The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 62

There comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time.

Between forty and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness enhanced even the moving-over of a b.u.t.ton.

When Mr. Haas smiled, his mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was his own.

He smiled now, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles attached by a chain to a wire-encircled left ear.

"Sit," he cried, "and let me serve you!"

Standing there with a diffidence which she could not crowd down, Mrs.

Coblenz smiled through closed lips that would pull at the corners.

"The idea, Mr. Haas--going to all that trouble!"

"'Trouble,' she says! After two hours hand-shaking in a swallowtail, a man knows what real trouble is!"

She stirred around and around the cup, supping up spoonfuls gratefully.

"I'm sure much obliged. It touches the right spot."

He pressed her down to the chair, seating himself on the low edge of the dais.

"Now you sit right here and rest your bones."

"But my mother, Mr. Haas. Before it's time for the ride home, she must rest in a quiet place."

"My car'll be here and waiting five minutes after I telephone."

"You--sure have been grand, Mr. Haas!"

"I shouldn't be grand yet to my--let's see what relation is it I am to you?"

"Honest, you're a case, Mr. Haas--always making fun!"

"My poor dead sister's son marries your daughter. That makes you my--nothing-in-law."

"Honest, Mr. Haas, if I was around you, I'd get fat laughing."

"I wish you was."

"Selene would have fits. 'Never get fat, mamma,' she says, 'if you don't want----'"

"I don't mean that."

"What?"

"I mean I wish you was around me."

She struck him then with her fan, but the color rose up into the mound of her carefully piled hair.

"I always say I can see where Lester gets his comical ways. Like his uncle, that boy keeps us all laughing."

"Gad, look at her blus.h.!.+ I know women your age would give fifty dollars a blush to do it that way."

She was looking away again, shoulders heaving to silent laughter, the blush still stinging.

"It's been so--so long, Mr. Haas, since I had compliments made to me--you make me feel so--silly."

"I know it, you nice, fine woman, you, and it's a darn shame!"

"Mr.--Haas!"

"I mean it. I hate to see a fine woman not get her dues. Anyways, when she's the finest woman of them all!"

"I--the woman that lives to see a day like this--her daughter the happiest girl in the world with the finest boy in the world--is getting her dues all right, Mr. Haas."

"She's a fine girl, but she ain't worth her mother's little finger nail."

"Mr.--Haas!"

"No, sir-ee!"

"I must be going now, Mr. Haas--my mother--"

"That's right. The minute a man tries to break the ice with this little lady, it's a freeze-out. Now, what did I say so bad? In business, too.

Never seen the like. It's like trying to swat a fly to come down on you at the right minute. But now, with you for a nothing-in-law, I got rights."

"If--you ain't the limit, Mr. Haas!"

"Don't mind saying it, Mrs. C., and, for a bachelor, they tell me I'm not the worst judge in the world, but there's not a woman on the floor stacks up like you do."

"Well--of all things!"

"Mean it."

"My mother, Mr. Haas, she--"

"And if anybody should ask you if I've got you on my mind or not, well I've already got the letters out on that little matter of the pa.s.sports you spoke to me about. If there's a way to fix that up for you, and leave it to me to find it, I--"

She sprang now, trembling, to her feet, all the red of the moment receding.

"Mr. Haas, I--I must go now. My--mother--"

He took her arm, winding her in and out among crowded-out chairs behind the dais.

"I wish it to every mother to have a daughter like you, Mrs. C."

"No! No!" she said, stumbling rather wildly through the chairs. "No! No!

No!"