The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 59

Suddenly Miss Coblenz raised her eyes, 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 the 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 Wa.s.serman Avenue, like all the swell young marrieds. He's making twenty-six hundred now, mamma, 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, mamma--your little Selene all of a sudden in with--the somebodys?"

Immediately tears were already finding staggering procession down Mrs.

Coblenz' 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, mamma, 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, mamma, 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 Circa.s.sian walnut. He gave them their flat-silver, too, Puritan design, for an engagement present.

Think of it, mamma, 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, mamma, 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--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, mamma, 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--the way granpa was a revolutionist and was--was hustled off barefooted to Siberia like--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--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, mamma, but so have other people suffered."

"She's old, Selene--old."

"I tell you it's the way you indulge her, mamma. 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 Wa.s.serman 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, mamma, 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 mamma 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, mamma."

"Oh, baby, don't say that!"