The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 58

"I'm an old woman. I--"

"And just think, s.h.i.+la's mamma, Mark Haas is going to get us letters and pa.s.sports and--"

"My son--my boy--his father before him--"

"Mamma--mamma, please don't let a spell come on! It's all right. s.h.i.+la's going to fix it. Any day now, maybe--"

"You'm a good girl. You'm a good girl, s.h.i.+la." Tears were coursing down to a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them.

"And you're a good mother, mamma. n.o.body knows better than me how good."

"You'm a good girl, s.h.i.+la."

"I was thinking last night, mamma, 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 to-day, mamma, 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, mamma, 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, mamma. 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, mamma. 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, mamma, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn't eat out your heart in spells. You mustn't, mamma; 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 G.o.d--my--G.o.d!"

"Mamma, 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--s.h.i.+la-baby in my lap--stirring on the fire black lentils for my boy--black lentils--he--"

"Mamma!"

"My boy. Like his father before him. My--"

"Mamma, please! Selene is coming any minute now. You know how she hates it. Don't let yourself think back, mamma. A little will-power, the doctor says, is all you need. Think of to-morrow, mamma; maybe, if you want, you can come down and sit in the store awhile and--"

"I was rocking. O my G.o.d, I was rocking, and--"

"Don't get to it--mamma, please! Don't rock yourself that way! You'll get yourself dizzy. Don't, ma; don't!"

"Outside--my boy--the holler--O G.o.d, in my ears all my life! My boy--the papers--the swords--Aylorff--Aylorff--"

"Shh-h-h--mamma--"

"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--s.h.i.+la--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.

"Mamma, mamma--my G.o.d! 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, mamma! These spells--- they ain't good for a young girl like Selene to hear. Mamma, ain't you got your own s.h.i.+la--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.

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 G.o.d, rest!"

"Yes, yes, mamma; 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 pa.s.sed 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 base-burner, 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 k.n.o.b. It was as if standing there with her head c.o.c.ked 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 grandparent, 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 further into the room, lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet of knick-knacks at what she saw far 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 b.u.t.tons down what was hip before the hipless age, the chest sufficiently concave and the silhouette a mere stroke of 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 halfway to her throat, hers were those proportions which strong women, eschewing the sweetmeat, 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.

"Mamma!"

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 mamma's girl have a good time? Look at your dress all dusty! You oughtn't to wear you best in that little flivver."