Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things. Glass Montague
Читать онлайн книгу.
to Abe and Morris that all Paris was celebrating with a public holiday the arrival of President Wilson.
"It's a funny thing about the French language," Morris said, as she concluded. "Even if you don't understand what the people mean, you could 'most always tell what they've been eating, which if the French people was limited by law to a ton of garlic a month per person, Abe, this lady would go to jail for the rest of her life."
"Attendez!" said the concierge. "Au dessus il yà un monsieur qui parle anglais."
She motioned for them to wait and ascended the stairs to the floor above, where they heard her knock on an office door. Evidently the person who opened it was annoyed by the interruption, for his voice—and to Abe and Morris it was a strangely familiar voice—was raised in angry protest.
"Now listen," said the tenant, "I told you before that I've only got this place temporarily, and as long as I am in here I don't want you to do no cleaning nor nothing, because the air is none too good here as it is, and furthermore—"
He proceeded no farther, however, for Abe and Morris had taken the stairs three at a jump and began to wring his hands effusively upon the principle of any port in a storm.
"Well, well, well, if it ain't Leon Sammet!" Abe cried, and his manner was as cordial as though, instead of their nearest competitor, Leon were Potash & Perlmutter's best customer.
"The English language bounces off of that woman like water from a duck's neck," Leon said, "which every five minutes she comes up here and talks to me in French high speed with the throttle wide open like a racing-car already."
"And the exhaust must be something terrible," Abe said.
"I am nearly frozen from opening the windows to let out her conversation," Leon said, "and especially this morning, when I thought I could get a lot of letter-writing done without being interrupted, on account of the holiday."
"So that's the reason why everything is closed up!" Morris exclaimed.
"But Christmas ain't for pretty near two weeks yet," Abe said.
"What has Christmas got to do with it?" Leon retorted. "To-day is a holiday because President Wilson arrives in Paris."
"And you are working here?" Abe cried.
"Why not?" Leon asked.
"You mean to say that President Wilson is arriving in Paris to-day and you ain't going to see him come in?" Morris exclaimed. "What for an American are you, anyway?"
"Say, for that matter, President Wilson has been arriving in New York hundreds of times in the past four years," Leon said, "and I 'ain't heard that you boys was on the reception committee exactly."
"That's something else again," Abe said. "In New York we've got business enough to do without fooling away our time rubbering at parades, but President Wilson only comes to Paris once in a lifetime."
"And some of the people back home is kicking because he comes to Paris even that often," Leon commented.
"Let 'em kick," Morris declared, "which the way some Americans runs down President Wilson only goes to show that it's an old saying and a true one that there is no profit for a man in his own country, so go ahead and write your letters if you want to, Leon, but Abe and me is going down-town to the Champs Elizas and give the President a couple of cheers like patriotic American sitsons should ought to do."
"In especially," Abe added, "as it is a legal holiday and we wouldn't look at no model garments to-day."
II
SETTLING THE PRELIMINARIES
"After all, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, as he sat with his partner, Morris Perlmutter, in their hotel room on the night after the President's arrival in Paris, "a President is only human, and it seems to me that if they would of given him a chance to go quietly to a hotel and wash up after the trip, y'understand, it would be a whole lot better as meeting him at the railroad depot and starting right in with the speeches."
"What do you mean—give him a chance to wash up?" Morris asked. "Don't you suppose he had a chance to wash up on the train, or do you think him and Mrs. Wilson sat up all night in a day-coach?"
"I don't care if they had a whole section," Abe retorted; "it ain't the easiest thing in the world to step off a train in a stovepipe hat, with a clean shave, after a twenty-hour trip, even if it would of been one of them eighteen-hour limiteds even, and begin right away to get off a lot of schmooes about he don't know how to express the surprise and gratification he feels at such an enthusiastic reception, in especially as he probably lay awake half the night trying to memorize the bigger part of the speech following the words, 'and now, gentlemen, I wouldn't delay you no longer.' So that's why I say if they would have let him go to his hotel first, y'understand, why, then he—"
"But Mr. and Mrs. Wilson ain't putting up at no hotel. They are staying with a family by the name of Murat," Morris explained.
"Relations to the Wilsons maybe?" Abe inquired.
"Not that I heard tell of," Morris replied.
"Well, whoever they are they've got my sympathy," Abe said; "because once, when the Independent Order Mattai Aaron held its annual Grand Lodge meeting in New York, me and Rosie put up the Grand Master, by the name Louis M. Koppelman, used to was Koppelman & Fine, the Fashion Store, Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and the way that feller turned the house upside down, if he would have stayed another week with us, understand me, I would have hired a first-class A number one criminal lawyer to defend me and wired the relations for instructions as to how to ship the body home."
"I bet yer the Murats feel honored to got Mr. and Mrs. Wilson staying with them," Morris said.
"For the first few days maybe," Abe admitted, "but wait till a couple weeks go by! I give them until January 1, 1919, and after that Mr. and Mrs. Murat would be signaling each other to come up-stairs into the maid's room and be holding a few ain't-them-people-got-no-home conversations. Also, Mawruss, for the rest of their married life, Mawruss, every time the tropic of who invited them in the first place comes up at meal-times, y'understand, either Mr. or Mrs. Murat is going to get up from the table and lock themselves up in the bedroom for the remainder of the evening. Am I right or wrong?"
"I wouldn't argue with you," Morris said, "because if I would give you the slightest encouragement you are liable to go to work and figure where Mrs. Murat is kicking to Mr. Murat that she couldn't make out with the housekeeping money while the Wilsons is in Paris, on account of having to buy an extra bottle of Grade B milk every day, or something like that, which you talk like Mr. and Mrs. Wilson was in Paris on a couple of weeks' vacation, whereas the President has come here to settle the peace of the world."
"Did I say he didn't?" Abe protested.
"And while you are sitting here talking a lot of nonsense," Morris went on, "big things is happening, which with all the questions he has got to think about, I bet yer the President oser worries his head about a little affair like board and lodging. Also I read in one of them Paris editions of an American paper that there come over to France on the same steamer with him over three hundred experts—college professors and the like—and them fellers is now staying in Paris at various hotels, which, if that don't justify Mr. Wilson in putting up with a private family, y'understand, I don't know what does!"
"I thought at the time I read about them experts coming over to help the President in the Peace Conference that he was letting himself in for something," Abe observed.
"I bet yer!" Morris said. "And that's where Colonel House was wise when he comes over on a steamer