"Humoresque"

"'Rimsky!' A man three times your age who was playing concerts before you was born! Is that a comparison? From your clippings-books I can show Rimsky who the world considers the greatest violinist. Rimsky he rubs into me!"

"All right then, the press-clippings, but did Elsass, the greatest manager of them all, bring me a contract for thirty concerts at two thousand a concert? Now I've got you! Now!"

She would not meet his laughter.

"'Elsass!' Believe me, he'll come to you yet. My boy should worry if he makes fifty thousand a year more or less. Rimsky should have that honour--for so long as he can hold it. But he won't hold it long. Believe me, I don't rest easy in my bed till Elsass comes after you. Not for so big a contract like Rimsky's, but bigger--not for thirty concerts but for fifty!"

"Brava! Brava! There's a woman for you. More money than she knows what to do with, and then not satisfied!"

She was still too tremulous for banter.

"'Not satisfied?' Why, Leon, I never stop praying my thanks for you!"

"All right then," he cried, laying his icy fingers on her cheek; "to-morrow we'll call a Mignon--a regular old-fashioned Allen Street prayer-party!"

"Leon, you mustn't make fun."

"Make fun of the sweetest girl in this room?"

"'Girl!' Ah, if I could only hold you by me this way, Leon! Always a boy--with me--your poor old mother--your only girl. That's a fear I suffer with, Leon--to lose you to a--girl! That's how selfish the mother of such a wonder-child like mine can get to be."

"All right. Trying to get me married off again. Nice! Fine!"

"Is it any wonder I suffer, son? Twenty-one years to have kept you by me a child. A boy that's never in his life was out after midnight except to catch trains. A boy that never has so much as looked at a girl and could have looked at princesses. To have kept you all these years--mine--is it any wonder, son, I never stop praying my thanks for you? You don't believe Hancock, son, the way he keeps teasing you always you should have a--what he calls--affair--a love-affair? Such talk is not nice, Leon--an affair!"

"Love-affair poppycock!" said Leon Kantor, lifting his mothers face and kissing her on eyes about ready to tear. "Why, I've got something, ma, right here in my heart for you that--"

"Leon, be careful your shirt-front!"

"That's so--so what you call 'tender,' for my best sweetheart that I--oh, love affair--poppycock!"

She would not let her tears come. "My boy--my wonder-boy!"

"There goes the overture, ma."

"Here, darlink--your glass of water."

"I can't stand it in here; I'm suffocating!"

"Got your mute in your pocket, son?"

"Yes, ma; for God's sake, yes! Yes! Don't keep asking things."

"Ain't you ashamed, Leon, to be in such an excitement? For every concert you get worse."

"The chairs--they'll breathe on my neck."

"Leon, did mamma promise you those chairs would be moved?"

"Where's Hancock?"

"Say--I'm grateful if he stays out. It took me enough work to get this room cleared. You know your papa he likes to drag in the whole world to show you off--always just before you play. The minute he walks in the room, right away he gets everybody to trembling just from his own excitements. I dare him this time he should bring people--no dignity has that man got, the way he brings everyone."

Even upon her words came a rattling of door, of door-knob and a voice through the clamour.

"Open--quick--Sarah! Leon!"

A stiffening raced over Mrs. Kantor, so that she sat rigid on her chair-edge, lips compressed, eye darkly upon the shivering door.

"Open--Sarah!"

With a narrowing glance, Mrs. Kantor laid to her lips a forefinger of silence.

"Sarah, it's me! Quick, I say!"

Then Leon Kantor sprang up, the old prehensile gesture of curving fingers shooting up.

"For God's sake, ma, let him in! I can't stand that infernal battering."

"Abrahm, go away! Leon's got to have quiet before his concert."

"Just a minute, Sarah. Open quick!"

With a spring, his son was at the door, unlocking and flinging it back.

"Come in, pa."

The years had weighed heavily upon Abrahm Kantor in avoirdupois only. He was himself plus eighteen years, fifty pounds, and a new sleek pomposity that was absolutely oleaginous. It shone roundly in his face, doubling of chin, in the bulge of waistcoat, heavily gold-chained, and in eyes that behind the gold-rimmed glasses gave sparklingly forth his estate of well-being.

"Abrahm, didn't I tell you not to dare to--"

On excited balls of feet that fairly bounced him, Abrahm Kantor burst in.

"Leon--mamma--I got out here an old friend--Sol Ginsberg--you remember, mamma, from brasses--"

"Abrahm--not now--"

"Go way with your 'not now!' I want Leon should meet him. Sol, this is him--a little grown-up from such a Nebich like you remember him--nu? Sarah, you remember Sol Ginsberg? Say--I should ask you if you remember your right hand? Ginsberg & Esel, the firm. This is his girl, a five years' contract signed yesterday--five hundred dollars an opera for a beginner--six rôles--not bad--nu?"

"Abrahm, you must ask Mr. Ginsberg please to excuse Leon until after his concert--"

"Shake hands with him, Ginsberg. He's had his hand shook enough in his life, and by kings, too--shake it once more with an old bouncer like you!"

Mr. Ginsberg, not unlike his colleague in rotundities, held out a short, a dimpled hand.

"It's a proud day," he said, "for me to shake the hands from mine old friend's son and the finest violinist living to-day. My little daughter--"

"Yes, yes, Gina. Here shake hands with him. Leon, they say a voice like a fountain. Gina Berg--eh, Ginsberg--is how you stage-named her? You hear, mamma, how fancy--Gina Berg? We go hear her, eh?"

There was about Miss Gina Berg, whose voice could soar to the tirra-lirra of a lark and then deepen to mezzo, something of the actual slimness of the poor, maligned Elsa so long buried beneath the buxomness of divas. She was like a little flower that in its crannied nook keeps dewy longest.

"How do you do, Leon Kantor?"

There was a whir through her English of three acquired languages.

"How do you do?"

"We--father and I--travelled once all the way from Brussels to Dresden to hear you play. It was worth it. I shall never forget how you played the 'Humoresque.' It made me laugh and cry."

"You like Brussels?"

She laid her little hand to her heart, half closing her eyes.

"I will never be so happy again as with the sweet little people of Brussels."

"I, too, love Brussels. I studied there four years with Ahrenfest."

"I know you did. My teacher, Lyndahl, in Berlin, was his brother-in-law."

"You have studied with Lyndahl?"

"He is my master."

"I--will I sometime hear you sing?"

"I am not yet great. When I am foremost like you, yes."

"Gina--Gina Berg, that is a beautiful name to make famous."

"You see how it is done? Gins--Berg. Gina Berg.

"Clev-er!"

They stood then smiling across a chasm of the diffidence of youth, she fumbling at the great fur pelt out of which her face flowered so dewily.

"I--well--we--we are in the fourth box--I guess we had better be going--fourth box left." He wanted to find words, but for consciousness of self could not "It's a wonderful house out there waiting for you, Leon Kantor, and you--you're wonderful, too!"

"The--flowers--thanks!"

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