"You got great times down by Rivington Street this time of year. Not? I remember how my children used to like it with their hornsoserlike it was their own holiday."
"Ja, it's a greatgedinkslike always. Sometimes I say it gets so tough down there I hate my Tillie should come home from the factory after dark, but now with Morris Rinabauer—"
"Mrs. Fischlowitz, I guess you think it's a sin I should say so, but I tell you, when I think of that dirty little street down there and your flat what I lived in the seventeen happiest years of my life with my husband and babies—when I think back on my years in that little flat I—I can just feel myself tremble like all over. That's how happy we were down there, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, when I got a place like this, atRivington Street I wouldn't want I should ever have to look again."
"It's a feeling, Mrs. Fischlowitz, what you—you can't understand until—until you live through so much like me. I—I just want some day you should let me come down, Mrs. Fischlowitz, and visit by you in the old place, eh?"
"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, I can tell you the day what you visit on me down there I am a proud woman. How little we got to offer you know, but if I could fix for you Kaffeeklatsch some day and Kuchen and—"
"In the kitchen you still got the noodle-board yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, where you can mix Kuchen too?"
"I should say so. Always on it I mix my doughs."
"He built it in for me himself, Mrs. Fischlowitz. On hinges so when I was done, up against the wall out of the way I could fold it."
"'Just think,' I say to my children, 'we eat noodles off a board what Simon Meyerburg built with his own hands.' On the whole East Side it's a curiosity."
"Sometimes when I come down by your flat, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I show you how I used to make them for him. Wide ones he liked."
"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, like you could put your hands in dough now!"
"'Mamma,' he used to say—standing in the kitchen door when he came home nights and looking at me maybe rocking Becky there by the stove and waiting supper for him—'Mamma,' he'd say, clapping his hands at me, 'open your eyes wide so I can see what's in 'em.'"
"That such a big man should play like that!"
"'Come in, darling,' I'd say; 'you can't guess from there what we got.'"
"Just think, like just married you were together."
"'Noodles!' he'd holler, and all the time right in back of me, spread out on the board, he could see 'em. I can see him yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, standing there in the kitchen doorway, under the horseshoe what he found when we first landed."
"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, in that flat we 'ain't had nothing but luck, neither, with you so good to us."
"Ach, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, for an old friend like you, what I lived next door to so many years and more as once gave my babies to keep for me when I must go out awhile, I shouldn't do a little yet."
"'Little,' she calls it. With such low rent you give us I'm ashamed to bring the money. Five weeks in the country and milk for my Tillie, until it's back from the grave you snatched her. Even on my back now every stitch what I got on I got to thank you for. Such comfort I got from that black cape!"
"I was just thinking, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with your rheumatism and on such a cold day a cape ain't so good for you, neither. Right up under it the wind can get."
"Warm like toast it is, Mrs. Meyerburg."
"I got a idea, Mrs. Fischlowitz! In that chest over there by the wall I got yet a jacket from Rivington Street. Right away it got too tight for me. Like new it is, with a warm beaver collar. At auction one day he got it for me. Like a top it will fit you, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
"No, no, please, Mrs. Meyerburg. It just looks like every time what I come you got to give me something. Ashamed it makes me. Please you shouldn't."
But in the pleasant frenzy of sudden decision Mrs. Meyerburg was on her knees beside a carved chest, burrowing her arm beneath folded garments, the high smell of camphor exuding.
"Only yesterday in my hand I had it. There! See! Just your size!" She held the creased garment out from her by each shoulder, blowing the nap of the beaver collar.
"Please, no, Mrs. Meyerburg. Such a fine coat maybe you can wear it yourself. No, I don't mean that, when you got such grander ones; but for me, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's too fine to take. Please!"
Standing there holding it thrust enthusiastically forward, a glaze suddenly formed over Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and she laid her cheek to the brown fur collar, a tear dropping to it.
"You'm right, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I—I can't give this up. I—he—a coat he bought once for me at auction when—heosercould afford it. I—you must excuse me, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
"That's right, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a remembrance you should keep it."
Then brightening: "But I got in the next room, Mrs. Fischlowitz, a coat better as this for you. Lined all in squirrel-skin they call it. One day by myself I bought it, and how my Becky laughs and won't even let me wear it in automobile. I ain't stylish enough, she says."
With an inarticulate medley of sounds Mrs. Fischlowitz held up a hand of remonstrance. "But—"
"Na, na, just a minute." And on the very wings of her words Mrs. Meyerburg was across the room, through the ornate door of an ornate boudoir, and out presently with the garment flung across her arm. "Na, here put it on."
"Ach, such a beau-tiful coat!"
"So! Let me help!"
They leaned together, their faces, which the years had passed over none too lightly, close and eager. Against the beaver collar Mrs. Fischlowitz's hand lay fluttering.
"Put your hands in the pockets, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Deep, eh?"
"Finer you can believe me as I ever had in my life before. I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, a woman like you should get first place in heaven and you should know how many on the East Side there is says the same. I—I brought you your rent, Mrs. Meyerburg. You must excuse how late, but my Sollie—"
"Ja, ja."
Eleven! Twelve! Twelve-fifty! Mrs. Fischlowitz counted it out carefully from a small purse tucked in her palm, snapping it carefully shut over the remaining coins.
"Thank you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. You should never feel hurried. Mr.Oppenheimer will mail you a receipt."
"I guess now I must be going, Mrs. Meyerburg—to-night I promised mySollie we have cheese-Kuchen for supper."
"Always I used to make it with a short crust for my Isadore. How he loved it!"
"Just again, Mrs. Meyerburg, I want you should let me say how—how this is the finest present what I ever had in my life. I can tell you from just how soft it is on me, I can tell how it must feel to ride in automobile."
A light flashed in brilliance up into Mrs. Meyerburg's face. "Mrs.Fischlowitz!"
"Ja, Mrs. Meyerburg?"
"I tell you what! I—this afternoon my Becky, Mrs. Fischlowitz, she—she ain't so well and like always can't take with me a ride in the Park. Such—such a cold that girl has got. How I should like it, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you would be so kind to—to take with me my drive in—in your new coat."
"Ja, ja, I know, Mrs. Fischlowitz, cheese Kuchen should first get cold before supper, but if you could just an hour ride by me a little? If you would be so kind, Mrs. Fischlowitz!"
Diffidence ran trembling along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, as if she dared not venture too far upon a day blessed with tasks. "I got always so—so much time to myself now'days, Mrs. Fischlowitz, sometimes I—I get maybe a—a little lonesome."
"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, you don't want to be bothered with such—such a person like me when you ride so grand through the Park."
"Fit like a fiddle it will make you feel, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Button up tight that collar and right away we start. Please, right next to you, will you press that third button? That means we go right down and find outside the car waiting for us."
"But, Mrs. Meyerburg—"
"See, just like you, I put on a coat on the inside fur. This way, Mrs.Fischlowitz. Careful, your foot!"
In the great lower hall full of Tudor gloom the carved stone arches dropping in rococo stalactites from the ceiling, and a marble staircase blue-veined as a delicate woman's hand winding up to an oriole window, a man-servant swung back two sets of trellised doors; bowed them noiselessly shut again.
The quick cold of December bit them at the threshold. Opposite lay the Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns, the sunlight hard against their boles. More sunlight lay cold and glittering down the length of the most façaded avenue in the world and on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars and their nickel-plated snouts and plate-glass sides.
Women, with heads too haughty to turn them right or left, moved past in closed cars that were perfumed and upholstered like jewel-boxes; the joggly smartness of hansom cabs, their fair fares seeing and being seen behind the wooden aprons and their frozen laughter coming from their lips in vapor! On the broad sidewalks women in low shoes that defied the wind, and men in high hats that the wind defied; nursemaids trim as deaconesses, and their charges the beautiful exotic children of pure milk and pure sunshine!
One of these deaconess-like nursemaids, walking out with a child whose black curls lay in wide sprays on each shoulder, detached herself from the up-town flow and crossed to the trellised threshold.
"Good afternoon, Madam Meyerburg. Mademoiselle,dites bonjour à madame votre grand'maman."
"Bonjour, grand'maman."
In the act of descending her steps, Mrs. Meyerburg's hands flew outward. "Ach, du little Aileen. Come, Aileen, to grandma. Mrs. Fischlowitz, this is Felix's little girl. You remember Felix—such a beautiful bad little boy he was what always used to fight your Sollie underneath the sink."
"Gott in Himmel, so this is Felix's little girl!"
"Ja, this is already his second. Come, Aileen, to grandma and say good afternoon to the lady."
The maid guided the small figure forward by one shoulder. "Dites bonjour à madame, Mademoiselle Aileen."
"Bonjour, madame."
"Not a word of English she can speak yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I tell you already my grandchildren are so smart not even their language I can understand.Aberfor why such a child should only talk so in her own country she can't be understood, I don't know."
"I guess, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's style now'days that you shouldn't know your own language."
"Come by grandma to-morrow, Aileen, and upstairs I got in the little box sweet cakes like grandma always keeps for you. Eh, baby?"
"Say thank you, grandmother."
"Merci bien, grand'maman."
And they were off into the stream again, the small white leggings at a smart trot.
At the curb a low-bodied, high-power car, with the top flung back and the wind-shield up, lay sidled against the coping.
"Get right in, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Burk, put under Mrs. Fischlowitz's both feet a heater."
A second man, in too-accentuated livery of mauve and astrakhan, flung open the wide door. A glassed-in chauffeur, in more mauve and astrakhan, threw in his clutch. The door slammed. Mrs. Fischlowitz breathed deep and grasped the nickel-plated door handle. Mrs. Meyerburg leaned out, her small plumes wagging.
"Burk, since Miss Becky ain't along to-day, I don't want in front no second man."
"Yes, madam."
"I want instead you should take the roadster and call after Mrs. Weinstein. You know, down by Twenty-third Street, the fourth floor back."
"Yes, madam."
"I want you should say, Burk, that Mrs. Meyerburg says her and her daughter should take off from their work an hour for a drive wherever they say you should take them. And tell her, Burk, she should make for me five dozens more them paper carnations. Right away I want you should go."
"Yes, madam."
They nosed slowly into the stream of the Avenue.
"Always Becky likes there should be two men stuck up in front there. I always say to look only at the backs of my servants I don't go out riding for."
Erect and as if to the fantastic requirements of the situation sat Mrs. Fischlowitz, her face of a thousand lines screwed to maintain the transiency of a great moment.
"That I should live, Mrs. Meyerburg, to see such a sight like this! Inthe thirty years I been in this country not but once have I walked upFifth Avenue—that time when my Tillie paraded in the shirtwaist strike.I—I can tell you I'm proud to live to see it this way from automobile."
"Lean back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, so you be more comfortable. That's all right; you can't hurt them bottles. My Becky likes to have fancy touches all over everything. Gold-tops bottles she has to have yet by her. I can tell you, though, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if I do say it myself, when that girl sits up in here like a picture she looks. How they stare you should see."
"Such a beau-ti-ful girl! I can tell you for her a prince ain't good enough. Ach, what a pleasure it must be, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a mother to know if her child wants heaven she can nearly get it for her. I can tell you that must be the greatest pleasure of all for you, Mrs. Meyerburg, to give to your daughter everything just like she wants it."
"Ja, ja," said with little to indicate mental ferment.
They were in the Park, with the wind scampering through the skeins of bare tree branches. The lake lay locked in ice, skaters in the ecstasy of motion lunging across it. Beneath the mink lap-robe Mrs. Fischlowitz snuggled deeper and more lax.
"Gott in Himmel, I tell you this is better as standing over my cheese Kuchen."
"Always I used to let my cheese drip first the night before. Right through a cheese-cloth sack hung from a nail what my husband drove in for me under the window-sill."
"Right that same nail is there yet, Mrs. Meyerburg.Oserwe should touch one thing!"
"I can tell you it's a great comfort, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I got such a tenant as you in there."
"When you come to visit me, Mrs. Meyerburg, right to the last nail like you left it you find it. Not even from the kitchen would I let my Sollie take down the old clothes-line what you had stretched across one end."
"Ach, how many times in rainy days I used that line. It's a good little line I bet yet. Not?"
"Ja." But with no corresponding kit of emotions in Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice. She was still breathing deep the buoyant ether of the moment, and beneath the ingratiating warmth of fur utterly soothed. "Gott," she said, "I wish my sister-in-law, Hanna, with all her fine airs up where she lives on One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street, could see me now.Osershe could stare and stare, and bow and bow, and past her I would roll like—like a rolling-pin."
From the gold-topped bottle nearest her came a long insidious whiff of frangipani. She dared to lean toward it, sniffing.
"Such a beautiful smell." And let her eyes half close.
"You market your meat yet on Fridays down by old Lavinsky's, Mrs.Fischlowitz?"
"Ja, just like always, only his liver ain't so good like it used to be.I can tell you that's a beau-ti-ful smell."
An hour they rode purringly over smooth highways and for a moment alongside the river, but there the wind was edged with ice and they were very presently back into the leisurely flow of the Avenue. From her curves Mrs. Fischlowitz unbent herself slowly.
"No, no, Mrs. Fischlowitz—you stay in."
"Ach, I get out here at your house, too, and take the street-cars. I—"
"No, no. James takes you all the way home, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I get out because my Becky likes I should get home early and get dressed up for dinner."
"But Mrs. Meyerburg—"
"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by, Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."
Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.
"Madame!"
"Ja."
"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so well. Three spells of fainting, madame."
"Therese!"
"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come—"
With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out for the balustrade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.
"Madame?"
When Mrs. Meyerburg spoke finally it was as if those seconds had been years, sapping more than their share of life from her. "I—now I don't go up, Therese. After a while I come, but—but not now. I want, though, you should go right away up to Miss Becky with a message."
"Oui, madame."
"I want you should tell her for me, Therese, that—that to-morrow New-Year's dinner with the family all here, I—I want she should invite the Marquis Rosencrantz. That everything is all right. Right away I want you should go and tell her, Therese!"
"Oui, madame."
Up in her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap at the door. She was there and waiting.
"Kemp, I want you should away take down this roll to Goldfinger's office in the Syndicate Building. Just say Mrs. Meyerburg says everything is all right—to go ahead."
"Yes, madam." And he closed the door after him, holding the knob a moment to save the click.
* * * * *
In a Tudor dining-hall, long as the banquet-room of a thane, faced in thrice-weathered oak and designed by an architect too eminent to endure interference—except when Miss Meyerburg had later and at her own stealthy volition installed a Pompeian colored window above the high Victorian fireplace—the wide light of a brilliant New-Year's day lay against leaded window-panes, but shut out by thick hangings.
Instead, the yellow light from a ceiling sown with starlike bulbs lay over that room. At each end of the table, so that the gracious glow fell full upon the small figure of Mrs. Meyerburg at one end and upon the grizzled head of Mr. Ben Meyerburg at the other, two braces of candles burned softly, crocheting a flickering design upon the damask.
From the foot of that great table, his place by precedence of years, Mr. Ben Meyerburg rose from his Voltairian chair, holding aloft a wineglass like a torch.
"Masseltov, ma," he said, "and just like we drank to the happy couple who have told us the good news to-day, so now I drink to the grandest little mother in the world.Masseltov, ma." And he drained his glass, holding it with fine disregard back over one shoulder for refilling.
Round that table Mrs. Meyerburg's four remaining sons, towering almost twice her height, rose in a solemn chorus that was heavier than their libations of wine.
"Masseltov, ma."
"Ach, boys, my sons,ich—ich—danke." She was quivering now in the edge of tears and grasped tightly at the arms of her chair.
"Masseltov, ma," said Rebecca Meyerburg, raising her glass and her moist eyes shining above it. The five daughters-in-law followed immediate suit. At Miss Meyerburg's left the Marquis Rosencrantz, with pointed features and a silhouette sharp as a knife edge, raised his glass and his waxed mustache and drank, but silently and over a deep bow.
"Mamma—mother dear, the marquis drinks to you."
Mrs. Meyerburg turned upon him with a great mustering of amiability and safely withdrawn now from her brink of tears. "I got now six sons what can drink to my health—not, Marquis?"
"She says, Marquis," translated Miss Meyerburg, ardently, to the sharp profile, "that now she has six sons to drink to her health."
"Madame me fait trop d'honneur."
"He says, mamma, that it is too great an honor to be your son."
From her yesterday's couch of mental travail Miss Meyerburg had risen with a great radiance turping out its ravages. She was Sheban in elegance, the velvet of her gown taken from the color of the ruby on her brow, and the deep-white flesh of her the quality of that same velvet with the nap raised.
"He wants to kiss your hand, ma. Give it to him. No, the right one, dearie."
"I—I'm much obliged, Marquis. I—well, for one little old woman like me, I got now six sons and six daughters, each one big enough to carry me off under his arm. Not?"
She was met with immediate acclaim from a large blond daughter-in-law, her soft, expansive bosom swathed in old lace caught up with a great jeweled lizard.
"Little old nothing, ma. I always say to Isadore you've got more energy yet than the rest of the family put together."
"Ach, Dora, always you children like to make me think I been young yet."
But she was smilingly tremulous and pushed herself backward in her heavy throne-like chair. A butler sprang, lifting it gently from her.
Immediately the great, disheveled table, brilliantly littered with crystal, frumpled napkins, and a great centerpiece of fruits and flowers, was in the confusion of disorganization.
Daughters-in-law and husbands moved up toward a pair of doors swung heavily backward by two servants.
Mrs. Isadore Meyerburg pushed her real-lace bodice into place and adjusted the glittering lizard. "Believe me," she said, exuding a sigh and patting her bosom on the swell of that deep breath, "I ate too much, but if I can't break my diet for the last engagement in the family, and to nobility at that, when will I do it?"
"I should say so," replied Mrs. Rudolph Meyerburg, herself squirming to rights in an elaborate bodice and wielding an unostentatious toothpick behind the cup of her hand; "like I told Roody just now, if I take on a pound to-day he can blame his sister."
"Say, I wish you'd look at the marquis kissing ma's hand again, will you?"
"Look at ma get away with it too. You've got to hand it to them French, they've got the manners all right. No wonder our swell Trixie tags after them."
"Say, Becky shouldn't get manners yet with her looks and five hundred thousand thrown in. I bet, if the truth is known, and since ma is going to live over there with them, that there's a few extra thousand tacked on too."
"Not if the court knows it! Like I told Roody this morning, she's bringing a title into the family, but she's taking a big wad of the Meyerburg money out of the country too."
"It is so, ain't it?"
Around her crowded Mrs. Meyerburg's five sons.
"Come with us, ma. We got a children's party up in the ballroom forAileen this afternoon, and then Trixie and I are going to motor down toSheepshead for the indoor polo-match. Come, ma."
"No, no, Felix. I want for myself rest this afternoon. All you children go and have your good times. I got home more as I can do, and maybe company, too."
"Tell you what, ma, come with Dora and me and the kids. She wants to go out to Hastings this afternoon to see her mother. Come with us, ma. The drive will do you good."
"No, no, Izzy. When I ride too much in the cold right away up in my ribs comes the sciatica again."
Miss Meyerburg bent radiant over her parent. "Mother," she whispered, her throat lined with the fur of tenderness, "it's reception-day out at that club, and all the cliques will be there, and I want—"
"Sure, Becky, you and the marquis should drive out. Take the big car, but tell James he shouldn't be so careless driving by them curves out there by the golf-links."
"But, ma dear, you come, too, and—"
"No, no, Becky; to-day I got not time."
"But, ma—ma, you ain't mad at me, dear? You can see now for yourself, can't you, dear, what a big thing it is for the family and how you—"
"Yes, yes, Becky. Look, go over by your young man. See how he stands there and not one word what Ben is hollering so at him can he understand."
Across the room, alongside a buffet wrought out of the powerful Jacobean period, Mr. Ben Meyerburg threw a violent contortion.
"Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?" he shouted, the apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.
"Pardon?"
"Smoke? Do you smoke? Smokez-vous? Cigarez-vous? See, like this. Fume.Blow. Do you smoke? Smokez-vous?"
"Pardon?"said the marquis, bowing low.
* * * * *
In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg's bedchamber, the buzz of departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it as if an echo or so still lingered.
Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among a page of figures. After a while the finger ceased to move across the page, but lay passive midway down a column. After another while she slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past. Resuming her beat up and down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and not unlike the tune of quinine singing in the head.
The ormolu clock struck, and from various parts of the house musical repetitions. A French tinkle from her daughter's suite across the hall; from somewhere more remote the deep, leisurely tones of a Nuremberg floor clock. Finally Mrs. Meyerburg dropped into the overstuffed chair beside her window, relaxing into the attitude her late years had brought her, head back, hands stretched out along the chair sides, and full of rest. An hour she sat half dozing, and half emerging every so often with a start, then lay quietly looking into space, her eyes quiet and the erstwhile brilliancy in them gone out like a light.
Presently she sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded across the carpet. From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it. From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet grayish with age and the bow not perky. Her movements were brief and full of decision. When she opened her door it was slyly and with a quick, vulpine glance up and down the grave quiet of the halls. After a cocked attitude of listening and with an incredible springiness almost of youth, Mrs. Meyerburg was down a rear staircase, through a rear hallway, and, unseen and unheard, out into the sudden splendor of a winter's day, the side street quiet before her.
"Gott!" said Mrs. Meyerburg, audibly, breathing deep and swinging into a smart lope eastward. Two blocks along, with her head lifted and no effort at concealment, she passed her pantry-boy walking out with a Swedish girl whose cheeks were bursting with red. He eyed his mistress casually and without recognition.
At Third Avenue she boarded a down-town street-car, a bit winded from the dive across cobbles, but smiling. Within, and after a preliminary method of paying fare new and confusing to her, she sat back against the rattly sides, her feet just lifted off the floor. She could hardly keep back the ejaculations as old streets and old memories swam into view.
"Look at the old lay-dee talking to her-sel-uph," sang an urchin across the aisle.
"Shut up," said the mother, slapping him sidewise.
At one of the most terrific of these down-town streets Mrs. Meyerburg descended. Beneath the clang and bang of the Elevated she stood confused for the moment and then, with her sure stride regained, swung farther eastward.
Slitlike streets flowed with holiday copiousness, whole families abroad on foot—mothers swayback with babies, and older children who ran ahead shouting and jostling. Houses lean and evil-looking marched shoulder to shoulder for blocks, no gaps except intersecting streets. Fire-escapes ran zigzag down the meanest of them. Women shouted their neighborhood jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg smiled as she hurried.
Midway in one of these blocks and without a pretense of hesitancy she turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back full span.
"Gott in Himmel, Mrs. Meyerburg! Mrs. Meyerburg!Kommen Sie herein. Mrs. Meyerburg, for why you didn't let me know? To think not one of my children home and to-day a holiday, my place not in order—"
"Now, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you go to one little bit of trouble, right away I got no more pleasure. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Ach, if you 'ain't got on your pantry shelfs just the same paper edge like my Roody used to cut out for me."
"Come, come, Mrs. Meyerburg, in parlor where—"
"Go way mit you. Ain't the kitchen where I spent seventeen years, the best years in my life, good enough yet? Parlor yet she wants to take me."
An immediate negligée of manner enveloped her like an old wrapper. A certain tulle of bewilderment had fallen. She was bold, even dictatorial.
"Don't fuss round me so much, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Just like old times I want it should seem. Like maybe I just dropped in on you a lump of butter to borrow. No, no, don't I know where to hang mine own bonnet in mine own house? Ach, the same coat nails what he drove in himself!"
"To think, Mrs. Meyerburg, all my children gone out for a good time this afternoon, my Tillie with Morris Rinabauer, who can't keep his eyes off her—"
"How polished she keeps her stove, just like I used to."
"Right when you knocked I was thinking, well, I clean up a bit. Please,Mrs. Meyerburg, let me fix you right away a cup coffee—"
"Right away, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you begin to make fuss over me, I don't enjoy it no more. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, right here in this old rocker-chair by the range let me, please, sit quiet a minute."
In the wooden rocker beside the warm stove she sat down quietly, lapping her hands over her waist-line.
"Gott in Himmel,"sitting well away from the chair-back and letting her eyes travel slowly about the room, "just like it was yesterday; just like yesterday." And fell to reciting the phrase softly.
"Ja, ja," said Mrs. Fischlowitz, concealing an unwashed litter of dishes beneath a hastily flung cloth. "I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, my house ain't always this dirty; only to-day not—"
"Just like it was yesterday," said Mrs. Meyerburg, musing through a tangle of memories. She fell to rocking. A narrow band of sunshine lay across the bare floor, even glinted off a pan or two hung along the wall over the sink. Along that same wall hung a festoon of red and green peppers and a necklace of garlic. Toward the back of the range a pan of hot water let off a lazy vapor. Beside the scuttle a cat purred and fought off sleep.
"Already I got the hot water, Mrs. Meyerburg, to make you a cup coffee if—"
"Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, let me rest like this. In a minute I want you should take me all through in the children's room and—"
"If I had only known it how I could have cleaned for you."
"Ach, my noodle-board over there! How grand and white you keep it."
"Ja, I—"
"Mrs. Fischlowitz!"
"Yes, Mrs. Meyerburg?"
"Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you want to—to give me a real treat I tell you what. I tell you what!"
"Ja, ja, Mrs. Meyerburg; anything what I can do I—"
"I want you should let me mix you on that old board a mess noodles!"
"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, your hands and that grand black-silk dress!"
"For why not, Mrs. Fischlowitz? Wide ones, like he used to like. Just for fun, please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-morrow I send you two barrels flour for what I use up."
"But, Mrs. Meyerburg, I should make for you noodles, not you for me—"
"It's good I should learn, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to get back my hand in such things. Maybe you don't believe me, but I ain't so rich like I was yesterday when you seen me, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-day I'm a poor woman, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with—"
Mrs. Fischlowitz threw out two hands in a liberal gesture. "Such a good woman she is! In my house where I'm poor she wants, too, to play like she's a poor woman. That any one should want to play such a game with themselves! Noodles she wants to make for me, instead I should wait on her like she was a queen."
"It takes me back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to old times. Please, Mrs.Fischlowitz, to-morrow I send you two barrels."
"Like you ain't welcome to everything what I got in the house. All right, noodles you should make and always I keep 'em for remembrance. Just let me run down to cellar and bring you up flour. No, no, you set there and let me fold down the board for you. Rock there, Mrs. Meyerburg, till I come up with the flour. Eggs plenty I got."
"And a little butter, Mrs. Fischlowitz, the size of an egg, and always a pinch of salt."
"The neighbors should see this! Mrs. Simon Meyerburg making for me noodles in my kitchen!" She was off and down a small rear stairway, a ribbon of ejaculations trailing back over one shoulder.
In her chair beside the warm range Mrs. Meyerburg sat quiescent, her head back against the rest, eyes half closed, and slanting toward the kitchen door. Against the creaking floor her chair swayed rhythmically. Tears ran down to meet the corners of her mouth, but her lips were looped up in a smile.
The cat regarded her through green eyes slit down their middle. Toward the rear of the stove the pan of water seethed.
Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg leaned forward with a great flash across her face. "Simon," she cried, leaning to the door and stretching forward quavering arms. "Simon, my darling!" She leaned further, the rims of her eyes stretched wide. "Simon—come, my darling. Simon!"
Into the opposite doorway, smirched with flour and a white pail of it dangling, flashed Mrs. Fischlowitz, breathing hard from her climb.
"What, Mrs. Meyerburg, you want something?"
"Simon," cried Mrs. Meyerburg, her voice lifted in a paean of welcome; "come, my darling, come in. Come!" And she tried to rise, but sat back, quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat.
Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice, and she let fall her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill. "Mrs. Meyerburg, there ain't nobody there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs. Meyerburg!"
"Simon!"
"Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Nobody's there!Ach—help—doctor—Tillie!"
Back against Mrs. Fischlowitz's frenzied arms lay Mrs. Meyerburg, very gray, her hand against her left breast and down toward the ribs.
"Gott! Gott! Please, Mrs. Meyerburg—Mrs. Meyerburg!" dragging back one of the weary eyelids and crying out at what she saw there. "Help doctor—Tillie—quick—quick—"
She could not see, poor dear, that into those locked features was crystallized the great ecstasy of reunion.
The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn. Such social sores—the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour—such sores may run and fester, but not to sicken public eyes.
For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men's hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose draymen's backs are bent and whose salesgirls' feet are swollen plaster each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering merchandise.
In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.
Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex, fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.
Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.
The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven, predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men's hands involuntarily close into tight fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and curse their God when the reckoning comes.
Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.
"If the rush hadn't quit right this minute I—I couldn't have lasted it out till closing, honest I couldn't."
"Poor tired little filly!"
"Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram's office they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin."
"Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll, it ain't every little girl I'd coax like this."
"I—Jimmie—I—"
"I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas tree—a poor little baby doll like you!"
"The kid, too, Jimmie, I—oughtn't!"
"Didn't you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a whippersnapper? Don't be a quitter Doll, didn't you?"
"Yes, but—"
"A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain't nothing too good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night—eh, Doll?"
"Yes—Jimmie!"
"Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!"
"I—can't—go, Jimmie, him layin' there, and the kid and all!"
"Didn't I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn't you glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that you lemme blow you—wasn't you?"
"Yes, Jimmie, but—"
"Didn't I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you even after the big show was over, and wouldn't I have blown you to yellow instead of the red if you hadn't been a little cheap skate and wanted the red? Didn't I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn't I blow you for proper?"
"It was swell, Jimmie!"
"Well, I'm going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It'sChristmas Eve and—"
"Yes, it's Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he—he had one of his bad hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she—she's too little to know she's getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee—a—a kid oughtta have something—a tree or something."
He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. "It'syououghtta have something, Doll."
"I—I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got home, he—he was laying there like a rag."
"I like you, Doll. I'm going to blow in the stack of my winnings on you—that's how much I like you. There ain't nothing I wouldn't do for a little filly like you."
"Jimmie!"
"There ain't!"
"Aw!"
"You wouldn't be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn't sneaked off two years ago and done it while I wasn't looking. Nearly two whole years you lemme lose track of you! That ain't a nice way to treat a fellow that likes you."
"We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the department two months ago, after he got so bad. 'Ain't I told you how things just kinda happened?"
"I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in the gents' furnishing that wasn't wide from nothing but padding. I could have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could have told you."
"Jimmie, ain't you ashamed! Jimmie!"
"Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain't real on that true-blue stuff, Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you're bustin' to lemme blow you. That's what you get, sweetness, when you don't ask your Uncle Fuller first. If you'd have asked me I could have told you he was weak in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you'd be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and supportin' a—"
"You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you—"
"Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a rose—a whole bouquet of them."
"You—you don't know nothing about him. He—he never knew he had a lung till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents' furnishing over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him."
"Sure, he didn't, Doll; no harm meant. That's right, stand by him. I like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me you'd have married him if he'd had three bum lungs, that crazy you was!"
"Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn't sound we—I wouldn't be in this mess, I—we—I wouldn't!"
Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.
"Poor little filly!"
More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of her self-compassion. "You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain't cryin', only I'm dog tired from nursin' and drudgin', drudgin' and nursin'."
"Hard luck, little un!"
"Him layin' there and me tryin' to—to make things meet. You gotta excuse me, Jimmie, I'm done up."
"That's why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can't bear to see a little filly like you runnin' with the odds dead agin her."
"You been swell to me, Jimmie."
"The sky's my limit, Doll."
"Maybe it wasn't right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him layin' there, and the kid and all, but a girl's gotta have something, don't she, Jimmie? A girl that's got on her shoulders what I got has gotta have something—a laugh now and then!"
"That's the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to."
"Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my hat for trimming the other night, just like they didn't cost nothing—honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole night's nursin'. Honest, I felt like in the old days before—before I was married."
"Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll—if you hadn't pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage—there ain't nothing I wouldn't have done for you."
"I—I didn't mean nothing, Jimmie."
"I ain't sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did, even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll, you!"
"Aw—you!"
"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen. I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"
"I—I can't, Jimmie. I—'S-s-s-s-h!"
A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge, patient.
Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds, then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand—light, lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God's own loom, from God's own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.
Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her throat as if to choke its gasp.
"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"
Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.
"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you and me!"
"Snowin'!"
"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab by the hour. I'm—"
"Snowin'!"
She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.
"He—he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if—if we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South before the first one—South, where the sun shines and he could feel it clear through him, he—Oh, ain't I—ain't I in a mess!"
"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and throbbing throat. "Poor little filly, all winded!"
"I—oh, I—"
"There's the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I'll buy you a taxicab. Hear it—there's the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll! Merry Christmas!"
A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd turned about, faced, thinned, died.
Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry. "Snowin'!"
"A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll. The kind you read about."
"It—it don't mean nothing to me, but—"
"Sure, it does; I'm goin' to blow you right, Doll. Half the money is yourn, anyways. You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much as me, girlie. If I hadn't named that filly after you she'd 'a' been left at the post."
"You—you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me. There ain't a girl ever went out with you that you 'ain't named one after. You—you never had the right to!"
"I took it, kiddo, 'cause I like you! Gad! I like you! Nix, it ain't every little girl I'd name one of my stable after. 'Violet!'—some little pony that, odds ag'in her and walks off with the money."
"I—honest, I sometimes—I—just wish I was dead!"
"No, you don't, Doll. You know you just wanna go to-night, but you 'ain't got the nerve. I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that'll leave any Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post. Gad! look out there, will you? I'm going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm if it costs every cent the filly won for us!"
Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water when summer's moment is bluest. Her lips, that were meant to curve, straightened in a line of decision.
"I'll go, Jimmie."
"That's the goods!"
"A girl's just gotta have something to hold herself together, don't she? It—it ain't like the kid and Harry was layin' awake for me—last Tuesday they was both asleep when I got home. They don't let each other get lonesome, and Harry—he—There ain't nothing much for me to do round home."
"Now you're talkin' the English language, Doll."
"I'll go, Jimmie."
He extended his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across the other.
"Sure, you're going! A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed, sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin' but trouble for your Christmas stockin'. A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!"
"A girl's gotta have something! You knew me before I was married,Jimmie, and there never was a girl more full of life."
"Sure I knew you. But you was a little cold-storage queen and turned me down."
"He—Harry, he never asks me nothing when I come in, and the kid's asleep, anyways."
"Color up there a little, Doll. Where I'm going to take you there ain't nothing but live ones. I'm going to take you to a place where the color scheme of your greenbacks has got to be yellow. Color up there, Doll. You ain't going dead, are you?"
She stretched open her eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a tendril and curled round the brim.
"Going dead! Say, my middle name is Speed! It's like Harry used to tell me when we wasn't no farther along in the marriage game than his sneaking over here from the gents' furnishing three times a day to price bill-folders—he used to say that I was a live wire before Franklin flew his kite."
"Doll!"
"I ain't tired, Jimmie. Not countin' the year and a half I was home before Harry took sick, I been through the Christmas hell just six times. The seventh don't mean nothing in my life. I've seen 'em behind these very counters cursing Christmas with tears in their eyes and spending their merry holiday in bed trying to get some of the soreness out. It takes more than one Christmas to put me out of business."
"Here, lemme tuck that curl in for you, Doll."
"Quit!"
"Doll!"
"Quit, I say!"
"Color up there, girlie. Look live!"
She rubbed her palms briskly across her cheeks to generate a glow, and they warmed to color as peaches blush to the kiss of the sun.
"See!"
"Pink as cherries!"
"That's right, kid me along."
"Tried to dodge me to-night, didn't you, kitten?"
"I—I didn't think I ought to go to-night."
"It's a good thing my feelings ain't hurt easy."
"Honest, Jimmie, I didn't try to dodge you. I—I only thought, with the girls here gabbling so much about last Tuesday night and all, it wouldn't look right. And he had a spell last night again, and the doctor said we—we ought to get him South before the first snow—South, where the sun shines. But he's got as much chance of gettin' South as I have of climbing the South Pole!"
"A pretty little thing like you climbing the South Pole! I'd be there with field-glasses all-righty!"
"I—I went up and talked and begged and begged and talked to old Ingram up at the Aid Society to-day, but the old skinflint says they can't do nothing for an employee after he's been out of his department more'n eight weeks, and—and Harry's been out twelve. He says the Society can't do nothing no more, much less send him South. Just like a machine he talked. I could have killed him!"
"Poor little filly! I was that surprised when I seen you was back in the store again! There ain't been a classy queen behind the counter since you left."
"Aw, Jimmie, no wonder the girls say you got your race-horses beat for speed."
"That's me!"
Aisles thinned and the store relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of trampled débris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left their pickings—a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of Christmastide, and reeking with foolish sweat.
"Button up there, Doll, and come on; it's a swell night for Eskimos."
Mr. Fitzgibbons folded over his own double-breasted coat, fitted his flat-brimmed derby hat on his well-oiled hair, drew a pair of gray suede gloves over his fingers, and hooked his slender cane to his arm.
"Ready, Doll?"
"The girls, Jimmie—look at 'em rubbering and gabbling like ducks!It—it ain't like I could do any good at home, it ain't."
"I'd be the first to ship you there if you could. You know me, Doll!"
His words deadened her doubts like a soporific. She glanced about for the moment at the Dionysian spectacle of the Mammoth Store ravished to chaos by the holiday delirium; at the weary stream of shoppers and workers bending into the storm as they reached the doors; at the swift cancan of snowflakes dancing whitely and swiftly without; at Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons standing attendant. Then she smiled.
"Come on, Jimmie!"
"Come on yourself, Doll!"
Snow beat in their faces like shot as they emerged into the merry night.
She shivered in her thin coat. "Gee! ain't it cold!"
"Not so you can notice it. Watch me, Doll!" He hailed a passing cab with a double flourish of cane and half lifted her in, his fingers closing tight over her arm. "Little Doll, now I got you! And we understand one another, don't we, Doll?"
"Yes, Jimmie."
She leaned back, quiescent, nor did his hold of her relax. A fairy etching of snow whitened the windows and wind-shield, and behind their security he leaned closer until she could feel the breath of his smile.
"Doll, we sure understand each other, don't we, sweetness? Eh? Answer me, sweetness, don't we? Eh? Eh?"
"Yes, Jimmie."
Over the city bells tolled of Christmas.
* * * * *
The gentle Hestia of Christmas Eve snug beside her hearth, with little stockings dangling like a badly matched row of executed soldiers, the fire sinking into embers to facilitate the epic descent from the chimney, the breathing of dreaming children trembling for their to-morrow—this gentle Hestia of a thousand, thousand Christmas Eves was not on the pay-roll of Maxwell's thousand-dollar-a-week cabaret.
A pandering management, with its finger ever on the thick wrist of its public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and mistletoe commingling with the grape.
An electric fountain shot upward its iridescent spray, now green, now orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, white limbed, bathed in light.
On the topmost of a flight of marble steps a woman sang of love who had defiled it. At candle-shaded tables thick tongues wagged through thick aromas and over thick foods, and as the drama was born rhythmic out of the noisy dithyramb, so through these heavy discords rose the tink of Venetian goblets, thin and pure—the reedy music of grinning Pan blowing his pipes.
Rose-colored light lay like a blush of pleasure over a shining table spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs. Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder. Following her Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons, smiling.
"Here, sit on this side of the table, Doll, so you can see the big show."
"Gee!"
"It's the best table in the room to see the staircase dancing."
"Gee!"
"Told you I was going to show you a classy time to-night, didn't I,Doll?"
"Yeh, but—but I ain't dressed for a splash like this, Jimmie, I—I ain't."
"Say, they know me round here, Doll. They know I'd fall for a pair of eyes like yourn, if you was doing time on a rock-pile and I had to bring you in stripes."
"I'm—a—sight!"
"If you wasn't such a little pepper-box I'd blow you to a feather or two."
"Ain't no pepper-box!"
"You used to be, Doll. Two years back there wasn't a girl behind the counter ever gimme the cold storage like you did. I liked your nerve, too, durned if I didn't!"
"I—I only thought you was guyin'."
"I 'ain't forgot, Doll, the time I asked you out to dinner one night when you was lookin' pretty blue round the gills, and you turned me down so hard the whole department gimme the laugh. It's a good thing I 'ain't got no hard feelings."
"Honest, Jimmie, I—"
"That was just before you stole the march on me with the Charley from the gents' furnishing. I ain't holding it against you, Doll, but you gotta be awful nice to me to make up for it, eh?"
A shower of rose-colored rain from the fountain threw its soft blush across her face.
"Aw, Jimmie, don't rub it in! Ain't I tryin' hard enough to—to square myself? I—I was crazy with the heat two years ago. I—aw, I—Now it's different. I—It's like you say, Jimmie, you 'ain't got no hard feelings." She swallowed a rising in her throat and took a sip of clear, cold water. A light film of tears swam in her eyes. "You 'ain't, have you, Jimmie?"
He leaned across the table and out of the hearing of the attendant waiter. "Not if we understand each other, Doll. You stick to me and you'll wear diamonds. Gad! I bet if I had two more fillies like Violet I'd run Diamond Pat Cassidy's string of favorites back to pasture, you little queenie, you!"
Her timid glance darted like the hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf. "I ain't much of a looker for a Broadway palace like you've brought me to, Jimmie. Look at 'em, all dolled up over there. Honest, Jimmie, I—I feel ashamed."
"Just you stick to me, peaches, and there ain't one at that table that's got on anything you can't have twice over. I know that gang—the pink queen and all. 'Longside of you they look like stacks o' bones tied up in a rag o' satin."