is grand!' Then he says: 'If something I'm hoping for happens in a
couple of days, me and Louis Epstein are going to buy one of those
five-hundred-dollar roadsters together. Then we can have a swell time
together, Birdie!' Just like that he said it."
"You're a good girl, Birdie, and you deserve the best. To-night you wear
your blue. Tillie, come in and set the chairs straight--nice--Miss
Birdie's going to have company. How that Mrs. Ginsburg got on my nerves,
I can't tell you, with her Meena and her brag!"
"I should say so!"
* * * * *
At eight o'clock Birdie again posed before her mirror. Her
robin's-egg-blue dress where it fell away from her rather splendid and
carefully powdered chest was spangled with small sequins, which glinted
like stars. There was a corresponding galaxy of spangles arranged
bandeau-fashion in her hair. The Blessed Damozel, when she leaned out
from the golden bar of Heaven, wore seven significant stars in her hair.
Birdie also wore stars in her hair, in her eyes, and in her heart and on
her bosom.
"I think this dress makes me look grand and thin, mamma."
"It cost enough."
"Do you like those silver spangles in my hair? That's the way Bella
Block wore hers at the theater the other night."
"I don't believe in such fussiness for girls! Your mother before you
didn't have it. If you want you can wear my diamond bow-knot. Have
Tillie come in and pin it on you with the safety-catch. I'm so nervous
like a cat!"
"What are you so nervous about, mamma?"
"Say, Birdie, you know I'm the last one to talk about such things--but
the Gumps don't start things without intentions. Flora told me herself
that Ben Gump got engaged to her sister the second time he called."
"Aw, mamma!"
"Believe me, if it should come to us we got no cause to complain. Grand
prospects! Grand boy! And what more do you want? Papa and me, with such
a son-in-law, can enjoy our old age."
"Such talk!"
"You think I let on to anybody! All I say is to you; but a girl needs
advice from her parents. Look at your sister Ray--she was a smart and
sensible girl."
"Abe, with his stuttering and all!"
"Just the same he is a good husband to her and makes her a good living.
You think she would have got him if she hadn't fixed things for
herself--kind of! Believe me, it was hard enough for us, then, before
papa went into petticoats."
"She can have him!"
"I always say Ray was a smart girl. She wasn't no beauty, and the
chances didn't come so thick; and now to walk in her house you wouldn't
think she did the courting! A more devoted boy than Abe I don't know."
"Do you like that bow at the belt, mamma?"
"Yes.... Tillie," called Mrs. Katzenstein, raising her voice, "turn on
the lights in the parlor, and then tell Mr. Katzenstein I said to put on
his coat."
"I don't want the lights on, mamma--it looks better that way."
"You want it to look like we was stingy with light yet! How does that
look--just the gas-logs going! You tell Mr. Katzenstein, Tillie, that I
insist that he should put on his coat to meet Birdie's company--his
newspaper will keep. There's the bell! Tillie, go to the door."
After a well-timed interval Birdie entered the soft-lighted parlor; the
gas-logs gave out a mellow but uncertain light. It was as if the spirit
of fire were doing an elf dance about the room--glinting on the polished
surface of the floor, glancing on and off the gilt frame of a
wall-picture, and gleaming at its own reflection in the mahogany
table-legs and glass doors of the curio cabinet.
Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in
hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.
"Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap
to sit in the light," said Birdie.
He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head
backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong
man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.
"What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?"
"Sure I'm not," he said. "I'm just catching up on sleep."
They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of
their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers
abruptly.
"Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real
tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this
morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated
how Mr. Latz sells cigars."
"To-night," he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair
and exhaling loudly, "I feel as funny as a funeral."
"Marcus," she said, "honest, you don't look right; you're pale!"
He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate _vis-a-vis_.
The light played over them.
"You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many
kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you."
Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump.
He was a well-set-up young man--solidly knit and close packed--but five
inches short of the stuff that matinee idols and policemen are made of.
Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.
This facetious mood, however, was further emphasized in the large,
well-formed ears, which flared away from his head as if alarmed, and in
a wide, heavy-set mouth, which seemed straining to meet those respective
ears; yet when Mr. Gump smiled he showed a double deck of large white
teeth, dazzling as snow, and his eyes illuminated, and small-rayed
wrinkles spread out from the corners and gave them geniality.
"Your mamma was here at the whist this afternoon, Marcus. We think she's
a grand woman!"
His face lighted.
"I was afraid she wouldn't come on account of the weather. I meant to
telephone from the factory to take a cab, but I had a hard day of it.
What's the difference, I always say in a case like that, whether it
costs a little more or a little less? Recreation is good for her."
"It's a terrible night, isn't it? Papa says even the horses can't
walk--it's so slippery."
"I care a lot how slippery it is when I come to see you, Birdie." He
sighed and regarded her nervously.
"Aw, Marcus! Jollier!" She colored the red of the deepest peony in the
garden and giggled like water purling over stones.
"You can believe me, I wish I was jollying! Until I met you it was all
right to say that about me; but now--but--Oh, well, what's the use of
talking?"
He rose from the divan in some agitation, thrust his hands into his
pockets, hitched his trousers upward, and walked away.
Birdie remained on the divan, observing the rules of the oldest game,
clasped her hands on her knees, and held the silence. When she finally
spoke her voice was filtered by the benign process of understanding.
"Look how easy he gets mad," she said, querulously; "just like I'm not
glad he wasn't jollying!"
There was a pause; the large onyx clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly
and impersonally, as if its concern were solely with time and not with
man.
Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at
an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses--a sloe black and a
virgin white--rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.
"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway.
It's like I said to you last night--if a fellow can't give you what
you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."
"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like
that!"
Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her
pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an
important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood
fizzing through their veins.
"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl
along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing
ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell--"
At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned
reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate
in low seas, hove in.
"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite
rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice
this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking
well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well--ain't it?"
"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a
hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."
"Just like Mr. Katzenstein--ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish
there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works!
Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less,
I tell him."
"You got a swell apartment here, Mrs. Katzenstein. Some cousins of my
poor father's--the Morris Jacobs--live in this same house."
"Are those Jacobs your cousins? Such grand people--the knit-underwear
Jacobs, Birdie! I never meet the old lady in the elevator that she
don't ask me to come up and see her. It's terrible the way I don't pay
calls. Birdie, we must go up soon."
"Yes, mamma."
"Yes, we got a nice little apartment here, Mr. Gump; but for what we pay
it might be better. If I didn't dread the _gedinks_ of moving we could
do better for the money; but we got comfort here, even if it ain't so
grand. Sometimes, on account of Birdie, I say we take a bigger place;
but who knows how long she is at home--not that we're in a hurry with
her, but you know how it is when a girl reaches a certain age."
"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gump.
"I'm in no hurry," said Birdie.
"I don't say that, neither. When a girl meets the right one it's
different. Look at Ray--two hours before she was engaged she didn't know
it was going to happen!"
"Come right in, papa. Mr. Gump is here--so tired he is he hates to come
in."
There are a few epics waiting to be dug out of remote corners. One day
an American drama will be born in a Western shack or under some East
Side stairway; one day a prophet will look within the dingy temple of a
Mr. Katzenstein at the warm red heart beating beneath a hairy chest, and
there find a classic rune to the men who moil and toil, and pay
millinery bills with a three-figure check; another day an elegiac will
be written to the men who slip the shoes off their aching feet in the
merciful seclusion of their alternate Wednesday-night subscription boxes
and sit through four hours of Wagner--facing an underdressed daughter,
two notes due on the morrow, and a remote stageful of vocalizing figures
especially designed for his alternate and inquisitional Wednesday
nights.
Life had whacked hard at Mr. Katzenstein, writ across his face in a
thousand welts and wrinkles, bent his knees and fingers, and calloused
his hands.
"Good evening, Mr. Gump--good evening! I say to mamma the young folks
got no time for us in here. I'm right?"
"The more the merrier!" said Mr. Gump, reseating himself.
"Mr. Katzenstein says he used to know your father, Mr. Gump."
"Rudolph Gump! I should say so--yes. Believe me, I wish I had half a
dollar for every shirtwaist I bought off him in my life! Your father and
me played side by each down on Cedar Street before you was born. I knew
him longer as you--he was a good silk man, was Rudolph Gump. Have a
cigar, young man?"
"Thanks--I don't smoke."
"Ain't it wonderful, though, that in a city like this my husband should
know you before you was born?"
Mrs. Katzenstein clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and
patted her hands together. Birdie regarded the company with polite
interest.
"Wonders never cease!" she said.
"Birdie, go get your papa his chair out from the dining-room--since he's
got lumbago these straight-backs ain't comfortable for him."
"Let me go for you, Miss Birdie."
"Oh no, Marcus--I know just where it is." She smiled at him with her
eyes--bright eyes that were full of warmth and reflected firelight.
Mr. Katzenstein groped in his side-pocket for a match, ran his tongue
horizontally along a cigar, and puffed it slowly into life.
"How's business?" he said, between puffs, with the lighted match still
applied to the end of his cigar.
"We can't complain, Mr. Katzenstein. If this strike don't reach to the
piece-workers we can't complain."
"I hear your firm opens a new factory."
"Yes; we're going to put in a line of March Hare neckwear and
manufacture it in Newark."
"My wife tells me you manage the new factory--eh?"
"Oh, I can't say that, Mr. Katzenstein; in fact--"
"_Ach_, papa, I didn't say for sure; the ladies this afternoon--"
"Here's you chair, papa."
Mr. Grump sprang to her aid.
"Thanks, Marcus," she said.
"What do you think of my girl there, Gump? She's a fine one--not?"
"Aw, now, papa, you quit! What'll Marcus think--such goings-on!"
"How her papa spoils her, Mr. Gump, you won't believe! Not one thing
that girl wants she don't get! Last week she meets her papa down-town
after the matinee and comes home with a new muff. Yesterday, before he
goes down-town, she gets from him a check for some business like a
silver-mesh bag, like the girls are wearing. Just seems like she has to
have everything she sees!"
"All I got to say, Gump, you should some day have just such a daughter!"
"Papa!"
"Papa!"
"You couldn't wish me better," said Mr. Gump.
Conversation drifted, and after a time Birdie regarded her mother with
level eyes; then her lids drooped and slowly raised--as significantly as
the red and green eyes that wink and signal in the black path of the
midnight flier.
"Well, papa, we must excuse ourselves. When young folks get together
they have no time for old ones."
"Now, mamma!" protested Birdie. "We're glad if you stay."
"I was young once myself," said Mr. Katzenstein; "and I like 'em yet,
Gump! Take it from me, I like 'em yet! Mamma here thinks I not got an
eye for the nice girls still; but I say what she don't know don't hurt
her--eh?"
"I should worry!" said Mrs. Katzenstein, regarding her husband with
gentle eyes. "Put your hand on my shoulder, papa. All day he makes the
hardest work for himself, and then at night comes home with a lame
back."
"Good night, Gump! Come round and we play pinochle."
"I hope you don't think we're stingy with light, Mr. Gump. If I had my
way they'd all be going; but Birdie likes only the gas-grate. My Ray was
the same way, never a great one for much light."
"I'm the same, too," replied Mr. Gump.
"Good night!"
"Good night!"
Birdie remained seated in the mellow flicker of the fire-dance; its glow
lit her large, well-featured face intermittently and set the stars in
her hair scintillating. The quiet of late evening fell over the room.
"What a grand old pair, Birdie!"
"Yes," she said, softly--very softly.
Silence.
"Say--Birdie! Say--"
"What?"
"I didn't say anything."
"Oh!" The red in her face ran down into the square-shape neck of her
dress.
Silence.
"Aw, look what you did, Marcus! You burnt the toe of your shoe!"
"Say, Birdie, what I started to say when your mamma and papa come
in--er--"
"Yes?"
"What I started to say was, so long as a fellow's got intentions it's
all right for him to call on a girl--er--regular, like this." Her soft
breathing answered him. "But--well, I mustn't--I ain't got the right to
come round here any more."
She looked at him like a startled nymph.
"What is it?"
"So long as I had intentions it was all right, I say; but--well, now I
ain't."
"Ain't what?" Her breath came more rapidly between her lips.
"I was starting to say before they came in, Birdie--I came here straight
from the office to tell you--even maw don't know it yet--_I've lost
out!_ Loeb's daughter is engaged, and he's going to put his new
son-in-law from Cleveland in the Newark factory."
"Marcus!"
"Yes! You can't be so sore as I am--a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar job
almost in my hand, and then this had to happen! The little raise I get
now don't help. I can't ask a girl to marry me on fifteen hundred when I
expected twice that much--not a girl like you!"
Birdie placed the palm of her hand flat against her cheek; the stars in
her eyes had vanished in the light of understanding.
"Such a mean trick!" she gasped. "How you've built up their trade for
them--and now such a mean trick!"
"I was so sure all along, after what Loeb told me last month. Only last
week I says to maw I'll ask you this week right after I know for
certain. That sure I--was."
His voice trailed off at the end. She sat watching the flames, her
shoulders slightly stooped and her eyes quiet.
"You ain't so sorry as I am, Birdie. Believe me, I could die right now!
With you it ain't so bad--you got plenty good chances yet. But if you
knew what feelings I got for you! With me there ain't no more Birdies."
She turned her head slowly toward him; her throat throbbing and a
delicate pink under her skin.
"I should care, Marcus!" she said, softly.
"What?"
"I should care!" she repeated. "We should live little then, if we can't
live big--live little."
"What do you mean, Birdie?"
She regarded and invited him with her eyes, and he stood away from her
like a tired traveler trying to shut out the song of the Lorelei!
"Birdie, I ain't got the right! I--I--you been used to so much. With you
it ain't like with most girls--your mamma and your papa they--"
Even as he spoke they were somehow in their first embrace, and round
their heads came crashing various castles in Spain, and they sat among
the ruins and smiled into each other's radiant eyes and whispered, with
their warm hands touching:
"I don't deserve such a prize as you, Birdie!"
"Such a scare as you gave me, Marcus! I thought first you
meant--you--meant it was me you didn't want."
He refuted the thought with a kiss.
"I ain't good enough for you, Birdie."
"I ain't good enough for you, Marcus."
"You can believe me, Birdie, when he told me to-day it was just like I
had died inside."
"It shows it don't pay to work too hard for such people, Marcus--they
don't appreciate it."
"I can get the same money as now at Lowen-Felsenthal's; they were after
me last year."
"You go, Marcus. You can work up with them; besides, I like the
ready-to-wear business better than boys' pants and neckwear."
"I wanted to start out with giving you more than you got already,
Birdie."
"Believe me, mamma and papa had no such start as we got. We can afford
maybe one of those three-rooms-and-bath apartments in Harlem--Flossie
Marks says they're just perfect; and mamma and papa lived right in back
of the factory--I remember it myself. Which is worse?"
"That's why I hate it for them, Birdie; your mamma wants you to have the
best like she didn't have--I hate it for her."
"You come to-morrow night, and we'll tell them. Just you do like I tell
you, and I can fix it."
He placed his hand against her forehead, tilted her head backward and
kissed her twice on the lips.
"You're my little Birdie, ain't you--a little birdie like flies in the
woods!"
The evening petered out and too soon waned to its finish. They parted
with thrice-told good-nights, reluctant to break the weft of their
enchantment. She closed the door after him and stood with her back
against it; her lips were curved in a perfect smile.
A door creaked, and footsteps padded down the hall.
"Birdie! Birdie!"
"Yes, mamma!" was all she said, going toward her parent and hiding her
pink face in the flannel folds of the maternal wrapper.
"God bless you, Birdie! Such happiness I should wish every mother. Go
in, baby, and tell papa. For an engagement present you get--like
Ray--two hundred dollars."
Mrs. Katzenstein's face was lyric and her voice furry with emotion. She
hastened, her night-room slippers slouching off her feet, into the hall
and unhooked the telephone receiver.
"Columbus 5-6-2-4," she whispered, standing on her toes to reach the
mouthpiece. "Bamberger's apartment. Batta! Hello, Batta! I know you
ain't in bed yet, 'cause you got the poker crowd--not? Batta, I got news
for you! Guess! Yes; it just happened--such a surprise, you can believe
me! Grand! How happy we are you should know! I want they should start in
one of those apartments like yours, Batta. Five rooms and a sleep-out
porch is enough for a beginning. You can tell who you want--yes; I don't
believe in secrets. Batta, who was the woman that embroidered those
towels for your Miriam's trousseau? Yes; both of them gone now! Ain't
that the way with raising children? But I wish every girl such a young
man! Yes, just think, for a firm like Loeb Brothers--manager yet! Batta,
come over the first thing in the morning. Now I got trousseau on my mind
again, I think I go to the same woman for the table-linen. Good night.
She's in talking to her papa--she'll call you to-morrow. Thank you! Good
night! Good-by!... Birdie," she called, through the open doorway, "Mrs.
Ginsburg's number is Plaza 8-5-7, ain't it? You think it too late to
call her?"
"Yes, mamma, and, anyway, if Aunt Batta knows it that's
enough--to-morrow everybody has it."
"Yes," said Mrs. Katzenstein, submissively; but after a moment she
turned to the telephone again and unhooked the receiver. "Plaza 8-5-7,"
she said, in muffled tones.
* * * * *
The evening following, Mrs. Katzenstein greeted her prospective
son-in-law with three kisses--one for each cheek and the third for the
very center of his mouth. She batted at him playfully with her hand.
"You bad boy, you! What you mean by stealing away our baby? Papa, you
come right in here and fight with him."
"Mrs. Katzenstein, for you to give me a girl like Birdie, I don't
deserve. She's the grandest girl in the world!"
"He asks me for my Birdie," said Mr. Katzenstein, pumping the young
man's arm up and down; "but he asks me after it is all settled and
everybody but me knows it--even in the factory to-day I hear about it."
Laughter.
"What could we do, papa--wake you up last night?"
"He should pay your bills awhile, and then he won't feel so glad--ain't
it, Birdie?" He pinched his daughter's cheek.
"Marcus took me to lunch at the Kaiserbraeu to-day, papa. He's starting
in to pay my bills already."
"Have a cigar, Marcus!"
"Thanks, I don't smoke."
"Well, Marcus, you got a fine girl; and you're a good boy, making good
money."
"I told your mamma to-day, Marcus; she got the best of it, and I got the
best of it," chuckled Mrs. Katzenstein.
Marcus regarded Birdie in some uneasiness, the color drained out of his
face.
"Go on, Marcus," she said, with a note of reassurance in her voice.
"Everything as you say is grand and fine, Mr. Katzenstein,
except--except--well, to-day at lunch I told Birdie some news I just
heard, which--which maybe won't make you feel so good; I told her it
wasn't too late if she wanted to change her mind about me."
"_Ach!_" exclaimed Mrs. Katzenstein, clasping her hands quickly. "Ain't
everything all right?"
"What you mean, Marcus?" inquired Mr. Katzenstein, glancing up quickly.
"What's wrong? Ain't everything all right, children?"
"Aw, mamma, it ain't nothing wrong! Don't get so excited over
everything."
"Birdie's right, mamma--what you so excited about? What is it you got to
say, Marcus?"
"I ain't frightened; but what's the matter, children? This is what we
need yet something to happen when it's all fixed!"
"Well, I told Birdie about it at lunch to-day, and--"
There was a pause. Birdie linked her arm within the young man's and
regarded her parents like a Nemesis at the bar.
"It isn't so bad as Marcus makes out, papa."
"Well, young man?" questioned Mr. Katzenstein, sharply.
"Well, you don't need to holler at him, papa."
"I got some bad news to-day, Mr. Katzenstein. The raise I was expecting
I don't get--instead of twenty-eight hundred dollars I go only to
fifteen. Loeb is going to put his son-in-law, Steinfeld, from Cleveland,
in the new factory. I still just got the city trade."
"I says to Marcus, papa, it's enough; you and mamma had less than half
that much."
"_Ach_, my poor baby! My poor baby!"
"I ain't your poor baby, mamma. It could be worse--believe me--"
"Oh! And I thought he was going to have that grand position and give it
to her so fine--how I told everybody; how I--"
"Don't get excited, Salcha! Let's sit quiet and talk it over."
"Such plans as I had for that girl, papa! I had it all fixed that she
should have one of those five rooms and a sleeping-out porch over Batta!
Already I talked to Tillie that she should go to her."
Mrs. Katzenstein sniffled and wiped each eye with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Katzenstein."
"That don't get you nowhere, Mr. Gump. If you had only known this last
night! Now what will people say?"
"Mamma!"