Every Soul Hath Its Song. Fannie Hurst
tossed aside his newspaper and raised his spectacles to his horseshoe expanse of bald head. His face radiated into a smile that brought out the whole chirography of fine lines, and his eyes disappeared in laughter like two raisins poked into dough.
"Na, na, old lady, na, na!" He made to pinch her cheek where it bagged toward a soft scallop of double chin, but she withdrew querulously.
"I tell you what I been through this winter, with Izzy out in a Middle West territory where only once in four months I can see him, and my Ray and her going-ons with them little snips, and now Miriam with her Europe on the brain. I tell you that if anybody in this family needs Europe it's me for my health, better as Miriam for her singing and her style. Such nagging I have got ringing in my ears about it I think it's easier to go as to stay home with long faces."
Erect on the edge of her chair Miriam inclined toward her parent. "That's just what I been saying, mamma; all four of us need it. Not only me and Ray, but—"
"Leave me out, missy!"
"Not only us two for our education, mamma, but a trip like that can make you and papa ten years younger. Read what the booklet says. It—"
"I'm an old woman and I don't want I should try to look young like on the streets here up-town you can see the women. What comes natural to me like gray hairs I don't got to try to hide."
"Hurrah for ma! 'Down with the peroxide and the straight fronts,' she says."
"Izzy, that ain't so nice neither to talk such things before your sisters."
"Don't listen to him, mamma. Just let me ask you, mamma, just let me ask you, papa—papa, listen: did you ever in your life have a real vacation? What were those two weeks in Arverne for you last summer compared to on board a ship? You—"
"That's what I need yet—shipboard! I tell you I'm an old man and I'm glad that I got a home where I can take off my shoes and sit in comfort with my rheumatism."
"Hannah Levin's father limped ten times worse than you, papa. Didn't he, mamma? And since he took Hannah over last summer not one stroke has he had since. And she—Well, you see what she did for herself."
Mrs. Binswanger paused in her stitch. "That's so, Simon; Hannah Levin should grab for herself a man like Albert Hamburger. She should fall into the human-hair Hamburger family, a stick like her! At fish-market when he lived down-town each Friday morning I used to meet old man Levin, and I should say his knees were worse as yours, papa."
"When my daughter marries a Albert Hamburger, then maybe too we can afford to take a trip to Europe."
Miss Binswanger raised her eyes, great dark pools glozed over with tears. "All right then, I'll huck at home. But let me tell you, papa, since you come right out and mention it, that's where she met Albert Hamburger, if anybody should ask you, right on board the ship. Those kind don't lie round Arverne with that cheap crowd of week-end salesmen."
"There she goes on my profesh again!"
"That's where she met him, since you talk about such things, papa, right on the steamer."
"So!" Mrs. Binswanger let fall idle hands into her lap. "So!"
"Sure. Didn't you know that, mamma? She was going over for just ten weeks with her mother and father to take a few singing-lessons when they got to Paris, just like I want to, and right on the ship going over she met him and they got engaged."
"So!"
"Yes, mamma."
Mr. Binswanger fell into the attitude of reading again, knees crossed and one carpet slipper dangling. "I know plenty girls as get engaged on dry land, Carrie; just get such ideas that they don't out of your head."
"I don't say, Simon, I don't give you right, but after a winter like I been through I feel like maybe it's better to go as to stay."
"That's right, ma, loosen up and she'll get you yet."
"It ain't nice, Izzy, you should use such talk to your mother. I tell you it ain't so nice a son should tell his mother she should loosen up."
"I only meant, ma—"
"That's just how I feel, Simon, with the summer coming on I can't stand no more long faces. Last year it was Arverne till a cottage we had to take. Always in April already my troubles for the summer begin. One year Miriam wants Arverne and Ray wants we should go to the mountains where the Schimm girls go. This year, since she got in with them Lillianthal girls, Miriam has to have Europe, and Ray wants to stay home so with snips like Louie Ruah she can run with. I tell you when you got daughters you don't know where—"
"Give 'em both a brain test, ma."
"Stop teasing your sister, Izzy. I always say with girls you got trouble from the start and with boys it ain't no better. Between Arverne and—"
"Arverne! None of the swell crowd goes there any more, mamma."
"Swell! Let me tell you, Miriam, your papa and me never had time to be swell when we was young. I remember the time when we couldn't afford a trip to Coney Island, much less four weeks a cottage at Arverne-next-to-the-sea. Ain't it, papa? I wish the word 'swell' I had never heard. My son Isadore kicks to-night at supper because at hotels on the road he gets fresh napkins with every meal. Now all of a sudden my daughter gets such big notions in her head that nothing won't do for her but Europe for a summer trip. I tell you, Simon, I don't wish a dog to go through what I got to."
Mr. Binswanger let fall his newspaper to his knee.
"Na, na, mamma, for what you get excited? Ain't talk cheap enough for you yet? Why shouldn't you let the children talk?"
Miss Binswanger inclined to her father's knee, her throat arched and flexed. "Papa dear, it's a cheap trip. For what four weeks in a cottage at Arverne-by-the-sea would cost the four of us could take one of those tourists' trips through Europe. The Lillianthals, papa, for four hundred and fifty dollars apiece landed in Italy and went straight through to—"
"The Lillianthals, Lillianthals," mimicked Mrs. Binswanger, sliding her darning-egg down the length of a silken stocking. "I wish that name we had never heard. All of a sudden now education like those girls you think you got to have, music and—"
"Oh, mamma, honest, you just don't care how dumb us girls are. Look at
Ray and me, we haven't even got a common education like—"
"You can't say, Miriam Binswanger, that me or your papa ever held one of our children back out of school. If they didn't want to go we couldn't—"
"Oh, mamma, I—I don't mean just school. How do you think I feel when all the girls begin to talk about Europe and all, and I got to sit back at sewing-club like a stick?"
"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"
"Izzy!"
"Why do you think a fellow like Sol Blumenthal is all the time after Lilly Lillianthal and Sophie Litz and those girls? He has been over seventeen times, buying silks, and those girls don't have to sit back like sticks when he talks about the shows in Paris and all."
"I know girls, Miriam, what got as fine husbands as Sol Blumenthal and didn't need to run to Europe for them."
"I never said that, did I, mamma? Only it's a help to girls nowadays if—if they've been to places and know a thing or two."
"If a girl can cook a little and—"
"Look there at Ray, nothing in her head but that novel she's reading, and little snips that'll treat her to a soda-water if she hangs round the White Front long enough, and ride her down to Brighton on one of those dirty excursion boats if she—"
"You shut up, Miriam Binswanger, and mind your own business!"
"You let her talk to me that way, mamma?"
"Go to it, sis."
"You let her talk that way to me and Izzy eggs her on! No wonder she's fresh, the way everybody round