izzy says, Julius: there's too many fine goils in the city for the boys to come out here on a forty-five-minute ride. What boys has she got out here, Mike Donnely and—"

"Ach!"

"That's what we need; just something like that should happen to us. But, believe me, it's happened before when a girl ain't got no better to pick from. How I worry about it you should know."

"Becky, with even such talk you make me sick."

"Mark my word, it's happened before, Julius! That's why I say, Julius, a few months in the city this winter and she could meet the right young man. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum. Yourself you said how grand and steady he is. Twice with Izzy he's been out here, and not once his eyes off Poil did he take."

"Teitlebaum, with a store twice so big as ours on Sixth Avenue, don't need to look for us—twice they can buy and sell us."

"Is—that—so! To me that makes not one difference. Put Poil in the city, where it don't take an hour to get to be, and, ach, almost anything could happen! Not once did he take his eyes off her—such a grand, quiet boy, too."

"When a young man's got thoughts, forty-five minutes' street-car ride don't keep him away."

"Nonsense! I always say I never feel hungry till I see in front of me a good meal. If I have to get dressed and go out and market for it I don't want it. It's the same with marriage. You got to work up in the young man the appetite. What they don't see they don't get hungry for. They got to get eyes bigger as their stomachs first."

"Such talk makes me sick. Suppose she don't get married, ain't she got a good home and—"

"An old maid you want yet! A beau-ti-fool goil like our Poil he wants to make out of her an old maid, or she should break her parents' hearts with a match like Mike Donnely—"

"Becky."

"Aw, Julius, now we got the chance to rent for three months. Say we live them three months at the Wellington Hotel. Say it costs us a little more; everybody always says what a grand provider you are, Julius; let them say a little more, Julius."

"I—I ain't got the money, Becky, I tell you. For me to refuse what you want is like I stick a knife in my heart, but I got poor business, Becky."

"Maybe in the end, Julius, it's the cheapest thing we ever done."

"I can't afford it, Becky."

"For only three months we can go, Julius."

"I got notes, Becky, notes already twice extended. If I don't meet in March God knows where—"

"Ya, ya, Julius; all that talk I know by heart!"

"I ain't getting no younger neither, Becky. Hardly through the insurance examination I could get. I ain't so strong no more. When I get big worries I don't sleep so good. I ain't so well nights, Becky."

"Always the imagination sickness, Julius."

"I ain't so well, I tell you, Becky."

"Last time when all you had was the neuralgia, and you came home from the store like you was dying, Dr. Ellenburg told me hisself right here on this porch that never did he know a man so nervous of dying like you."

"I can't help it, Becky."

"If I was so afraid like you of dying, Julius, not one meal could I enjoy. A healthy man like you with nothing but the rheumatism and a little asthma. Only last week you came home pale like a ghost with a pain in your side, when it wasn't nothing but where your pipe burnt a hole in your pants pocket to give me some more mending to do."

"Just for five minutes you should have felt that pain!"

"Honest, Julius, to be a coward like you for dying it ain't nice—honest, it ain't."

"Always, Becky, when I think I ain't always going to be with you and the children such a feeling comes over me."

"Ach, Julius, be quiet! Without you I might just as well be dead, too."

"I'm getting old, Becky; sixty-six ain't no spring chicken no more."

"That's right, Julius; stick knives in me."

"Life is short, Becky; we must be happy while we got each other."

"Life is short, Julius, and for our children we should do all what we can. We can't always be with them, Julius. We—we must do the right thing by 'em. Like you say we—we're getting old—together, Julius. We don't want nothing to reproach ourselves with."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portieres swinging together, and stars sprang out in a clear sky.

They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binswanger's arm.

"Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!"

"We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism."

"Ya, ya, Becky—hear how he purrs, like an engine."

"Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets."

He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's outstretched arm.

"When—when we go—go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we—we take him with us, not, Becky?"

"Yes, papa."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the housekeeper.

Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key to the auctioneer.

The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship Mayflower; engages a three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in non-housekeeping apartments.

The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine.

Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home cookery.

Mr. Binswanger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between his eyes.

"Such a soup they got! Mulla-ga-what?"

"'Shh-h-h, papa; mullagatawny! Rice soup."

"Mullagatawny! Fine mess!"

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't talk so loud. Does the whole dining-room got to know you don't know nothing?"

Mrs. Binswanger took nervous resume of the red-and-gold, bright-lighted dining-room.

"For a plate of noodles soup, Becky, they can have all their mullagatawny! Fifteen cents for a plate of soup, Becky, and at home for that you could make a whole pot full twice so good."

"'Sh-h-h-h, papa."

"Don't 'sh-h-h-h-h me no more neither, Pearlie. Five months, from October to February, I been shooed like I was one of our roosters at home got over in Schlossman's yard. There, you read for me, Izzy; such language I don't know."

Isadore took up a card and crinkled one eye in a sly wink toward his mother and sister.

"Rinderbrust und Kartoffel Salad, pa, mit Apful Kuechen und Kaletraufschnitt."

"Ya, ya, make fun yet! A square meal like that should happen to me yet in a highway-robbery place like this."

Mrs. Binswanger straightened her large-bosomed, stiff-corseted figure in its large-design, black-lace basque, and pulled gently at her daughter's flesh-colored chiffon sleeve, which fell from her shoulders like angels' wings.

"Look across the room, Poil. There's Max just coming in the dining-room with his mother. Always the first thing he looks over at our table. Bow, Julius; don't you see across the room the Teitlebaums coming in? I guess old man Teitlebaum is out on the road again."

Miss Binswanger flushed the same delicate pink as her chiffon, and showed her oval teeth in a vivid smile.

"Ain't he silly, though, to-night, mamma! Look, when he holds up two fingers at me it means first he takes his mother up to her pinochle club, and then by nine o'clock he comes back to me."

"How good that woman has got it! Look, Poil, another waist she's wearing again."

"Look how he pulls out the chair for his mother, Izzy. It would hurt you to do that for me and mamma, wouldn't it?"

"Say, missy, I learnt manners two years before you ever done anything but hold down the front porch out on Newton Avenue. I'd been meetin' Max Teitlebaum and Ignatz Landauer and that crowd over at the Young Men's Association before you'd ever been to the movie with anybody except Meena Schlossman."

"I don't see that all your good start got you anywheres."

"Don't let swell society go to your head, missy. You ain't got Max yet, neither. You ought to be ashamed to be so crazy about a boy. Wait till I tell you something when we get up-stairs that'll take some of your kink out, missy."