Читать книгу Every Soul Hath Its Song - Fannie Hurst - Страница 7

"Gee!" he said, "you're a girl after my own heart!"

On the Elevated train the windows were lowered to the first inrush of spring, and when they left the city behind them came the first green smells of open field and bursting bud.

"Now are you sorry you came, little Miss Miriam?"

She bared her head to the rush of breeze and he held her hat on his lap.

"Well, I should say not!"

"No crowds, just everything to ourselves."

"M-m-m-m! Smells like lilacs."

"We'll pick some."

"I—I ought to be home."

"Forget it!"

"Now, Mr. Shap-iro!" But her eyes continued to laugh and the straight line of her mouth would quiver.

"Some eyes you've got, girlie! Some great big eyes! They nearly bowled me over when you opened the door for me last night. Let me see your eyes—what color are they, anyway?"

"Green."

They laughed without rhyme and without reason, and as if their hearts were distilling joy. Then for a time they rode without speech and with only the wind in their ears, and he watched the tendrils of her hair blowing this way and that.

"Just think," she said, finally, "we land in Naples just four weeks from to-day!"

"Hope the boat don't sail."

"You don't."

"Do!"

"If you aren't just the limit!"

"What'll I be doing while you're gallivanting round the country with some Italian count?"

"I should worry."

"I better put a bee in Izzy's ear, and maybe he'll put another in your father's, and the old gentleman will change his mind and won't go."

"Yes—he—will—not! When papa promises he sticks."

"Well, you don't know the nervy things I can do if I want. Nerve is my middle name."

"You sure are some nervy."

"'Cheer up!' I always say to myself when a firm closes the front door on me: 'Cheer up; there's always the back door and the fire-escape left.' That's how I made my rep in shirtwaists—on nerve." He inclined to her slightly across the car-seat. "You wouldn't close the front door on me, would you, Miss Miriam?"

"Look, we get off here!"

"Would you?"

"N-no, silly."

Within the park new grass was soft as plush under their feet, and once away from the winding asphalt of the main driveway the bosky heart of a dell closed them in, and the green was suddenly dappled with shadow. Here and there in the cool, damp spots violets lifted their heads and pale wood-anemones, spring's firstlings. They sat on a rock spread first with newspaper. Over their heads birds twitted.

"Somehow, here so far away and all I—I just can't get it in my head that I'm really going."

"I can't, neither."

"Naples—just think!"

"Ain't it funny, Miss Miriam, but with some girls when you meet them it's just like you had known them for always, and then again with others somehow a fellow never gets anywheres."

"That's the way with me. I take a fancy to a person or I don't."

"That's me every time. Once let me get to liking a person, and good night!"

"Me, too."

"Now take you, Miss Miriam. From the very minute last night when you opened that door for me, with your cheeks so pink and your eyes so big and bright, something just went—well, something just went sort of lickety-clap inside of me. You seen for yourself how I wanted to back out of going to the show with Izz?"

"Yes."

"It—it ain't many girls I'd want to stay home from a show for."

"Say, just listen to the birds. If I could trill like that I wouldn't have to take any lessons in Paris."

"You sing, Miss Miriam?"

"Oh, a little."

"Gee! you are a girl after my own heart! There's nothing gets me like a little girl with a voice."

"My teacher says I'm a dramatic soprano."

"When you going to sing for me, eh?"

"I'll sing for you some time alrighty."

"Soon?"

"Yes."

"How soon?"

"Maybe after—after I've had some lessons in Paris."

He was suddenly grave. "Aw, there you go on that old trip again! Gee! I wish I could grab that bag out of your hand and throw it with tickets and all in the lake!"

"You know with me it's right funny too. The minute I get something I want, then I don't want it any more. Before papa said yes I was so crazy to go, and now that I got the tickets bought I'm not so anxious at all."

"Then don't go, Miss Miriam."

She withdrew her hand and danced to her feet, her incertitude vanishing like a candle flame blown out. "Look over there, will you—a redbird!"

"If it ain't!" and he followed her quickly, high-stepping between violet patches.

"Honest, it's hard to walk, the violets are so thick."

"Here, let me pick you a bunch of them to take home, Miss Miriam. Say, ain't they beauties! Look, great big purple ones, and black and soft-looking toward the middle just like your eyes. Look what beauties—they'll keep a long time when you get home, if you wrap them in wet tissue-paper."

They fell to plucking, now here, now there.

The sun had got low when they retraced their steps to the train, and the chill of evening long since had set in.

"You—you ought to told me it was so late."

"I didn't know it myself, Miss Miriam."

"Let's hurry. Mamma won't know where—how—"

"We'll make it back in thirty minutes."

"Let's run for that train."

"Give me your hand."

They were off and against the wind, their faces thrust forward and upward. Homeward in the coach they were strangely silent, this time his hat in her lap. At the entrance to her apartment-house he left her with reiterated farewells.

"Then I can come to-morrow night, Miss Miriam?"

"Y-yes." And she stepped into the elevator. He waved through the trellis-work, as she moved upward, brandishing his hat. She answered with a flourish of her bunch of violets.

"Good-by!"

At the threshold her mother met her, querulous and in the midst of adjusting summer covers to furniture.

"How late! I hope, Miriam, right away you had the steamer-trunk sent up. Good berths—good state-rooms you got? What you got in that paper, that aloes root I told you to get against seasickness? Gimme and right away I boil it."

"No, no, don't touch them! They—they're violets. Let me put them in water with wet tissue-paper over them."

* * * * *

To the early clattering of that faithful chariot of daybreak, the milk-wagon, and with the April dawn quivering and flushing over the roofs of houses, Mrs. Binswanger rose from her restless couch and into a black flannelette wrapper.

"Simon, wake up! How a man can sleep like that the day what he starts for Europe!"

To her husband's continued and stentorian evidences of sleep she tiptoed to the adjoining bedroom, slippered feet sloughing as she walked.

"Girls!"

Only their light breathing answered her. Atop the bed-coverlet her younger daughter's hand lay upturned, the fingers curling toward the palm.

"Ray! Miriam!"

Miriam stirred and burrowed deeper into her pillow, her hair darkly spread against the white in a luxury of confusion.

"Girls!"

"What, mamma?"

"Five o'clock, Miriam, and we ain't got the trunks strapped yet, or that seasick medicine from Mrs. Berkovitz."

"For Heaven's sake, mamma, the boat don't sail till three o'clock this afternoon! There's plenty time. Go back to bed awhile, mamma."

"When such a trip I got before me as twelve days on water, I don't lay me in bed until the last minute. Ray, get up and help mamma. In a minute the milkman comes, and I want you should tell him we don't take no more for ten weeks. Get up, Ray, and help mamma see that all the windows is locked tight."

"M-m-m-m."

"Miriam, get up! I want you should throw this quilt from your bed over the brass table in the parlor so it don't get rust. Miriam, didn't you say yourself last night you must get up early? Always only at night my children got mouths about how early they get up."

From the soft mound of her couch Miriam rose to the dawn with the beautiful gesture of tossing backward her black hair. Sleep trembled on her lashes and she yawned frankly with her arms outflung.

"Oh-h-h-h-h dear!"

"I tell you I got more gumption as my daughters. I want, Miriam, you should go down by Berkovitz's for that prescription for your papa."

"Aw, now, mamma, you've got six different kinds of—"

"I tell you when I let your papa get seasick or any kind of sick on this trip, with his going-on about hisself, right away my whole trip is spoilt. Ray, if you don't get up and sew in them cuffs and collars on your coat don't expect as I will do it for you. For my part you can travel just like a rag-bag, Ray!"

"M-m-m-m."

Shivering and with her small ankles pressed together, Miriam peered out into the pale light.

"A grand day, mamma."

"Miriam, I think if I sew all the express checks up in a bag and wear them right here under my waist with the jewelry, they are better as in papa's pockets. With his tobacco-bag, easy as anything he can pull them out and lose them. That's what we need yet, to lose our express checks!"

"Mamma, that's been on your mind for ten days. For goodness' sakes, nobody's going to lose the express checks!"

"What time they call for the trunks, Miriam?"

"For goodness' sakes, mamma, didn't I tell you exactly ten times that's all been attended to! Yesterday Irving went direct to the transfer office with me."

"I ain't so sure of nothing what I don't attend to myself. Ray, get up!"

The sun rose over the roofs of the city, gilding them. At seven o'clock the household was astir, strapping, nailing, folding, and unfolding. Mr. Binswanger stooped with difficulty over his wicker traveling-bag.

"So! Na!"

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?"