Gaslight Sonatas - Fannie Hurst
"Fine fellow, Mark Haas!"
"'When the time comes, Mrs. Coblenz,' he says, 'that you want to make that
trip, just you let me know. Before the war there wasn't a year I didn't
cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm. I don't know
there's much I can do; it ain't so easy to arrange for Russia, but, just
the same, you let me know when you're ready to make that trip.' Just like
that he said it. That from Mark Haas!"
"And a man like Haas don't talk that way if he don't mean it."
"Mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him. I haven't got
the demands for silks."
"That wash silk I'm telling you about, though, Mrs. C., does up like a--"
"There's ma thumping with the poker on the up-stairs floor. When it's
closing-time she begins to get restless. I--I wish Selene would come in.
She went out with Lester Goldmark in his little flivver, and I get nervous
about automobiles."
Mr. Bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat.
"Good Lord! five-forty, and I've just got time to sell the Maplehurst
Emporium a bill of goods!"
"Good-night, Milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear
yourself. Greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the year,
and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters."
"No sooner said than done."
"And come out for supper some Sunday night, Milt. It does mama good to have
young people around."
"I'm yours."
"Good-night, Milt."
He reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers.
"Good-night, Mrs. C.," he said, a note lower in his throat; "and remember
that call-on-me stuff wasn't all conversation."
"Good-night, Milt," said Mrs. Coblenz, a coating of husk over her own voice
and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his. "You--you're all right!"
* * * * *
Up-stairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal
half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was
turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with
violet, invading. Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing
through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery
of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old
flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with
grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great
stack in a bedroom cupboard.
A clock, with a little wheeze and burring attached to each chime, rang six,
and upon it Mrs. Coblenz, breathing from a climb, opened the door.
"Ma, why didn't you rap for Katie to come up and light the gas? You'll ruin
your eyes, dearie."
She found out a match, immediately lighting two jets of a
center-chandelier, turning them down from singing, drawing the shades of
the two front and the southeast windows, stooping over the upholstered
chair to imprint a light kiss.
"A fine day, mama. There'll be an entry this week. Thirty dollars and
thirteen cents and another call for garden implements. I think I'll lay in
a hardware line after we--we get back. I can use the lower shelf of the
china-table, eh, ma?"
Mrs. Horowitz, whose face, the color of old linen in the yellowing, emerged
rather startling from the still black hair strained back from it, lay back
in her chair, turning her profile against the upholstered back, half a
wreath and a trail of raffia sliding to the floor. Age had sapped from
beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the
cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin. Even the hands were
crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band
hanging loosely from the third finger.
Mrs. Goblenz stooped, recovering the wreath.
"Say, mama, this one is a beauty! That's a new weave, ain't it? Here, work
some more, dearie--till Selene comes with your evening papers."
With her profile still to the chair-back, a tear oozed down the corrugated
face of Mrs. Horowitz's cheek. Another.
"Now, mama! Now, mama!"
"I got a heaviness--here--inside. I got a heaviness--"
Mrs. Coblenz slid down to her knees beside the chair.
"Now, mama; shame on my little mama! Is that the way to act when Shila
comes up after a good day? 'Ain't we got just lots to be thankful for--the
business growing and the bank-book growing, and our Selene on top? Shame on
mama!"
"I got a heaviness--here--inside--here."
Mrs. Coblenz reached up for the old hand, patting it.
"It's nothing, mama--a little nervousness."
"I'm an old woman. I--"
"And just think, Shila's mama, Mark Haas is going to get us letters and
passports and--"
"My son--my boy--his father before him--"
"Mama--mama, please don't let a spell come on! It's all right. Shila's
going to fix it. Any day now, maybe--"
"You'm a good girl. You'm a good girl, Shila." Tears were coursing down to
a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them.
"And you're a good mother, mama. Nobody knows better than me how good."
"You'm a good girl, Shila."
"I was thinking last night, mama, waiting up for Selene--just thinking how
all the good you've done ought to keep your mind off the spells, dearie."
"My son--"
"Why, a woman with as much good to remember as you've got oughtn't to have
time for spells. I got to thinking about Coblenz, mama, how--you never did
want him, and when I--I went and did it, anyway, and made my mistake, you
stood by me to--to the day he died. Never throwing anything up to me! Never
nothing but my good little mother, working her hands to the bone after
he got us out here to help meet the debts he left us. Ain't that a
satisfaction for you to be able to sit and think, mama, how you helped--"
"His feet--blood from my heart in the snow--blood from my heart!"
"The past is gone, darling. What's the use tearing yourself to pieces with
it? Them years in New York when it was a fight even for bread, and them
years here trying to raise Selene and get the business on a footing, you
didn't have time to brood then, mama. That's why, dearie, if only you'll
keep yourself busy with something--the wreaths--the--"
"His feet--blood from my--"
"But I'm going to take you back, mama. To papa's grave. To Aylorff's. But
don't eat your heart out until it comes, darling. I'm going to take you
back, mama, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn't eat out your
heart in spells. You mustn't, mama; you mustn't."
Sobs rumbled up through Mrs. Horowitz, which her hand to her mouth tried to
constrict.
"For his people he died. The papers--I begged he should burn them--he
couldn't--I begged he should keep in his hate--he couldn't--in the square
he talked it--the soldiers--he died for his people--they got him--the
soldiers--his feet in the snow when they took him--the blood in the snow--O
my God!--my--God!"
"Mama darling, please don't go over it all again. What's the use making
yourself sick? Please!"
She was well forward in her chair now, winding her dry hands one over the
other with a small rotary motion.
"I was rocking--Shila-baby in my lap--stirring on the fire black lentils
for my boy--black lentils--he--"
"Mama!"
"My boy. Like his father before him. My--"
"Mama, please! Selene is coming any minute now. You know how she hates it.
Don't let yourself think back, mama. A little will-power, the doctor says,
is all you need. Think of to-morrow, mama; maybe, if you want, you can come
down and sit in the store awhile and--"
"I was rocking. O my God! I was rocking, and--"
"Don't get to it--mama, please! Don't rock yourself that way! You'll get
yourself dizzy! Don't, ma; don't!"
"Outside--my boy--the holler--O God! in my ears all my life! My boy--the
papers--the swords--Aylorff--Aylorff--"
"'Shh-h-h--mama--"
"It came through his heart out the back--a blade with two sides--out the
back when I opened the door; the spur in his face when he fell, Shila--the
spur in his face--the beautiful face of my boy--my Aylorff--my husband
before him--that died to make free!" And fell back, bathed in the sweat of
the terrific hiccoughing of sobs.
"Mama, mama! My God! What shall we do? These spells! You'll kill yourself,
darling. I'm going to take you back, dearie--ain't that enough? I promise.
I promise. You mustn't, mama! These spells--they ain't good for a young
girl like Selene to hear. Mama, 'ain't you got your own Shila--your own
Selene? Ain't that something? Ain't it? Ain't it?"
Large drops of sweat had come out and a state of exhaustion that swept
completely over, prostrating the huddled form in the chair.
"Bed--my bed!"
With her arms twined about the immediately supporting form of her daughter,
her entire weight relaxed, and footsteps that dragged without lift, one
after the other, Mrs. Horowitz groped out, one hand feeling in advance,
into the gloom of a room adjoining.
"Rest! O my God! rest!"
"Yes, yes, mama; lean on me."
"My--bed."
"Yes, yes, darling."
"Bed."
Her voice had died now to a whimper that lay on the room after she had
passed out of it.
When Selene Coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace
curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic
scene, the two jets of gas were singing softly into its silence, and within
the nickel-trimmed baseburner the pink mica had cooled to gray. Sweeping
open that door, she closed it softly, standing for the moment against it,
her hand crossed in back and on the knob. It was as if--standing there
with her head cocked and beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming
out--something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard.
Philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood
thus, trembling with melody. Opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece
and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased
maternal grandfather, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed
her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance. Impervious to that
scrutiny, Miss Coblenz moved a tiptoe step or two farther into the room,
lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet
of knickknacks at what she saw far and beyond. Beneath the two jets, high
lights in her hair came out, bronze showing through the brown waves and the
patches of curls brought out over her cheeks.
In her dark-blue dress, with the row of silver buttons down what was hip
before the hipless age, the chest sufficiently concave and the silhouette a
mere stroke of a hard pencil, Miss Selene Coblenz measured up and down
to America's Venus de Milo, whose chief curvature is of the spine.
Slim-etched, and that slimness enhanced by a conscious kind of collapse
beneath the blue-silk girdle that reached up half-way to her throat, hers
were those proportions which strong women, eschewing the sweet-meat, would
earn by the sweat of the Turkish bath.
When Miss Coblenz caught her eye in the square of mirror above the
mantelpiece, her hands flew to her cheeks to feel of their redness. They
were soft cheeks, smooth with the pollen of youth, and hands still casing
them, she moved another step toward the portiered door.
"Mama!"
Mrs. Coblenz emerged immediately, finger up for silence, kissing her
daughter on the little spray of cheek-curls.
"'Shh-h-h! Gramaw just had a terrible spell."
She dropped down into the upholstered chair beside the base-burner, the
pink and moisture of exertion out in her face, took to fanning herself with
the end of a face-towel flung across her arm.
"Poor gramaw!" she said. "Poor gramaw!"
Miss Coblenz sat down on the edge of a slim, home-gilded chair, and took to
gathering the blue-silk dress into little plaits at her knee.
"Of course, if you don't want to know where I've been--or anything--"
Mrs. Coblenz jerked herself to the moment.
"Did mama's girl have a good time? Look at your dress, all dusty! You
oughtn't to wear your best in that little flivver."
Suddenly Miss Coblenz raised her glance, her red mouth bunched, her eyes
all iris.
"Of course--if you don't want to know--anything."
At that large, brilliant gaze, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward, quickened.
"Why, Selene!"
"Well, why--why don't you ask me something?"
"Why, I--I dunno, honey. Did--did you and Lester have a nice ride?"
There hung a slight pause, and then a swift moving and crumpling-up of Miss
Coblenz on the floor beside her mother's knee.
"You know--only, you won't ask."
With her hand light upon her daughter's hair, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward,
her bosom rising to faster breathing.
"Why--Selene--I--Why--"
"We--we were speeding along, and--all of a sudden, out of a clear sky,
he--he popped. He wants it in June, so we can make it our honeymoon to his
new territory out in Oklahoma. He knew he was going to pop, he said, ever
since that first night he saw me at the Y.M.H.A. He says to his uncle Mark,
the very next day in the store, he says to him, 'Uncle Mark,' he says,
'I've met _the_ little girl.' He says he thinks more of my little finger
than all of his regular crowd of girls in town put together. He wants to
live in one of the built-in-bed flats on Wasserman Avenue, like all the
swell young marrieds. He's making twenty-six hundred now, mama, and if he
makes good in the new Oklahoma territory, his Uncle Mark is--is going to
take care of him better. Ain't it like a dream, mama--your little Selene
all of a sudden in with--the somebodies?"
Immediate tears were already finding staggering procession down Mrs.
Coblenz's face, her hovering arms completely encircling the slight figure
at her feet.
"My little girl! My little Selene! My all!"
"I'll be marrying into one of the best families in town, ma. A girl who
marries a nephew of Mark Haas can hold up her head with the best of them.
There's not a boy in town with a better future than Lester. Like Lester
says, everything his Uncle Mark touches turns to gold, and he's already
touched Lester. One of the best known men on Washington Avenue for his
blood-uncle, and on his poor dead father's side related to the Katz &
Harberger Harbergers. Was I right, mama, when I said if you'd only let me
stop school I'd show you? Was I right, momsie?"
"My baby! It's like I can't realize it. So young!"
"He took the measure of my finger, mama, with a piece of string. A diamond,
he says, not too flashy, but neat."
"We have 'em, and we suffer for 'em, and we lose 'em."
"He's going to trade in the flivver for a chummy roadster, and--"
"Oh, darling, it's like I can't bear it!"
At that Miss Coblenz sat back on her tall wooden heels, mauve spats
crinkling.
"Well, you're a merry little future mother-in-law, momsie!"
"It ain't that, baby. I'm happy that my girl has got herself up in the
world with a fine upright boy like Lester; only--you can't understand,
babe, till you've got something of your own flesh and blood that belongs to
you, that I--I couldn't feel anything except that a piece of my heart was
going if--if it was a king you was marrying."
"Now, momsie, it's not like I was moving a thousand miles away. You can
be glad I don't have to go far, to New York or to Cleveland, like Alma
Yawitz."
"I am! I am!"
"Uncle--Uncle Mark, I guess, will furnish us up like he did Leon and
Irma--only, I don't want mahogany; I want Circassian walnut. He gave them
their flat-silver, too, Puritan design, for an engagement present. Think of
it, mama, me having that stuck-up Irma Sinsheimer for a relation! It always
made her sore when I got chums with Amy at school and got my nose in it
with the Acme crowd, and--and she'll change her tune now, I guess, me
marrying her husband's second cousin."
"Didn't Lester want to--to come in for a while, Selene, to--to see--me?"
Sitting there on her heels, Miss Coblenz looked away, answering with her
face in profile.
"Yes; only--I--well, if you want to know it, mama, it's no fun for a girl
to bring a boy like Lester up here in--in this crazy room, all hung up
with gramaw's wreaths and half the time her sitting out there in the dark,
looking in at us through the door and talking to herself."
"Gramaw's an old--"
"Is it any wonder I'm down at Amy's half the time? How do you think a girl
feels to have gramaw keep hanging onto that old black wig of hers and not
letting me take the crayons or wreaths down off the wall? In Lester's crowd
they don't know nothing about revolutionary stuff and persecutions. Amy's
grandmother don't even talk with an accent, and Lester says his grandmother
came from Alsace-Lorraine. That's French. They think only tailors and
old-clothes men and--."
"Selene!"
"Well, they do. You--you're all right, mama, as up to date as any of them,
but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in
front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off
barefooted to Siberia like a tramp? And the way she was cooking black beans
when my uncle died. Other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they
know. Alma Yawitz's grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself
they came from nearly the same part of the Pale as gramaw. But you don't
hear them remembering it. Alma Yawitz says she's Alsace-Lorraine on both
sides. People don't tell everything they know. Anyway where a girl's got
herself as far as I have!"
Through sobs that rocked her, Mrs. Coblenz looked down upon her daughter.
"Your poor old grandmother don't deserve that from you! In her day she
worked her hands to the bone for you. With the kind of father you had we
might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you
ungrateful girl--your poor old grandmother, that's suffered so terrible!"
"I know it, mama, but so have other people suffered."
"She's old, Selene--old."
"I tell you it's the way you indulge her, mama. I've seen her sitting here
as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her
head like--like she was dying."
"It's her mind, Selene--that's going. That's why I feel if I could only get
her back. She ain't old, gramaw ain't. If I could only get her back where
she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. All old people
think of--the grave. It's eating her--eating her mind. Mark Haas is going
to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. That's the only
way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, Selene. Now--now that my--my
little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, I--I'm going to take her
back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head,
her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all."
"It's you will be my responsibility now, ma."
"No! No!"
"The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wasserman and a spare room for
Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down. Wasn't it sweet for him to put
it that way right off, ma? 'Mother Coblenz,' he says."
"He's a good boy, Selene. It'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. Gramaw
mustn't miss none of it. He's a good boy and a fine family."
"That's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right."
"Lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl."
"A girl don't have to--be rich to get married right."
"You'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl."
"It--it would be different if Lester's uncle and all wasn't in the Acme
Club crowd, and if I hadn't got in with all that bunch. It's the last
expense I'll ever be to you, mama."
"Oh, baby, don't say that!"
"I--me and Lester--Lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's
announced next week--a reception--"
"We can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours,
and serve the ice-cream and cake in--"
"Oh, mama, I don't mean--that!"
"What?"
"Who ever heard of having a reception _here_! People won't come from town
'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. Even Gertie Wolf, with their big
house on West Pine Boulevard, had her reception at the Walsingham Hotel.
You--We--can't expect Mark Haas and all the relations--the Sinsheimers--
and--all to come out here. I'd rather not have any."
"But, Selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in
with that crowd through being friends at school with Amy Rosen. All the
city salesmen and the boys on Washington Avenue, even Mark Haas himself,
that time he was in the store with Lester, knows the way we live. You don't
need to be ashamed of your little home, Selene, even if it ain't on West
Pine Boulevard."
"It'll be--your last expense, mama. The Walsingham, that's where the girl
that Lester Goldmark marries is expected to have her reception."
"But, Selene, mama can't afford nothing like that."
Pink swam up into Miss Coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar
there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were
fluttering within.
"I--I'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other
girls."
"But, Selene--"
"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with
marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I
can't! I--wouldn't!"
She was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were
imminent.
"Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back
yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that
can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the
border, and--"
"Oh, I know! I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old,
worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest."
"It's hand-woven, Selene, with--"
"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I
didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens,
like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I
wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with passion and tears,
rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!"
"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be
willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding
she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a
cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen,
un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars,
if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can
afford, but she 'ain't got the money!"
"You--have got the money!"
"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what
business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a
pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do
for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked
ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God
knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl
ever had. But I 'ain't got the money--I 'ain't got the money."
"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and
forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two."
"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's--to go back--"
"You mean the bank-book's hers?"
"That's gramaw's, to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take
gramaw and her wreaths back home on."
"There you go--talking luny."
"Selene!"
"Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along
like that."
"You--"
"All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first
before me, with all my life to live--all right!"
"Your poor old--"
"It's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. I couldn't even have
company since I'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around.
Nobody can say I ain't good to gramaw; Lester says it's beautiful the way I
am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just
the same, I know when right's right and wrong's wrong. If my life ain't
more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. Go ahead!"
"Selene, Selene, ain't it coming to gramaw, after all her years' hard work
helping us that--she should be entitled to go back with her wreaths for the
graves? Ain't she entitled to die with that off her poor old mind? You bad,
ungrateful girl, you, it's coming to a poor old woman that's suffered as
terrible as gramaw that I should find a way to take her back."
"Take her back. Where--to jail? To prison in Siberia herself--"
"There's a way--"
"You know gramaw's too old to take a trip like that. You know in your own
heart she won't ever see that day. Even before the war, much less now,
there wasn't a chance for her to get passports back there. I don't say it
ain't all right to kid her along, but when it comes to--to keeping me out
of the--the biggest thing that can happen to a girl--when gramaw wouldn't
know the difference if you keep showing her the bank-book--it ain't right.
That's what it ain't. It ain't right!"
In the smallest possible compass, Miss Coblenz crouched now upon the floor,
head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising
sobs.
"Selene--but some day--"
"Some day nothing! A woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town
once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia! You can't get in
there, I--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to
leave. Even before the war Ray Letsky's father couldn't get back on
business. There's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. In
thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? Do you know the size
of Siberia? No! But I got to pay--I got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. But I
won't. I won't go to Lester if I can't go right. I--."