O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 34

She let her hand linger in his.

"Leon--you--really going--how--terrible--how--how--wonderful!"

"How wonderful--your coming!"

"I--you think it was not nice of me--to come?"

"I think it was the nicest thing that ever happened in the world."

"All the way here in the train, I kept saying--crazy--crazy--running to tell Leon--Lieutenant--Kantor good-bye--when you haven't even seen him three times in three years--"

"But each--each of those three times we--we've remembered, Gina."

"But that's how I feel toward all the boys, Leon--our fighting boys--just like flying to them to kiss them each one good-bye."

"Come over, Gina. You'll be a treat to our mother. I--well, I'm hanged--all the way from Philadelphia!"

There was even a sparkle to talk then, and a let-up of pressure. After a while, Sarah Kantor looked up at her son, tremulous but smiling.

"Well, son, you going to play--for your old mother before--you go? It'll be many a month--spring--maybe longer before I hear my boy again except on the discaphone."

He shot a quick glance to his sister.

"Why, I--I don't know. I--I'd love it, ma if--if you think, Esther, I'd better."

"You don't need to be afraid of me, darlink. There's nothing can give me strength to bear--what's before me like--like my boy's music. That's my life, his music."

"Why, yes; if mamma is sure she feels that way, play for us, Leon."

He was already at the instrument, where it lay swathed, atop the grand piano.

"What'll it be, folks?"

"Something to make ma laugh, Leon--something light, something funny."

"'Humoresque'?" he said, with a quick glance for Miss Berg.

"'Humoresque,'" she said, smiling back at him.

He capered through, cutting and playful of bow, the melody of Dvorak's, which is as ironic as a grinning mask.

Finished, he smiled at his parent, her face still untearful.

"How's that?"

"It's like life, son, that piece. Laughing and making fun of--the way just as we think we got--we ain't got."

"Play that new piece, Leon, the one you set to music. You know. The words by that young boy in the war who wrote such grand poetry before he was killed. The one that always makes poor Mannie laugh. Play it for him, Leon."

Her plump little unlined face innocent of fault, Mrs. Isadore Kantor ventured her request, her smile tired with tears."

"No, no--Rosa--not now--ma wouldn't want that."

"I do, son; I do! Even Mannie should have his share of good-bye."

To Gina Berg: "They want me to play that little setting of mine of Allan Seeger's poem, 'I have a rendezvous.'"

"It--it's beautiful, Leon! I was to have sung it on my program to-night--only, I'm afraid you had better not--"

"Please, Leon! Nothing you play can ever make me as sad as it makes me glad. Mannie should have too his good-bye."

"All right then, ma, if--if you're sure you want it. Will you sing it, Gina?"

She had risen.

"Why, yes, Leon."

She sang it then, quite purely, her hands clasped simply together and her glance mistily off, the beautiful, the heroic, the lyrical prophecy of a soldier-poet and a poet-soldier.

But I've a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear.

In the silence that followed, a sob burst out stifled from Esther Kantor, this time her mother holding her in arms that were strong.

"That, Leon, is the most beautiful of all your compositions. What does it mean, son, that word, 'rondy-voo'?"

"Why, I--I don't exactly know. A rendezvous--it's a sort of meeting, an engagement, isn't it, Miss Gina? Gina?"

"That's it, Leon--an engagement."

"Have I an engagement with you, Gina?"

"Oh, how--how I hope you have, Leon!"

"When?"

"In the spring?"

"That's it--in the spring."

Then they smiled, these two, who had never felt more than the merest b.u.t.terfly wings of love brushing them, light as lashes. No word between them, only an unfinished sweetness, waiting to be linked up.

Suddenly there burst in Abrahm Kantor.

"Quick, Leon! I got the car downstairs. Just fifteen minutes to make the ferry. Quick! The sooner we get him over there the sooner we get him back! I'm right, mamma? Now--now--no water-works! Get your brother's suitcase, Isadore. Now--now--no nonsense--quick!"

With a deftly manoeuvred round of good-byes, a grip-laden dash for door, a throbbing moment of turning back when it seemed as though Sarah Kantor's arms could not unlock their deadlock of him, Leon Kantor was out and gone, the group of faces point-etched into the silence behind him. The poor mute face of Mannie, laughing softly. Rosa Kantor crying into her hands. Esther, grief-crumpled, but rich in the enormous hope of youth. The sweet Gina, to whom the waiting months had already begun their reality.

Not so, Sarah Kantor. In a bedroom adjoining, its high-ceilinged vastness as cold as a cathedral to her lowness of stature, sobs dry and terrible were rumbling up from her, only to dash against lips tightly restraining them.