Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
"Do you like that bow at the belt, mamma?"
"Yes.... Tillie," called Mrs. Katzenstein, raising her voice, "turn on
the lights in the parlor, and then tell Mr. Katzenstein I said to put on
his coat."
"I don't want the lights on, mamma--it looks better that way."
"You want it to look like we was stingy with light yet! How does that
look--just the gas-logs going! You tell Mr. Katzenstein, Tillie, that I
insist that he should put on his coat to meet Birdie's company--his
newspaper will keep. There's the bell! Tillie, go to the door."
After a well-timed interval Birdie entered the soft-lighted parlor; the
gas-logs gave out a mellow but uncertain light. It was as if the spirit
of fire were doing an elf dance about the room--glinting on the polished
surface of the floor, glancing on and off the gilt frame of a
wall-picture, and gleaming at its own reflection in the mahogany
table-legs and glass doors of the curio cabinet.
Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in
hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.
"Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap
to sit in the light," said Birdie.
He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head
backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong
man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.
"What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?"
"Sure I'm not," he said. "I'm just catching up on sleep."
They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of
their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers
abruptly.
"Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real
tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this
morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated
how Mr. Latz sells cigars."
"To-night," he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair
and exhaling loudly, "I feel as funny as a funeral."
"Marcus," she said, "honest, you don't look right; you're pale!"
He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate _vis-a-vis_.
The light played over them.
"You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many
kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you."
Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump.
He was a well-set-up young man--solidly knit and close packed--but five
inches short of the stuff that matinee idols and policemen are made of.
Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.
This facetious mood, however, was further emphasized in the large,
well-formed ears, which flared away from his head as if alarmed, and in
a wide, heavy-set mouth, which seemed straining to meet those respective
ears; yet when Mr. Gump smiled he showed a double deck of large white
teeth, dazzling as snow, and his eyes illuminated, and small-rayed
wrinkles spread out from the corners and gave them geniality.
"Your mamma was here at the whist this afternoon, Marcus. We think she's
a grand woman!"
His face lighted.
"I was afraid she wouldn't come on account of the weather. I meant to
telephone from the factory to take a cab, but I had a hard day of it.
What's the difference, I always say in a case like that, whether it
costs a little more or a little less? Recreation is good for her."
"It's a terrible night, isn't it? Papa says even the horses can't
walk--it's so slippery."
"I care a lot how slippery it is when I come to see you, Birdie." He
sighed and regarded her nervously.
"Aw, Marcus! Jollier!" She colored the red of the deepest peony in the
garden and giggled like water purling over stones.
"You can believe me, I wish I was jollying! Until I met you it was all
right to say that about me; but now--but--Oh, well, what's the use of
talking?"
He rose from the divan in some agitation, thrust his hands into his
pockets, hitched his trousers upward, and walked away.
Birdie remained on the divan, observing the rules of the oldest game,
clasped her hands on her knees, and held the silence. When she finally
spoke her voice was filtered by the benign process of understanding.
"Look how easy he gets mad," she said, querulously; "just like I'm not
glad he wasn't jollying!"
There was a pause; the large onyx clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly
and impersonally, as if its concern were solely with time and not with
man.
Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at
an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses--a sloe black and a
virgin white--rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.
"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway.
It's like I said to you last night--if a fellow can't give you what
you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."
"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like
that!"
Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her
pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an
important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood
fizzing through their veins.
"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl
along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing
ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell--"
At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned
reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate
in low seas, hove in.
"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite
rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice
this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking
well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well--ain't it?"
"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a
hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."
"Just like Mr. Katzenstein--ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish
there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works!
Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less,
I tell him."
"You got a swell apartment here, Mrs. Katzenstein. Some cousins of my
poor father's--the Morris Jacobs--live in this same house."
"Are those Jacobs your cousins? Such grand people--the knit-underwear
Jacobs, Birdie! I never meet the old lady in the elevator that she
don't ask me to come up and see her. It's terrible the way I don't pay
calls. Birdie, we must go up soon."
"Yes, mamma."
"Yes, we got a nice little apartment here, Mr. Gump; but for what we pay
it might be better. If I didn't dread the _gedinks_ of moving we could
do better for the money; but we got comfort here, even if it ain't so
grand. Sometimes, on account of Birdie, I say we take a bigger place;
but who knows how long she is at home--not that we're in a hurry with
her, but you know how it is when a girl reaches a certain age."
"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gump.
"I'm in no hurry," said Birdie.
"I don't say that, neither. When a girl meets the right one it's
different. Look at Ray--two hours before she was engaged she didn't know
it was going to happen!"
"Come right in, papa. Mr. Gump is here--so tired he is he hates to come
in."
There are a few epics waiting to be dug out of remote corners. One day
an American drama will be born in a Western shack or under some East
Side stairway; one day a prophet will look within the dingy temple of a
Mr. Katzenstein at the warm red heart beating beneath a hairy chest, and
there find a classic rune to the men who moil and toil, and pay
millinery bills with a three-figure check; another day an elegiac will
be written to the men who slip the shoes off their aching feet in the
merciful seclusion of their alternate Wednesday-night subscription boxes
and sit through four hours of Wagner--facing an underdressed daughter,
two notes due on the morrow, and a remote stageful of vocalizing figures
especially designed for his alternate and inquisitional Wednesday
nights.
Life had whacked hard at Mr. Katzenstein, writ across his face in a
thousand welts and wrinkles, bent his knees and fingers, and calloused
his hands.
"Good evening, Mr. Gump--good evening! I say to mamma the young folks
got no time for us in here. I'm right?"
"The more the merrier!" said Mr. Gump, reseating himself.
"Mr. Katzenstein says he used to know your father, Mr. Gump."
"Rudolph Gump! I should say so--yes. Believe me, I wish I had half a
dollar for every shirtwaist I bought off him in my life! Your father and
me played side by each down on Cedar Street before you was born. I knew
him longer as you--he was a good silk man, was Rudolph Gump. Have a
cigar, young man?"
"Thanks--I don't smoke."
"Ain't it wonderful, though, that in a city like this my husband should
know you before you was born?"
Mrs. Katzenstein clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and
patted her hands together. Birdie regarded the company with polite
interest.
"Wonders never cease!" she said.
"Birdie, go get your papa his chair out from the dining-room--since he's
got lumbago these straight-backs ain't comfortable for him."
"Let me go for you, Miss Birdie."
"Oh no, Marcus--I know just where it is." She smiled at him with her
eyes--bright eyes that were full of warmth and reflected firelight.
Mr. Katzenstein groped in his side-pocket for a match, ran his tongue
horizontally along a cigar, and puffed it slowly into life.
"How's business?" he said, between puffs, with the lighted match still
applied to the end of his cigar.
"We can't complain, Mr. Katzenstein. If this strike don't reach to the
piece-workers we can't complain."
"I hear your firm opens a new factory."
"Yes; we're going to put in a line of March Hare neckwear and
manufacture it in Newark."
"My wife tells me you manage the new factory--eh?"
"Oh, I can't say that, Mr. Katzenstein; in fact--"
"_Ach_, papa, I didn't say for sure; the ladies this afternoon--"
"Here's you chair, papa."
Mr. Grump sprang to her aid.
"Thanks, Marcus," she said.
"What do you think of my girl there, Gump? She's a fine one--not?"
"Aw, now, papa, you quit! What'll Marcus think--such goings-on!"
"How her papa spoils her, Mr. Gump, you won't believe! Not one thing
that girl wants she don't get! Last week she meets her papa down-town
after the matinee and comes home with a new muff. Yesterday, before he
goes down-town, she gets from him a check for some business like a
silver-mesh bag, like the girls are wearing. Just seems like she has to
have everything she sees!"
"All I got to say, Gump, you should some day have just such a daughter!"
"Papa!"
"Papa!"
"You couldn't wish me better," said Mr. Gump.
Conversation drifted, and after a time Birdie regarded her mother with
level eyes; then her lids drooped and slowly raised--as significantly as
the red and green eyes that wink and signal in the black path of the
midnight flier.
"Well, papa, we must excuse ourselves. When young folks get together
they have no time for old ones."
"Now, mamma!" protested Birdie. "We're glad if you stay."
"I was young once myself," said Mr. Katzenstein; "and I like 'em yet,
Gump! Take it from me, I like 'em yet! Mamma here thinks I not got an
eye for the nice girls still; but I say what she don't know don't hurt
her--eh?"
"I should worry!" said Mrs. Katzenstein, regarding her husband with
gentle eyes. "Put your hand on my shoulder, papa. All day he makes the
hardest work for himself, and then at night comes home with a lame
back."
"Good night, Gump! Come round and we play pinochle."
"I hope you don't think we're stingy with light, Mr. Gump. If I had my
way they'd all be going; but Birdie likes only the gas-grate. My Ray was