Hungry Hearts
married himself to a girl with a thousand dollars. That started him
in business, and now he has the biggest shirt-waist factory on West
Twenty-Ninth Street."
"Yes, I heard your son had a factory." Mrs. Pelz hesitated and
stammered; "I'll tell you the truth. What I came to ask you--I
thought maybe you would beg your son Abe if he would give my husband
a job."
"Why not?" said Hanneh Breineh. "He keeps more than five hundred
hands. I'll ask him if he should take in Mr. Pelz."
"Long years on you, Hanneh Breineh! You'll save my life if you
could only help my husband get work."
"Of course my son will help him. All my children like to do good. My
daughter Fanny is a milliner on Fifth Avenue, and she takes in the
poorest girls in her shop and even pays them sometimes while they learn
the trade." Hanneh Breineh's face lit up, and her chest filled with
pride as she enumerated the successes of her children. "And my son
Benny he wrote a play on Broadway and he gave away more than a hundred
free tickets for the first night."
"Benny? The one who used to get lost from home all the time? You
always did love that child more than all the rest. And what is Sammy
your baby doing?"
"He ain't a baby no longer. He goes to college and quarterbacks the
football team. They can't get along without him.
"And my son Jake, I nearly forgot him. He began collecting rent
in Delancey Street, and now he is boss of renting the swellest
apartment-houses on Riverside Drive."
"What did I tell you? In America children are like money in the
bank," purred Mrs. Pelz, as she pinched and patted Hanneh Breineh's
silk sleeve. "Oi weh! How it shines from you! You ought to kiss the
air and dance for joy and happiness. It is such a bitter frost outside;
a pail of coal is so dear, and you got it so warm with steam heat. I
had to pawn my feather bed to have enough for the rent, and you are
rolling in money."
"Yes, I got it good in some ways, but money ain't everything,"
sighed Hanneh Breineh.
"You ain't yet satisfied?"
"But here I got no friends," complained Hanneh Breineh.
"Friends?" queried Mrs. Pelz. "What greater friend is there on
earth than the dollar?"
"Oi! Mrs. Pelz; if you could only look into my heart! I'm so choked
up! You know they say a cow has a long tongue, but can't talk."
Hanneh Breineh shook her head wistfully, and her eyes filmed with
inward brooding. "My children give me everything from the best. When
I was sick, they got me a nurse by day and one by night. They bought
me the best wine. If I asked for dove's milk, they would buy it for
me; but--but--I can't talk myself out in their language. They want
to make me over for an American lady, and I'm different." Tears
cut their way under her eyelids with a pricking pain as she went
on: "When I was poor, I was free, and could holler and do what I
like in my own house. Here I got to lie still like a mouse under a
broom. Between living up to my Fifth-Avenue daughter and keeping up
with the servants, I am like a sinner in the next world that is thrown
from one hell to another." The doorbell rang, and Hanneh Breineh
jumped up with a start.
"Oi weh! It must be the servant back already!" she exclaimed,
as she tore off her apron. "Oi weh! Let's quickly put the dishes
together in a dish-pan. If she sees I eat on the kitchen table, she
will look on me like the dirt under her feet."
Mrs. Pelz seized her shawl in haste.
"I better run home quick in my rags before your servant sees me."
"I'll speak to Abe about the job," said Hanneh Breineh, as she
pushed a bill into the hand of Mrs. Pelz, who edged out as the servant
entered.
* * * * *
"I'm having fried potato lotkes special for you, Benny," said
Hanneh Breineh, as the children gathered about the table for the family
dinner given in honor of Benny's success with his new play. "Do you
remember how you used to lick the fingers from them?"
"Oh, mother!" reproved Fanny. "Anyone hearing you would think we
were still in the pushcart district."
"Stop your nagging, sis, and let ma alone," commanded Benny,
patting his mother's arm affectionately. "I'm home only once a
month. Let her feed me what she pleases. My stomach is bomb-proof."
"Do I hear that the President is coming to your play?" said Abe,
as he stuffed a napkin over his diamond-studded shirt-front.
"Why shouldn't he come?" returned Benny. "The critics say
it's the greatest antidote for the race hatred created by the war. If
you want to know, he is coming to-night; and what's more, our box is
next to the President's."
"Nu, mammeh," sallied Jake, "did you ever dream in Delancey
Street that we should rub sleeves with the President?"
"I always said that Benny had more head than the rest of you,"
replied the mother.
As the laughter died away, Jake went on:
"Honor you are getting plenty; but how much mezummen does this play
bring you? Can I invest any of it in real estate for you?"
"I'm getting ten per cent royalties of the gross receipts,"
replied the youthful playwright.
"How much is that?" queried Hanneh Breineh.
"Enough to buy up all your fish-markets in Delancey Street,"
laughed Abe in good-natured raillery at his mother.
Her son's jest cut like a knife-thrust in her heart. She felt
her heart ache with the pain that she was shut out from their
successes. Each added triumph only widened the gulf. And when she tried
to bridge this gulf by asking questions, they only thrust her back upon
herself.
"Your fame has even helped me get my hat trade solid with the Four
Hundred," put in Fanny. "You bet I let Mrs. Van Suyden know that
our box is next to the President's. She said she would drop in to
meet you. Of course she let on to me that she hadn't seen the play
yet, though my designer said she saw her there on the opening night."
"Oh, Gosh, the toadies!" sneered Benny. "Nothing so sickens you
with success as the way people who once shoved you off the sidewalk
come crawling to you on their stomachs begging you to dine with
them."
"Say, that leading man of yours he's some class!" cried
Fanny. "That's the man I'm looking for. Will you invite him to
supper after the theater?"
The playwright turned to his mother.
"Say, ma," he said, laughingly, "how would you like a real actor
for a son-in-law?"
"She should worry," mocked Sam. "She'll be discussing with
him the future of the Greek drama. Too bad it doesn't happen to be
Warfield, or mother could give him tips on the 'Auctioneer.'"
Jake turned to his mother with a covert grin.
"I guess you'd have no objection if Fanny got next to Benny's
leading man. He makes at least fifteen hundred a week. That wouldn't
be such a bad addition to the family, would it?"
Again the bantering tone stabbed Hanneh Breineh. Everything in her
began to tremble and break loose.
"Why do you ask me?" she cried, throwing her napkin into her
plate. "Do I count for a person in this house? If I'll say
something, will you even listen to me? What is to me the grandest man
that my daughter could pick out? Another enemy in my house! Another
person to shame himself from me!" She swept in her children in one
glance of despairing anguish as she rose from the table. "What worth
is an old mother to American children? The President is coming to-night
to the theater, and none of you asked me to go." Unable to check the
rising tears, she fled toward the kitchen and banged the door.
They all looked at one another guiltily.
"Say, sis," Benny called out sharply, "what sort of frame-up is
this? Haven't you told mother that she was to go with us to-night?"
"Yes--I--" Fanny bit her lips as she fumbled evasively for
words. "I asked her if she wouldn't mind my taking her some other
time."
"Now you have made a mess of it!" fumed Benny. "Mother'll be
too hurt to go now."
"Well, I don't care," snapped Fanny. "I can't appear with
mother in a box at the theater. Can I introduce her to Mrs. Van
Suyden? And suppose your leading man should ask to meet me?"
"Take your time, sis. He hasn't asked yet," scoffed Benny.
"The more reason I shouldn't spoil my chances. You know
mother. She'll spill the beans that we come from Delancey Street the
minute we introduce her anywhere. Must I always have the black shadow
of my past trailing after me?"
"But have you no feelings for mother?" admonished Abe.
"I've tried harder than all of you to do my duty. I've _lived_
with her." She turned angrily upon them. "I've borne the shame
of mother while you bought her off with a present and a treat here and
there. God knows how hard I tried to civilize her so as not to have to
blush with shame when I take her anywhere. I dressed her in the most
stylish Paris models, but Delancey Street sticks out from every inch of
her. Whenever she opens her mouth, I'm done for. You fellows had your
chance to rise in the world because a man is free to go up as high as
he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man
my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother."
They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.
"I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny,
thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and
heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages
and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof,
and--"
A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of
Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her
pent-up fury on the helpless servant.
"Oh, my nerves! I can't stand it any more! There will be no girl
again for another week!" cried Fanny.
"Oh, let up on the old lady," protested Abe. "Since she
can't take it out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the
servants?"
"If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you
wouldn't see anything funny about it. Why can't we move into a
hotel that will do away with the need of servants altogether?"
"I got it better," said Jake, consulting a notebook from his
pocket. "I have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where
there's only a small kitchenette; but we can do away with the
cooking, for there is a dining service in the building."
* * * * *
The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by
her socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother
an empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh
Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and
marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse
for living and struggling and bearing up with her children. The lonely
idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all
her thoughts. It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air,
from life, from everything warm and human. The cold indifference, the
each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like
stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human
in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.
But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive
was being forced to eat in the public dining-room. No matter how
hard she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people
staring at her, and her daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong
fork or guzzling the soup or staining the cloth.
In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to
the public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in
the kitchenette to cook her own meals. That very day she rode down to
Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she