Chapter 3

In the act of adjusting her perky new hat Miriam flung out an intercepting hand. "Oh, papa, you mustn't put in that old flannel house-coat. That's not fit to wear anywhere but at home. And, papa, papa, you just mustn't take along that old black skull-cap; you'll be laughing-stock! Papa, please!"

He flung her off. "In my house and out of my house what I want to wear I wear. If in Naples them Eyetalians don't like what I wear, then--"

"_Italians_, papa; how many times have I told you to say it _Italians_?"

"When they don't like what I wear over there, right away they should lump it."

"Papa, please!"

From the room adjoining Mrs. Binswanger leaned a crumpled coiffure through the frame of the open door: "Simon, I got here that red woolen undershirt. I want you should put it on before we start."

"Na, na, mamma, I--"

"Right away Mrs. Berkovitz says it will keep the salt air away from your rheumatism. That's what I need yet, you should _grex_ from the start with your backache. Ray, take this in to your papa. Fooling with that new camera she stands all morning, when she should help a little. Look, Miriam, you think that in here I got the express checks safe?"

"Yes, mamma."

At ten o'clock, with the last bolt sprung and the last baggage departed, Mrs. Binswanger fell to the task of fitting gold links in her husband's adjustable cuffs, polishing his various pairs of spectacles, inserting various handkerchiefs in adjacent and expeditious pockets of his clothing.

"Simon, I want you should go in and dress now. All your things is laid right out on the bed for you."

"Mamma, you and papa don't need to begin to dress already. None of you need to leave the house until about two, and it's only ten now. Just think, from now until two o'clock you got to get ready in, mamma."

"When I travel I don't take no chances."

Miriam worked eager fingers into her new, dark-blue kid gloves. She was dark and trig in a little belted jacket, a gold quill shimmering at a cocky angle on the new blue-straw hat.

"To be on the safe side, mamma, I'm going right now to meet Irving, so we can sure have lunch and be at the boat by two."

"Not one minute later, Miriam!"

"Not one minute, mamma. Don't forget, Ray, you promised to bring my field-glass for me. Be in the state-room all of you where Irving and I can find you easy. There's always a big crowd at sailing. Don't get excited, mamma. Ray, be sure and fix papa's cuffs so the red flannel don't show. Good-by. Don't get excited, mamma!"

"Miriam, you got on the asafetidy-bag?"

"Yes, mamma."

"Miriam, you don't be one minute later as two--"

"No, mamma."

"Miriam, you--"

"Good-by!"

Over a luncheon that lay cold and unrelished between them Irving Shapiro leaned to Miriam Binswanger, his voice competing with the five-piece orchestra and noonday blather of the Oriental Café.

"I just can't get it in my head, somehow, Miriam, that to-morrow this time you'll be out on the sea."

"Me neither."

"I just never had two weeks fly like these since we got acquainted."

"Me--me neither."

Music like great laughter rose over the slip-up in her voice.

"You going to write to me, Miriam?"

"Yes, Irving."

"Often?"

"Yes, Irving."

"You're not going to forget me over there, are you, when you get to meeting all those counts and big fellows?"

"Oh, Irving!"

"You're not going to clean forget me then, are you, Miriam, and the great times we've had together, and the days in the woods, and the singing, and--"

"Oh, Irving, don't. I--Please--"

She laid her fork across her untouched plate and turned her face from him. Tears rose to choke her, and, tighten her throat against them as she would, one rose to the surface and ricocheted down her cheek.

"Why, Miriam!"

"It's nothing, Irving, only--only let's get out of here. I don't want any lunch, I just don't."

"Miriam, that's the way I feel, too. I--I just can't bear to have you go!"

"You--We can't talk like that, Irving."

"I tell you, Miriam, I just can't bear it!"

"I--I--oh--"

He leaned across the table for her hand, whispering, with an entire flattening of tone, "Miriam, don't go!"

"Irving, don't--talk so--so silly!"

"Miriam, let's--let's you and me stay at home!"

"Irving!"

"Let's, Miriam!"

"Irving, are you crazy?" But her voice yearned toward him.

"Miriam, right at this table I've got an idea. We can do it, Miriam; we can do it if you're game."

"Do what?"

He flashed out his watch. "We've got two hours and twenty minutes before she sails."

"Irving!"

"We have, dear, to--to get a special license and the ring and do the trick."

"Why, I--"

"Two hours and twenty minutes to make it all right for you to stay back with me. Miriam, are you game, dear?"

They regarded each other across the table as if each beheld in the other a vision.

"Irving, you--you must be crazy!"

"I'm not, dear. I was never less crazy. What's the use of us having to get apart after we just got each other? What's all those phony counts and picture-galleries and high-sounding stunts compared to us staying home and hitting it off together, Miriam? Just tell me that, Miriam."

"Irving, I--we just couldn't! Look at mamma and papa and Ray, all down at the boat maybe by now waiting for me, and none of them wanting to go except me. For a whole year I had to beg them for this, Irving. They wouldn't be going now if it wasn't for me. I--Irving, you must be crazy!"

He leaned closer and out of range of the waiter, his voice repressed to a tight whisper.

"None of those things count when a girl and a fellow fall in love like you and me, Miriam."

Even in her crisis her diffidence inclosed her like a sheath. "I never said I--I was in love, did I?"

"But you are! They'll go over there, Miriam, without you and have the time of their lives. We'll stay home and keep the flat open for them so your mother won't have to worry any more about burglars. After the first surprise it won't be a trick at all. We got two hours and fifteen minutes, dearie, and we can do the act and be down at the boat with bells on to tell 'em good-by. Now ain't the time to think about the little things and waste time, Miriam. We got to do it now or off you go hiking, just like--like we had never met, a whole ocean between us, Miriam!"

"Irving, you--you mustn't."

She pushed back from the table. He paid his check with a hand that trembled, resuming, even as he crammed his bill-folder into a rear pocket:

"Be a sport, Miriam! I tell you we got the right to do it because we're in love. We'll just tell them the truth, that at the last minute we--we just couldn't let go. 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. "So!"

"Oh, papa!"

"A fine come-off! A fine come-off! Eh, mamma? To Europe we go to take our daughter, and just so soon as we go no daughter we 'ain't got to take!"

"_Gott in Himmel! Gott in Himmel_!"

"Ray, haven't you got nothing to say to Irving and me--Ray!"

With a quick, fluid movement the younger sister slid close and her arms wound tight. "Miriam, you--you little darling, you! Miriam! Irving! You darlings!"

Suddenly Mrs. Binswanger inclined, inclosing the two in a wide, moist embrace. "Ach, my Miriam, what have you done! Not a stitch, not even a right wedding! Irving, you bad boy, you, like I--I should ever dream you had thoughts to be our son-in-law. Ach, my children, my children! Simon, I tell you we can be thankful it's a young man what we know is all right. Ach, I--I just don't know--I--just--don't know."

"Papa, you ain't mad at us?"

"What good it does me to be mad? I might just so well be glad as mad. My little Miriam-sha, my little Miriam-sha!" And he fell to blinking as if with gritty eyelids.

"Simon--ach, Simon--you--ach, my husband, you--you ain't crying, you--"

"Go 'way, Carrie, with such nonsense! You women don't know yet the difference between a laff and a cry. Well, Shapiro, you play me a fine trick, eh?"

"It wasn't a trick, Mr. Binswanger--pa, it was--"

"All off! All off!" And a third great blast sounded that set the tumblers rattling in their stands.

"I guess me--me and Irving's got to get off now, mamma--"

Mrs. Binswanger grasped her husband's arm in sudden panic. "Simon, I--I think as we should get off and go home with them. I--"

"Now, now, mamma, don't get excited! No, no, you mustn't! We will keep house fine for you until you come back. See, mamma! I have the key, and everything's fixed. See, mamma! You got to go, mamma. Ray should see Europe before she finds out there--there's just one thing that's better than going to Europe. Please, mamma, don't get excited. I tell you we'll have things fine when you come back. Won't we, Irving, won't we?"

"Ach, nothing in the house, Miriam."

"We got to get off now, Miriam dear, we got to. You can write us about those things, Mrs. Binswanger--mamma. Come, Miriam!"

"Yes, yes, Irving. Now don't cry, mamma, please! When everybody is so happy it's a sin to cry."

"Not a stitch on her wedding-day! All her clothes locked up here on the boat! Let me open the top tray of the trunk, Miriam, and give you your toothbrush and a few waists--Ach, nearly crazy I am! How I built for that girl's wedding when it--"

"Come, mamma, come--"

They were jamming up the crowded stairway and out to the sun-washed deck. Women in gay corsages and bright-colored veils strolled with an air of immediate adjustment. Men already in steamer caps and tweeds leaned against the railings. Travelers were rapidly separating themselves from stay-at-homes. Already the near-side decks were lined with faces, some wet-eyed and some smiling, and all with kerchiefs or small flags ready for adieus.

"All off! All off!"

"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't worry!"

"Irving, you be good to my Miriam. It's just like you got from me a piece of my heart. Be good to my baby, Irving. Be good!"

Ray tugged at her mother's skirts. "'Sh-h-h-h, mamma, the whole boat don't need to know."

"Be good to her, Irving!"

"Like I--just like I could be anything else to her, mamma!"

"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't cry so, I tell you! Let me go, please, mamma, please! Good-by, papa darling, take good care of yourself and--I--just love you, papa! Ray, have a grand time and don't miss none of it. That's right, kiss Irving; he's your brother-in-law now. Don't cry, mamma darling! Good-by! Good-by!"

A tangle of adieus, more handkerchiefing, more tears and laughter, more ear-splitting shrieks of steam and a black plume of smoke that rose in a billow, and hand in hand Miriam and Irving Shapiro joggling down the gang-plank to the pier.

From the bow of the top deck the ship's orchestra let out a blare of music designed to cover tears and heartaches. The gang-plank drew up and in like a tongue, separating land from sea. From every deck faces were peering down into the crowd below.

Miriam grasped her husband's coat-sleeve, in her frenzy taking a fine pinch of flesh with it. Tears rained down her cheeks.

"There they are, Irving, all three of 'em on the second deck, waving down at us! Good-by, mamma, papa, Ray! Oh, Irving, I just can't stand to see 'em go! Papa, Ray, mamma darling!"

"Now, now, Miriam, think what a grand time they're going to have and how soon they're going to be home again."

"Oh, my darlings!"

Mrs. Binswanger sopped at her eyes, waving betimes the small black cap rescued in the up-deck rush.

Laughter crept with a tinge of hysteria into Miriam's voice. "Oh, darlings, I--I just can't bear to have you go. They're--they're moving, Irving! I--Oh, mamma, papa, darlings! They're moving, Irving!"

Out into the bay where the sunlight hung between blue water and bluer sky, a sea-gull swinging round her spar, the _Roumania_ steamed, unconscious of her freight.

"Good-by, mamma, good-by. Let's follow them to the end of the pier, Irving. I--I want to watch them till they're out of sight."

"Don't cry so, darling!"

"Look! look, see that black speck; it's papa! Oh, I love him, Irving. Good-by, my darlings! Good-by! They didn't want to go except for me, and--Oh, my darlings!"

"Come, dear, we can't see them any more. Come now, it's all over, dear."

They picked their way through the dispersing crowd back toward the dock gates.

"See, dear, how grand everything is! You and me happy here and--"

"Oh, Irving, I know, but--"

"But nothing."

"Pin my veil for me, dear, to--to hide my eyes. I bet I'm a sight!"

"You're not a sight, you're a beauty!"

"'Sh-h-h-h, I don't feel like making fun, Irving!"

"It's a hot day, dear, so we got to celebrate some cool way. Let's take a cab and--"

"No, Irving dear, we can't afford another one."

"To-day we can afford any old thing we want."

"No, no, dear."

"I got it, then! If we ride down to the Battery we can catch a boat for Brighton. Then we can have a little boat-ride all our own, eh? You and me, darling, on a boat-trip all our own."

She turned her shining eyes full upon him. "That'll be just perfect, Irving!" she said.

ROLLING STOCK

In the great human democracy, revolution cannot uncrown the builder of bridges to place upon his throne the builder of pantry shelves. Gray matter and blue blood and white pigment are not dynasties of man's making. Accident of birth, and not primogeniture, makes master minds and mulattoes, seamstresses and rich men's sons. Wharf-rats are more often born than made.

That is why, in this dynasty not of man's making, weavers gone blind from the intricacies of their queen's coronation robe, can kneel at her hem to kiss the cloth of gold that cursed them. A peasant can look on at a poet with no thought to barter his black bread and lentils for a single gossamer fancy. Backstair slaveys vie with each other whose master is more mighty. And this is the story of Millie Moores who, with no anarchy in her heart and no feud with the human democracy, could design for women to whom befell the wine and pearl dog-collars of life, frocks as sheer as web, and on her knees beside them, her mouth full of pins and her sole necklace a tape-measure, thrill to see them garbed in the glory of her labor.

Indeed, when the iridescent bubble of reputation floated out from her modest dressmaking rooms in East Twenty-third Street, Millie Moores, whom youth had rushed past, because she had no leisure for it, felt her heart open like a grateful flower when life brought her more chores to do. And when one day a next-year's-model limousine drew up outside her small doorway with the colored fashion sheet stuck in the glass panel, and one day another, and then one spring day three of them in shining procession along her curb, something cheeped in Millie Moores's heart and she doubled her prices.

And then because ladies long of purse and short of breath found the three dark flights difficult, and because the first small fruit of success burst in Millie Moores's mouth, releasing its taste of wine, she withdrew her three-figure savings account from the Manhattan Trust Company, rented an elevator-service, mauve-upholstered establishment on middle Broadway, secured the managerial services of a slender young man fresh from the Louis Quinze rooms of Madam Roth--Modes, Fifth Avenue, tripled her prices, and emerged from the brown cocoon of Twenty-third Street, Madam Moores, Modiste.

Two years later, three perfect-thirty-six sibyls promenaded the mauve display rooms, tempting those who waddle with sleeveless frocks that might have been designed for the Venus of Milo warmed to life.

The presiding young man, slim and full of the small ways that ingratiate, and with a pomaded glory of tow hair rippling back in a double wave that women's fingers itched to caress and men's hands itched to thresh, pushed forward the mauve velvet chairs with a waiter's servility, but none of his humility; officiated over the crowded pages of the crowded appointment-book, jotted down measurements with an imperturbability that grew for every inch the tape-line measured over and above.

Last, Madam Moores, her small figure full of nerves; two spots of red high on her cheeks; her erstwhile graying hairs, a bit premature and but a sprinkling of them, turned to the inward of a new and elaborate coiffure; and meeting this high tide with a smile, newly enhanced by bridge-work and properly restrained to that dimension of insolence demanded by the rich of those who serve them well.