Every Soul Hath Its Song. Fannie Hurst
I'll do the talking, Miriam; I'll tell the old folks."
"Ray she—"
"If you ain't afraid to start out on a hundred a month and commissions, dear, we don't need to be scared of nothing. I'll tell them just the plain truth, dear. Just think, if we do it now, when they come back in ten weeks we can be down at the pier to meet them, eh, Miriam, just like an—an old married couple—eh, Miriam—eh, Miriam, dear!"
She rose. A red seepage of blood flooded her face; her bosom rose and fell.
"Are you game, Miriam? Are you, darling—eh, Miriam, eh?"
"Yes, Irving."
* * * * *
Alongside her pier, white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed and stoked, the Roumania reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose tapering toward the blue harbor and the blue billows beyond.
Within the narrow confines of a first-deck stateroom, piled round with luggage and its double-decker berths freshly made up, Mrs. Binswanger applied an anxious eye to the port-hole, straining tiptoe for a wider glimpse of deck.
"I tell you this much, papa, in another five minutes when that child don't come, right away off the boat I get and go home where I belong."
In the act of browsing among the lower contents of his wicker hand-bag
Mr. Binswanger raised a perspiring face.
"Na, na, mamma, thirty minutes' time yet she's got to get here.
Everybody don't got to come on four hours too soon like us."
"Ja, you should worry about anything, so long as you got right in front of you your newspapers and your tobacco. Right away for his tobacco he has to dig when he sees so worried I am I can't see. Why don't our Ray come back now if she can't find 'em and say she can't find 'em?"
"I tell you, Carrie, if you let me go myself I can find 'em and—"
"Right here you stay with me, Simon Binswanger! We don't get separated no more as we can help. I ain't—Ach, look such a crowd, and no Miriam. I—"
"Na, na, Carrie!"
"So easy-going he is! My daughter should keep me worried like this! To lunch the day what she sails to Europe she has to go! Always she complains that salesmen ain't good enough for her yet, and on the day she sails she has to go to lunch with one. Why, I ask you, Simon, why don't that Ray come back?"
Mr. Binswanger packed his pipe tight and adjusted a small, close-fitting black cap. "To travel with women, I tell you, it ain't no pleasure."
"Ach, du Himmel! Right away off that cap comes, Simon! With my own hands right away out of sight I hide it. Just once I want Miriam should see you in that skull-hat! Right away off you take it, Simon!"
"Ach, Carrie, on my own head I—"
"I tell you already ten times I wish I was back in my flat. I guess you think it's a good feeling I got to lock up my flat for Himmel knows who to break in, and my son Isadore 'way out in Ohio and not even here to—to say to his mother good-by. Already with such a smell on this boat and my feelings I got a homesickness I don't wish on my worst enemy. My boy should be left like this in America all alone!"
"Ach, Carrie, for why—"
Of a sudden Mrs. Binswanger's face fell into soft creases, her eyes closed, and cold tears oozed through, zigzagging downward. "My boy out West with—"
"Na, na, Carrie! Don't you worry our Izzy don't take care of hisself better as you. For what his expense accounts are—always a parlor car he has to have—he can take care of hisself twice better as us, mamma. Mamma, you should feel fine now we got started. I wish, mamma, you could see such a card-room and such a dining-room they got up-stairs—gold chairs like you never seen. We should go up on deck, Carrie, and—"
"Ach, Simon, Simon, why don't that child come! So nearly crazy I never was in my life. And now on top my Ray gone too. In a few minutes the boat sails, and I don't know yet if I got a child on board. I tell you, Simon, when Ray comes back I think it's better we carry off our trunks and—"
"Na, na, mamma, hear out in the hall. I told you so! Didn't I tell you they come? You hear now Miriam's voice. Didn't I tell you, didn't I tell you?"
"Mamma, papa, here we are!"
And in the doorway the hesitant form of erstwhile Miriam Binswanger, her eyes dim as if obscured by a fog of tulle, over one shoulder the flushed face of Mr. Irving Shapiro, and in turn over his the dark, quick features of Ray, flashing their quick expressions.
"I—I found 'em, mamma, just coming on board."
A white flame of anger seemed suddenly to lick dry the two tears that staggered down Mrs. Binswanger's plump cheeks.
"I tell you, Miriam, you got a lots of regards for your parents."
"But, mamma, we—"
"A child what can worry her mother like this! Ten minutes before we sail on board she comes just like nothing had happened. I should think, Mr. Shapiro, that a young man what can hold a responsible position like you, would see as a young girl what he invites out to lunch should have more regards for her parents as you both."
"Mamma, you—But just wait, mamma."
Miriam stepped half resolutely into the room, peeling the glove from off her left hand, and her glance here and there and everywhere with the hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf.
"Mamma, guess what—what we—we got to tell you? Mamma, we—Irving, you—you tell," Her bared hand fell like a quivering wing and she shrank back against his gray tweed coat-sleeve. "Irving, you tell!"
"Miriam, nothing ain't wrong! Izzy, my—"
"No, no, Mrs. Binswanger, nothing is wrong; what Miriam was trying to say was that everything's right, wasn't it, Miriam?"
"Yes, Irving."
Mr. Binswanger threw two hands with the familiar upward gesture. "Come, right away in a few minutes you got to get off, Shapiro. First I take you up and show you the card-room and—"
"'Sh-h-h-h, papa, let Irving—Go on, Irving."
He cleared his throat, inserting two fingers within his tall collar. "You see, Mr. Binswanger, you and Mrs. Binswanger, just at the last minute we—we both seen we couldn't let go!"
"Miriam!"
"Now don't get excited, Mrs. Binswanger, only we—well, we just went and got married, Mrs. Binswanger, when we seen we couldn't let go. From Dr. Cann we just came. A half-hour on pins and needles, you can believe us or not, we had to wait for him, and that's what made us so late. See, on her hand she's got the ring and—"
"See, mamma!"
"And in my pocket I got the special license. We couldn't help it, Mr.
Binswanger, we—we just couldn't let go."
"We couldn't, mamma, papa. We thought we ought to stay at home in the flat—you're so worried, mamma, about burglars and nobody in America with Izzy—and—and—Mamma? Papa? Haven't you got nothing to say to your Miriam?"
She extended empty and eloquent arms, a note of pleading rising above the tears in her words.
"Nothing? Mamma? Papa?"
From without came voices; the grinding of chains lifting cargo; a great basso from a smoke-stack; more voices. "All off! All off!" Feet scurrying over wooden decks! "All off! All off!" A second steam-blast that shot up like a rocket.
"Mamma? Ray? Papa? Haven't any of you got anything to say?"
"Gott in Himmel!" said Mrs. Binswanger. "Gott in Himmel!"
"So!" said Mr. Binswanger, placing a hand with a loud pat on each knee.