Part 8

"Yes, they're all grand matches!" exclaimed Mrs. Ginsburg. "It's just like Meena says; they're all gold pocket-book and automobile matches when they're with out-of-town men; but Cleveland--I don't wish it to her to live in Cleveland--not that I've ever been there, but I don't envy girls that marry out of New York."

"My Ray's got it grand in Kansas City! I wish you could see her closet room and her pantry--as big as my whole kitchen! A girl could do worse than Kansas City or Cleveland."

"I always say," remarked Birdie, "when I get engaged it makes no difference where he goes."

"That's the right way to feel, Miss Birdie. Some day, if Marcus should ever marry--and I'm the last one to stand in his way--if he gets his promotion to the Newark factories and the girl he picks out don't like Newark, then she's not the right girl," said Mrs. Gump.

"Newark," said Mrs. Katzenstein, "is a grand little town. Whenever we pass through on our way to Kansas City Birdie always says what a sweet little town it is. Mrs. Silverman, have another cup of coffee."

The short winter day sloughed off suddenly, and it was dark when they rose from the table. "So late!" exclaimed Mrs. Mince. "I got a girl that can't so much as put on the potatoes. Honest, the servant problem gets woise and woise."

"Sh-h-h!" cautioned Mrs. Katzenstein, placing her forefinger across her lips and glancing warningly toward the kitchen. "Tillie," she whispered, "ain't such a jewel neither; but she's honest, and I'm glad enough to have anybody these days. Birdie, she's always fussing with me because I do too much in the kitchen; but why should my husband have his coffee so it don't suit him? Children don't understand--they're too much for style."

"In my little flat, with Etta married and gone," chimed in Mrs. Adler, "I'm better off without a girl. I got a woman to come in and clean three times a week, and me and Ike go out for our supper. I got it better without the worry of a girl."

"I give you right. If I'd listen to Marcus I'd keep a servant, too--a servant when I got my troubles without one!"

"Ain't that jus' like papa, Birdie? He always says: 'Salcha, you take it easy now; when one girl isn't enough keep two'--as if I didn't have enough troubles already!"

"Good-by, Mrs. Katzenstein!" Mrs. Kronfeldt inserted a tissue-paper-wrapped package carefully within her muff. "You got good taste in prizes--salts and peppers always come in handy."

"That's the way me and Birdie felt when we picked them out--you can't have too many of them."

"And, Birdie, you come over with your mamma some afternoon when Ruby's home. That girl with her society and engagements--I never see her myself! This afternoon she saw vaudeville with Sol Littleberger. He's in off the road."

"Birdie had an engagement this afternoon, too, with a traveling-man; but I always like to have her home when I entertain."

"I had a lovely afternoon, Mrs. Katzenstein. You and Miss Birdie must come and see me--One Hundred and Forty-first Street ain't so far away that you can't get to us."

"Me and Birdie can come almost any afternoon, Mrs. Gump, except Saturday we go to the matinee--we're great ones for Saturday matinee."

"That's what I call too bad! On Saturday Marcus comes home early, and he could see you home."

"Well," said Mrs. Katzenstein, plucking a thread off Mrs. Gump's coat-sleeve, "it's not like there weren't plenty more Saturdays in the year. I got enough vaudeville shows this year anyway."

"After the third number I always say, 'Mamma, let's go!'--don't I, mamma?" said Birdie.

"We can come next Saturday, all right, Mrs. Gump; but mind, don't you go to any trouble for us--Birdie's on a diet, and all I want is a cup of coffee. It makes my husband so mad when I come home and got no appetite."

"Good-by, Mrs. Ginsburg. _Ach_, that's right--I forgot; Birdie, write down Maggie's address for Mrs. Ginsburg. You try her once. She brings home the clothes so white it's a pleasure to put them away. Tell her I recommended her. I wish you could see Birdie's shirt-waists come home from the wash--just like new!"

"I'll try her next week," said Mrs. Ginsburg, buckling her fur neckpiece.

"Give Adolph my love, Batta. Birdie, help Aunt Batta with her coat. Come over some evening soon. Good-by, ladies! Come again. Good-by! Be careful of that step there, Mrs. Gump. Good-by!"

Mrs. Katzenstein clicked the door softly shut and turned to her daughter. There were high red spots on her cheeks.

"Well," she sighed, "I'm glad that's over."

"Me, too; and I'm sorry enough that Mrs. Gump didn't win those salt-cellars."

"Such a grand woman as she is--plain and unassuming! He left her real comfortable, too--not much, but enough for herself. But, to look at her in that plain black dress, you wouldn't think that she had a son that might be made manager of the Loeb factory, would you?"

"It is so," agreed Birdie, nibbling from a half-emptied candy-dish on one of the tables; "and that's just the way with Marcus last night--it was only accident that he let out that him and Louis Epstein might have an automobile."

"Plain and unassuming people!" Mrs. Katzenstein exclaimed.

"I says to him when we were in the taxi, I says: 'Automobile-riding sure 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."