Part 10

The crowded steerage of a wooden ship, her first son suckling at her breast. At the prow Simon Meyerburg again, his peasant cap pushed backward and his black eyes, with the seer's light in them, gleaming ahead for the first glimpse of the land of fulfilment. An unbelievable city sucking them immediately into its slums. Filth. A quick descent into squalor. A second son. A third. A fourth. A fifth. A girl child. Mouths too eager for black bread. Always the struggle and the sour smell of slums. Finally light. White light. The seer sees!

Then, ever green in her mind, a sun-mottled kitchen with a black iron range, and along the walls festoons of looped-up green peppers. White bread now in abundance for small mouths not so hungry. At evening, Simon Meyerburg, with rims of dirt under his nails, entering that kitchen door, the girl child turning from her breast to leap forward....

Sometimes in her stately halls, caught, as it were, in passing from room to room, Mrs. Simon Meyerburg would pause, assaulted by these memories of days so remote that her mind could not always run back to meet them. Then again the glittering present studded with the jewels of fulfilment lay on her brow like the thin line of a headache, pressing out the past.

In Mrs. Meyerburg's bedroom a great arched ceiling, after the narrative manner of Paolo Veronese, lent such vastness to the apartment that moving across it, or sitting in her great overstuffed armchair beside a window, she hardly struck a note. Great wealth lay in canopied silence over that room. A rug out of Persia, so large that countless extra years and countless pairs of tired eyes and tired fingers had gone to make it, let noises sink noiseless into its nap. Brocade and tufting ate up sound. At every window more brocade shut out the incessant song of the Avenue.

In the overstuffed chair beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight and very black.

An hour by an inlaid ormolu clock she sat there, her feet in soft, elastic-sided shoes, just lifted from the floor. Incongruous enough, on a plain deal table beside her, a sheaf of blue-prints lay unrolled. She fingered them occasionally and with a tenderness, as if they might be sensitive to touch; even smiled and held the sheets one by one up against the shrouded window so that the light pressing through them might emphasize the labyrinth of lines. Dozed, with a smile printed on her lips, and awoke when her head lopped too heavily sidewise.

After an interval she slid out of her chair and crossed to the door; even in action her broad, squat figure infinitesimal to the room's proportions. When she opened the door the dignity of great halls lay in waiting. She crossed the wide vista to a closed door, a replica of her own, and knocked, waited, turned the crystal knob, knocked, waited. Rapped again, this time in three staccatos. Silence. Then softly and with her cheek laid against the imperturbable panel of the closed door:

"Becky! Becky! Open! Open!"

A muffled sound from within as if a sob had been let slip.

Then again, rattling the knob this time: "Becky, it's mamma. Becky, you should get up now; it's time for our drive. Let me in, Becky. Open!" shaking the handle.

When the door opened finally, Mrs. Meyerburg stepped quickly through the slit, as if to ward off its too heavy closing. A French maid, in the immemorial paraphernalia of French maids, stood by like a slim sentinel on stilts, her tall, small heels clicked together. Perfume lay on the artificial dusk of that room.

"Therese, you can go down awhile. When Miss Becky wants she can ring."

"Oui, madame."

"I wish, Therese, when you go down you would tell Anna I don't want she should put the real lace table-cloth from Miss Becky's party last night in the linen-room. Twice I've told her after its use she should always bring it right back to me."

"Oui, madame." And Therese flashed out on the slim heels.

In the crowded apartment, furnished after the most exuberant of the various exuberant French periods, Miss Rebecca Meyerburg lay on a Louis Seize bed, certified to have been lifted, down to the casters, from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette. In a great confusion of laces and linens, disarrayed as if tossed by a fever patient, she lay there, her round young arm flung up over her head and her face turned downward to the curve of one elbow.

"Ach, now, Becky, ain't it a shame you should take on so? Ain't it a shame before the servants? Come, baby, in a half-hour it's time for our drive. Come, baby!"

Beneath the fine linen Miss Meyerburg dug with her toes into the mattress, her head burrowing deeper and the black mane of her hair rippling backward in maenadic waves. "If you don't let me alone, ma, if you don't just let me lay here in peace, I'll scream. I'll faint. Faint, I tell you," and smothered her words in the curve of her elbow.

Mrs. Meyerburg breathed outward in a sigh and sat down hesitant on the bed edge, her hand reaching out to the bare white shoulder and smoothing its high luster.

"Come, Becky, and get up like a good girl. Don't you want, baby, to come over by mamma's room and see the plans for the Memorial?"

"No! No! No!"

"They got to be sent back to-day, Becky, before Goldfinger leaves for Boston with them. I got to get right away busy if I want the boys should have their surprise this time next year. To no one but my baby girl have I said yet one word. Don't you want, Becky, to see them before they go down by Goldfinger's office, so he can right away go ahead?"

"No! No!"

"Becky, ain't you ashamed, your own papa's Memorial?"

"Please, mamma, please. If you only won't Becky me."

"Betty."

"If you only will go and--and leave me alone."

"I ask you, Betty, should a girl what's got everything that should make her happy just like an angel, a girl what has got for herself heaven on earth, make herself right away sick the first time what things don't go smooth with her?"

"If I could only die! If I could die! Why don't I die to-day?"

The throb of a sob lay on her voice, and she sat up suddenly, pushing backward with both hands the thick rush of hair to her face. Grief had blotched her cheeks, but she was as warm and as curving as Flora. It was as if her deep-white flesh was deep-white plush and would sink to the touch. The line and the sheen of her radiated through her fine garment.

"Why don't I die?" repeating her vain question, and her eyes, darker because she was so white, looking out and past her parent and streaming their bitter tears.

"You'm a bad girl, Becky, and it's a sin you should talk so. _Gott sei dank_ your poor papa ain't alive to hear such bad words from his own daughter's lips."

"If pa was living things would be different--let me tell you that."

In a flare of immediate anger Mrs. Meyerburg's head shot forward. "Du--" she cried; "du--you--you bad girl--du--"

"If he had lived they would!"

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg's face, with the lines in it held tight, relaxed to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff silk shushing as she swayed.

"Ach, that I should live to hear from my own child that I 'ain't done by her like her father would want that I should do. Every hour since I been left alone, to do by my six children like he would want has been always my only thought, and now--"

"I mean it! I mean it! If he had lived he would have settled it on me easy enough when he saw what I was doing for the family. Two million if need be! He was the one in this family that made it big, because he wasn't afraid of big things."

Further rage trembled along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, and the fingers she waggled trembled, too, of that same wrath. "You'm a bad girl, Becky! You'm a bad girl with thought only for yourself. Always your papa said by each child we should do the same. Five hundred thousand dollars to each son when he marries a fine, good girl. More as one night I can tell you I laid awake when Felix picked out for himself Trixie, just wondering what papa would want I should do it or not."

"Can't you keep from picking on that girl, mamma? It's through her, if you want to know it, that I first got in with--with the marquis and that crowd."

"Always by each child we should do the same, he said. Five hundred thousand dollars to our girl when she marries a fine, good man. Even back in days when he had not a cent to leave after him, always he said alike you should all be treated. Always, you hear? Always."

Fire had dried the tears in Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and her face had resumed its fixity of lines. Only her finger continued to tremble and two near-the-surface nerves in her left temple.

"But, mamma, you know yourself he never dreamt we could climb up to this. That for a miserable five hundred thousand more we--"

"A miserable five hundred thousand she calls it like it was five hundred thousand cents!"

"That for a miserable five hundred thousand dollars we could raise our family up to the nobility. The Marquis Rosencrantz, ma, who--"

"Becky, it ain't that I got a word to say against this young man Rosencrantz--but--"

"Marquis Rosencrantz, mamma."

"All right then, Marquis Rosencrantz; but it's like your brother Ben says--a marquis in a country where there ain't no more any of them made could just as well be called a mister. Not a word I got to say against this young Rosencrantz, but--"

"Marquis, ma, please remember! M-a-r-q-u-i-s. Whether there are any more of them or not in France, he still goes by the title over here, and that's what he is, ma. Please remember!"

"Marquis Rosencrantz. But when a young man, Becky, don't talk my own language, it ain't so easy for me to know if I like him--"

"Like him. Huh!" Sitting there upright in bed, her large, white arms wrapped about her knees, Miss Meyerburg regarded her mother with dry eyes, but through a blur of scorn. "She don't know if she likes him! Let me tell you, ma, we can worry if he likes us, not if we like him."

"I always say, Becky, about these fine people what you meet traveling in Europe with your brother Felix and his wife with her gay ways, you--"

"A marquis comes her way and she don't know whether she likes him or not. That's rich!"

"For the price what you say he hinted to you last night he's got to have before he can get married, I guess _oser_ I can say if I like him or not."

"I should think, ma, if you had any pride for the family after the way we've been spit on by a certain bunch in this town, you'd be glad to grab a marquis to wave in their stuck-up faces."

"For such things what make in life men like wild beasts fighting each other I got no time. I ain't all for style. All what I want is to see my little girl married to a fine, good--"

"Yes, yes, ma. I know all that fine, good man stuff."

"Ja, I say it again. To a fine, good man just like nearly all your brothers married fine, good women."

"The marquis, just let me tell you, ma, is a man of force--he is. Maybe those foreigners don't always show up, but I've seen him on his own ground. I've seen him in Paris and Monte Carlo and I--"

"I 'ain't got a word to say against this young man what followed you all the way home from Paris. What I don't know I can't talk about. Only I ask you, Becky, ain't it always in the papers how from Europe they run here thick after the girls what have got money?"

"What are you always running down Europe for, ma? Where did you come from, yourself, I'd like to know!"

"I don't run it down, baby. I don't. You know how your papa loved the old country and sent always money back home. But he always said, baby, it's in America we had all our good luck and to America what gave us so much we should give back too. Just because your brother Felix and his wife what was on the stage like such doings over there is no reason--"

"It's just those notions of yours, ma, that are keeping this family down, let me tell you that--you and Ben and Roody and Izzy and all the rest of them with their old-fogyness."

"Your brothers, let me tell you, you bad girl, you, are as fine, steady men as your papa before them."

"We could have one of the biggest names in this town and get in on the right kind of charities, if you and they didn't--"

"Your papa, Becky, had his own ideas how to do charity and how we should not give just where our name shows big in the papers. Your brothers are like him, fine, good men, and that's why I want the Memorial should come like a surprise, so they can have before them always that their father was the finest--"

Suddenly Miss Meyerburg flung herself back on her pillows, tears gushing hot and full of salt. "Oh, what's the use? What's the use? She won't understand."

"Becky, baby, 'ain't you got everything what money can buy? A house on Fifth Avenue what even the sight-seeing automobile hollers out about. Automobiles of your own more as you can use. Brothers nearly all with grand wives and families, and such a beautiful girl like you with a grand fortune to--"

"Mamma, mamma, can't you understand there's things that money can't buy?"

"Ja, I should say so; but them is the things, Becky, that money makes you forget all about."

"Try to understand, can't you, ma, that the Rosencrantzes are a great old French family. You know for yourself how few of--of our people got titles to their names. Jacob Rosencrantz, ma, the marquis's great-grandfather back in the days when the family had big money, got his title from the king, ma, for lending money when the--"

"If all of his sons got, like this great-grandson of his asks, one million dollars with their wives, I should say he could afford to lend to the king. To two kings!"

"Please, mamma, can't you understand? It don't hurt how things are now--it's the way they used to be with those kinds of families that count, ma. I was on their estate in France, ma, with Trixie and Felix. She used to know him in Paris when she was singing there. You ought to see, ma, an old, old place that you can ride on for a day and not come to the end, and the house so moldy and ramshackly that any American girl would be proud to marry into it. Those are the things, ma, that our family needs and money can't buy."

"You mean, Becky, that five hundred thousand dollars can't buy it! It has got to be a million dollars yet! A million dollars my child asks for just like it was five dollars!"

"I'm not asking that, ma, I'm not. Five hundred thousand of it is mine by rights. I'm only asking for half a million."

"Gott in Himmel, child, much more as a million dollars I 'ain't got left altogether. With my five sons married and their shares drawn, I tell you, Becky, a million dollars to you now would leave me so low that--"

"There you go. That's what you said that time Felix had to have the hundred thousand in a hurry, but I notice you got it overnight without even turning a finger. For him you can do, but--"

"For a black sheep I got to--"

"It's not all tease with the boys, let me tell you, ma, when they sing that song at you about a whole stocking full you've got that none of us know anything about."

"Ja, you and your brothers can talk, but I know what's what. Don't think, Becky, your brother Felix and his wife with their Monte Carlo all the time and a yacht they got to have yet, and their debts, 'ain't eat a piece out of the fortune your papa built up for you children out of his own sweat."

"Don't go back to ancient history, ma."

"Those cut-uppings is for billionaires, Becky; not for one old lady as 'ain't got much more as a million left after her six dowries is paid."

"Yes, I wish I had what you've got over and above that."

"That young Rosencrantz is playing you high, Becky, because he sees how high your brother and his wife can fly. Always when people get big like us, right away the world takes us for even bigger as we are. He 'ain't got no right to make such demands. Five hundred thousand dollars is more as he ever saw in his life. I tell you, Becky, if I could speak to that young man like you can in his own language, I would tell him what--"

"He don't make demands in so many words, ma. There--there's a way those things are done without just coming right out. I guess you think, when Selma Bernheimer married her baron, he came right out in words and said it had to be two millions. Like fun he did! But just the same, you don't think she could have said yes to him, when he asked her, unless she knew that she--she could fork over, do you?"

"I tell you in such marriages the last thing what you hear talked about is being in love."

"Oh, that had nothing to do with this, ma. The love part is there all right. You--you don't understand, ma!"

"_Gott sei dank_ that I don't understand such!"

Then Miss Meyerburg leaned forward, her large, white hand on her parent's knee, her face close and full of fervor. "Ma dear, you got it in your power sitting there to make me the happiest girl in the world. I'll do more for the family in this marriage, ma dear, than all five of the boys put together. I tell you, ma, it's the biggest minute in the life of this family if you give--if you do this for me, ma. It is, dear."

"Ja, let me just tell you that your brothers and their wives will be the first to put their foot down on that the youngest should get twice as much as they."

"What do you care? And, anyways, ma, they don't need to know. What they don't know don't hurt them. Don't tell them, ma; just don't tell them. Ain't I the only girl, and the baby too? Haven't I got the chance to, raise them all up in society? Oh, ma dear, you've got so much! So much more than you can ever use, and--and you--you're old now, ma, and I--I'm so young, dear, so young!"

"Ja, like you say, maybe I'm old, but I tell you, Becky, I 'ain't got the money to throw away like--"

"Let me let the marquis ask me when he comes to-night, ma. He's ready to pop if--if I just dare to let him, ma."

"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you how things is done now'days between young people. I should let him ask her yet, she says, like I had put on his mouth a muzzle."

"It's no use letting him ask me, ma dear, if I can't come across like I know the girl he can marry has got to. Let me let him ask me to-night, ma. And to-morrow at New-Year's dinner with all the family here, we'll break it to 'em, ma. Mamma dearie! Let me ask the marquis here to New-Year's dinner to-morrow to meet his new brothers. Ma dearie!"

She was frankly pleading, her eyes twilit, with stars shining through, her mouth so like red fruit and her beautiful brows raised.

"So help me, Becky, if I give you the million like you ask and with the Memorial yet to build, I am wiped out, Becky. Wiped out!"

"Wiped out! With five sons with their finger in every good pie in town and a daughter married into nobility?"

"I 'ain't got one word to say against my children, Becky; luckier I been as most mothers; but the day what I am dependent on one of them for my living, that day I want I should be done with living."

"You could live with us, ma dearie. Paris in season and the estate in winter. You--you could run the big estate for us, ma, order and--"

"You heard what I said, Becky."

"Well, then, ma, why--why don't you get the Memorial out of your head, dear? Pa built his own Memorial, ma. His memory lasts with everybody, anyway."

Aspen trembling laid hold of Mrs. Meyerburg, muddling her words. "You--ach--from her dead father yet she would take away the marble to his memory."

"Ma!"

"Ja, the marble to his memory! Bad girl, you! A man what lifted up with his hands those that came after so that hardly on the ground they got to put a foot. And now du--du what gives him no thanks! A Memorial to her papa, a Home for the Old and Poor what he always dreamed of building, she begrudges, she begrudges!"

"No, no, mamma, you don't understand!"

"A man what loved so the poor while he lived, shouldn't be able to do for the poor after he is dead too. You go, you bad girl you, to your grand nobleman what won't take you if you ain't worth every inch your weight in gold, you--"

"Mamma--mamma, if you don't stop your terrible talk I--I'll faint, I tell you!"

"You go and your brother Felix and his fine wife with you, for the things what money can buy. You got such madness for money, sometimes like wolfs you all feel to me breathing on my back, you go and--"

"I tell you if--if you don't stop that terrible talk I--I'll faint, I will! Oh, why don't I die--why--why--why?"

"Since the day what he died every hour I've lived for the time when, with my children provided for, I could spend the rest of my days building to a man what deserved it such a monument as he should have. A Home for the Old and Poor with a park all around, where they can sit all day in the sun. All ready I got the plans in my room to send them down by Goldfinger this afternoon he should go right ahead and--"

"Mamma, mamma, please listen--"