Humoresque | Page 5

money here in her waist--"
"Papa will go back for the feedle _not_--three dollars she's saved for
herself he can holler out of her for a feedle!"
"Abrahm, he's screaming so he--he'll have a fit."
"He should have two fits."
"Darlink--"
"I tell you the way you spoil your children it will some day come back
on us."
"It's his birthday night, Abrahm--five years since his little head first lay
on the pillow next to me."
"All right--all right--drive me crazy because he's got a birthday."
"Leon baby--if you don't stop hollering you'll make yourself sick.
Abrahm, I never saw him like this--he's green--"
"I'll green him. Where is that old feedle from Isadore--that
seventy-five-cents one?"
"I never thought of that! You broke it that time you got mad at Isadore's
lessons. I'll run down. Maybe it's with the junk behind the store. I never
thought of that fiddle. Leon darlink--wait! Mamma'll run down and
look. Wait, Leon, till mamma finds you a fiddle."
The raucous screams stopped then, suddenly, and on their very lustiest
crest, leaving an echoing gash across silence. On willing feet of haste
Mrs. Kantor wound down backward the high, ladder-like staircase that
led to the brass-shop.
Meanwhile to a gnawing consciousness of dinner-hour had assembled
the house of Kantor. Attuned to the intimate atmosphere of the
tenement which is so constantly rent with cry of child, child-bearing,

delirium, delirium tremens, Leon Kantor had howled no impression
into the motley din of things. There were Isadore, already astride his
chair, leaning well into center table, for first vociferous tear at the
four-pound loaf; Esther, old at chores, settling an infant into the high
chair, careful of tiny fingers in lowering the wooden bib.
"Papa, Izzie's eating first again."
"Put down that loaf and wait until your mother dishes up, or you'll get a
potch you won't soon forget."
"Say, pop--"
"Don't 'say, pop' me! I don't want no street-bum freshness from you!"
"I mean, papa, there was an up-town swell in, and she bought one of
them seventy-five-cent candlesticks for the first price."
"_Schlemmil! Chammer!_" said Mr. Kantor, rinsing his hands at the
sink. "Didn't I always tell you it's the first price, times two, when you
see up-town business come in? Haven't I learned it to you often enough
a slummer must pay for her nosiness?"
There entered then, on poor, shuffling feet, Mannie Kantor, so marred
in the mysterious and ceramic process of life that the brain and the soul
had stayed back sooner than inhabit him. Seventeen in years, in the
down upon his face and in growth unretarded by any great nervosity of
system, his vacuity of face was not that of childhood, but rather as if his
light eyes were peering out from some hinterland and wanting so
terribly and so dumbly to communicate what they beheld to brain-cells
closed against himself.
At sight of Mannie, Leon Kantor, the tears still wetly and dirtily down
his cheeks, left off his black, fierce-eyed stare of waiting long enough
to smile, darkly, it is true, but sweetly.
"Giddy-app!" he cried. "Giddy-app!"

And then Mannie, true to habit, would scamper and scamper.
Up out of the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor,
disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm,
triumphant, a violin of one string and a broken back.
"See, Leon--what mamma got! A violin! A fiddle! Look! The bow, too,
I found. It ain't much, baby, but it's a fiddle."
"Aw, ma--that's my old violin. Gimme. I want it. Where'd you find--"
"Hush up, Izzie! This ain't yours no more. See, Leon, what mamma
brought you. A violin!"
"Now, you little chammer, you got a feedle, and if you ever let me hear
you holler again for a feedle, by golly! if I don't--"
From his corner, Leon Kantor reached out, taking the instrument and
fitting it beneath his chin, the bow immediately feeling, surely and
lightly, for string.
"Look, Abrahm, he knows how to hold it! What did I tell you? A child
that never in his life seen a fiddle, except a beggar's on the street!"
Little Esther suddenly cantered down-floor, clapping her chubby hands.
"Lookie--lookie--Leon!"
The baby ceased clattering his spoon against the wooden bib. A silence
seemed to shape itself.
So black and so bristly of head, his little clawlike hands hovering over
the bow, Leon Kantor withdrew a note, strangely round and given up
almost sobbingly from the single string. A note of warm twining
quality, like a baby's finger.
"Leon--darlink!"
Fumbling for string and for notes the instrument could not yield up to

him, the birdlike mouth began once more to open widely and terribly
into the orificial O.
It was then Abrahm Kantor came down with a large hollow resonance
of