Every Soul Hath Its Song. Fannie Hurst
Dobriner's the best in the business, just the same, madam. She ain't stuck on her way of living no more than I am, but she's a model and she 'ain't got enough of anything else in her to make the world treat her any different than a model."
"I'm not saying she ain't a good thirty-six, Phonzie."
"I got to hand it to her, madam, when it comes to a lot of things. She may be a little skylarker, but take it from me, it ain't from choice, and when she likes you—God! honest, I think that girl would pawn her soul for you. When I was down with pneumonia—"
"I ain't saying a thing against her."
"She's no saint, maybe, but then God knows I'm not, either, and what I don't know about her private life don't bother me."
"Oh, I—I know you like her all right."
"Say, I'll bet you any amount if that girl had memory enough to learn the words of a song or the steps of a dance, she could have landed a first-row job in any musical show on Broadway. She could do it now, for that matter. Gad! did you see her to-day showing off that Queen Louise cloth-of-gold model? Honest, she took my breath away, and I been on the floor with her twenty years."
"Y-yes."
"Keep down your hips and waist-line, Gert, I always say to her, and you are good in the business for ten years yet."
"She should worry while the crop of four carats is good."
"Yes, but just the same a girl like her don't know when her luck may turn. A girl can lose her luck sometimes before she loses her figure."
"Any old time she can lose her luck with you."
"Me!"
"Yes, you!"
Madam Moores bent over the pleats in her napkin. Opposite her, his cigarette held fastidiously aloft, he regarded her through its haze.
"Well, of all things! So that—that's what you think?"
"I—I know."
"Know what?"
"That she's dead strong for you."
"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like—well, she's like a sister or—or a pal to me, but she's got about as much time for a fellow of my pace, except when she gets blue, as—as the Queen of Sheba has."
"That's what you think, maybe, but everybody else knows she—she's been after you for years, trying—"
"Aw, cut the comedy, madam. Honest, you make me sore. She's nothing to me off the floor but a darn good pal. Say, I can treat her to a sixty-cent table d'hôte twice a week; but don't you think in the back of my head, when it comes to a showdown, that I couldn't even buy silk shoelaces for a girl of her kind. I ain't her pace and we both know it. Bosh!"
"You'd like to be, all right, if—if she didn't have so many rich ones hanging around."
"Just the same, many's the time she's told me if she could land a regular fellow and do the regular thing and settle down on seventy-five a month in a Harlem flat, why she'd drop all this skylarking of hers for a family of youngsters, so quick it would make your head swim."
"Sure, that's just what I say, she—"
"Many's the time she—she's cried to me—just cried, because the kind of life she has to live don't lead to anything, and she knows it."
"I ain't blaming you for liking her, Phonzie; a girl with her figure can make an old dub like me look like—well, I just guess after her I—I must look like thirty cents to you."
"You! Say, you got more real sense in your little finger than three of
Gert's kind put together."
She colored like a wild rose.
"Sense ain't what counts with the men nowadays; it's looks and—and speed like Gert's."
"Girls like Gert are all right, I tell you; but say, when it comes to real brains like yours—nobody home."
"Maybe not, but just the same it's the girls with sense get tired having the men rave about their smartness and pass on, to go rushing after a empty head completely smothered under yellow curls. That's how much real brains counts for with—with you men."
He flung her a gesture, his cigarette trailing a design in smoke. "Honest, madam, you got me wrong there. A fellow like me 'ain't got the nerve to—to go after a woman like you. A girl like Dodo or Gert is my size, but I'd be a swell dub trying to line up alongside of you, now wouldn't I?"
Tears that were distilled in her heart rose to her eyes, dimming them.
Her hand fluttered in among the plates and cups and saucers toward him.
"Phonzie, I—I—"
"You what?"
"I—I—Aw, nothing."
Her head fell suddenly forward in her arms, pushing the elaborate coiffure awry, and beneath the blue-checked apron her shoulders heaved.
He rose. "Madam! Why, madam, what—"
"Don't—don't pay any attention to me, Phonzie. I—I just got a silly fit on me. I'll be all right in a minute."
"Aw, madam, I—I didn't mean to make you sore by anything I said."
"You go now, Phonzie; the whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You—you go get some live one like Gert and—and take her out skylarking."
"You're sore about Gert, is that it, madam?"
"No, no. Honest, Phonzie."
"Madam, I—I just don't know what's got you. Is it something I said has hurt your feelings?"
"No, no."
He advanced with an incertitude that muddled his movements, made to cross to her side where she lay with her arms outstretched in the fuddle of dishes, made to touch her black silk sleeve where it emerged from the blue-checked apron, hesitated, sucking his lips in between his teeth, swung on his heel, then around once more, and placed his hand lightly on her shoulder.
"Madam?"
"You—you just go on, Phonzie. I—I guess I'm an old fool, anyways. It's like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip for me to try and squeeze anything but work out of my life. I—I guess I'm just nothing but an old fool."
"But, madam, how can a fellow like me squeeze anything out of life for you? Look at me! Why, I ain't worth your house room. I'm nothing but a fellow who draws his salary off a woman, and has all his life. Why, you—you earn as much in a week as I do in a month."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Look, you with a home you made for yourself and a business you built up out of your own brains, and what am I? A hall-room guy that can put a bluff across with a lot of idiot women. Look at me, forty and doing a chorus-man's work. You got me wrong, madam. I don't measure nowheres near up to you. If I did, do you think I wouldn't be settled down long ago like a regular—Aw, well, what's the use talking." He plucked at his short mustache, pulling the hairs sharply.
She raised her face and let him gaze at the ravages of her tears. "Why—why don't you come right out and say it, that I 'ain't got the looks and—the pep?"
"Madam, can't you see I'm only—"
"You—you can't run yourself down to me. You, and nobody else, has made the establishment what it is. I never had a head for the little things that count. That's why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third Street. What did I know about the big little things!—the carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and gold labels, all little things that get big results. I never had a head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models, or the French accent."
"You