Part 11

But the voice of Mrs. Meyerburg rose like a gale and her face was slashed with tears. "If my last cent it takes and on the streets I go to beg, up such a Memorial goes. All you children with your feet up on his shoulders can turn away from his memory now he's gone, but up it goes if on the day what I die I got to dig dirt with my finger-nails to pay yet for my coffin."

"Listen, ma; just be calm a minute--just a minute. I don't mean that. Didn't I just say he was the grandest father in the world and--"

"You said--"

"'Sh-h-h, mamma! Quiet, quiet! There isn't one of the boys wouldn't agree with me if they knew. We aren't big enough, I tell you, to sink a million in an out-of-town charity like that. In any charity, for that matter, no matter how big it shows up. You say yourself a million and a half will cripple you. Well, your first duty is to us living and not to him dead--To us living! It means my whole life, my whole life!" And she beat the pillow with hard fists.

"Ja, but--"

"With that money you can buy my happiness living, and he don't want it or need it dead."

Within the quick vise of her two hands Mrs. Meyerburg clasped her face, all quivering and racked with sobs. "I can't hear it. It's like she was sticking knifes into me."

"The marquis has the kind of blood we need to give this family a boost. We can be big, ma. Big, I tell you. I can have a crest embroidered in two colors in my linens. That inside clique that looks down on us now can do some looking up then. The boys don't need to know about that million, ma. Just let me have the marquis here to-morrow to meet his new brothers, ma, like there was nothing unusual. I'll pay it back to you in a million ways. The Memorial will come in time. Everything will come in time. Make me the happiest girl in the world, ma. He'll ask me to-night if I let him. Get the Memorial plans out of your head for a while, anyway! Just for a while!"

"Not so long as I got in me the strength to send down them plans to Goldfinger's office this afternoon with my message to go ahead. I don't invite no marquis here to-morrow for family dinner if I got to get him here with a million dollars' worth of bait. I--"

"Mamma!"

"Go and tell him your stingy old mamma would rather build a Home for the Old and Poor in memory of the grandest man what ever lived than give a snip like him, what never did a lick of work in his life, a fortune so he should have with it a good time at Monte Carlo. Just go tell him! Tell him!"

She was trembling now so that she could scarcely withdraw from the bedside, but her voice had lost none of its gale-like quality.

"Go tell him! Maybe it does him good he should hear." And in spite of her ague she crossed the vast room, slamming the door so that a great shudder ran over the room.

On the bed that had been lifted bodily from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette, its laces upheaved about her like billows in anger, Rebecca Meyerburg lay with her face to the ceiling, raw sobs distorting it.

Steadying herself without that door, her hand laid between her breasts and slightly to the left, as if there a sharp pain had cut her, Mrs. Meyerburg leaned to the wall a moment, and, gaining quick composure, proceeded steadily enough across the wide aisle of hall, her hand following a balustrade.

A servant intercepted her half-way. "Madam--"

"Kemp, from here when I look down in the lower hall, all them ferns look yellow on top. I want you should please cut them!"

"Yes, madam. Mrs. Fischlowitz, madam, has been waiting down in the side hall for you."

"Mrs. Fischlowitz! For why you keep her waiting in the side hall?"

"Therese said madam was occupied."

"Bring her right up, Kemp, in the elevator. Her foot ain't so good. Right away, Kemp."

"Yes, madam."

Into Mrs. Meyerburg's room of many periods, its vastness so emphasized by the ceiling after Paolo Veronese, its fluted yellow-silk bed canopy reaching up to that ceiling stately and theatric enough to shade the sleep of a shah, limped Mrs. Fischlowitz timidly and with the uncertainty with which the callous feet of the unsocialistic poor tread velvet.

"How-do, Mrs. Fischlowitz?"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, I didn't want you to be disturbed except I want to explain to you why I'm late again this month."

"Sit down! I don't want you should even explain, Mrs. Fischlowitz--that's how little I thought about it."

Mrs. Meyerburg was full of small, pleased ways, drawing off her guest's decent black cape, pulling at her five-fingered mittens, lifting the nest-like bonnet.

"So! And how's the foot?"

"Not so good and not so bad. And how is the sciatica with you, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"Like with you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. It could be better and it could be worse. Sometimes I got a little touch yet up between my ribs."

"If it ain't one thing, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's another. What you think why I'm late again with the rent, Mrs. Meyerburg? If last week my Sollie didn't fall off the delivery-wagon and sprain his back!"

"You don't say so!"

"That same job as you got him two years ago so good he's kept, and now such a thing has to happen. _Gott sei dank_, he's up and out again, but I tell you it was a scare!"

"I should say so. And how is Tillie?"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, you should just see for yourself how that girl has got new color since that certified milk you send her every day. Like a new girl so pretty all of a sudden she has grown. For to-morrow, Mrs. Meyerburg, a girl what never before had a beau in her life, if Morris Rinabauer, the young foreman where she works, 'ain't invited her out for New-Year's Day."

"You got great times down by Rivington Street this time of year. Not? I remember how my children used to like it with their horns _oser_ like it was their own holiday."

"Ja, it's a great _gedinks_ like always. Sometimes I say it gets so tough down there I hate my Tillie should come home from the factory after dark, but now with Morris Rinabauer--"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz, I guess you think it's a sin I should say so, but I tell you, when I think of that dirty little street down there and your flat what I lived in the seventeen happiest years of my life with my husband and babies--when I think back on my years in that little flat I--I can just feel myself tremble like all over. That's how happy we were down there, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, when I got a place like this, at Rivington Street I wouldn't want I should ever have to look again."

"It's a feeling, Mrs. Fischlowitz, what you--you can't understand until--until you live through so much like me. I--I just want some day you should let me come down, Mrs. Fischlowitz, and visit by you in the old place, eh?"

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, I can tell you the day what you visit on me down there I am a proud woman. How little we got to offer you know, but if I could fix for you Kaffeeklatsch some day and Kuchen and--"

"In the kitchen you still got the noodle-board yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, where you can mix Kuchen too?"

"I should say so. Always on it I mix my doughs."

"He built it in for me himself, Mrs. Fischlowitz. On hinges so when I was done, up against the wall out of the way I could fold it."

"'Just think,' I say to my children, 'we eat noodles off a board what Simon Meyerburg built with his own hands.' On the whole East Side it's a curiosity."

"Sometimes when I come down by your flat, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I show you how I used to make them for him. Wide ones he liked."

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, like you could put your hands in dough now!"

"'Mamma,' he used to say--standing in the kitchen door when he came home nights and looking at me maybe rocking Becky there by the stove and waiting supper for him--'Mamma,' he'd say, clapping his hands at me, 'open your eyes wide so I can see what's in 'em.'"

"That such a big man should play like that!"

"'Come in, darling,' I'd say; 'you can't guess from there what we got.'"

"Just think, like just married you were together."

"'Noodles!' he'd holler, and all the time right in back of me, spread out on the board, he could see 'em. I can see him yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, standing there in the kitchen doorway, under the horseshoe what he found when we first landed."

"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, in that flat we 'ain't had nothing but luck, neither, with you so good to us."

"Ach, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, for an old friend like you, what I lived next door to so many years and more as once gave my babies to keep for me when I must go out awhile, I shouldn't do a little yet."

"'Little,' she calls it. With such low rent you give us I'm ashamed to bring the money. Five weeks in the country and milk for my Tillie, until it's back from the grave you snatched her. Even on my back now every stitch what I got on I got to thank you for. Such comfort I got from that black cape!"

"I was just thinking, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with your rheumatism and on such a cold day a cape ain't so good for you, neither. Right up under it the wind can get."

"Warm like toast it is, Mrs. Meyerburg."

"I got a idea, Mrs. Fischlowitz! In that chest over there by the wall I got yet a jacket from Rivington Street. Right away it got too tight for me. Like new it is, with a warm beaver collar. At auction one day he got it for me. Like a top it will fit you, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"No, no, please, Mrs. Meyerburg. It just looks like every time what I come you got to give me something. Ashamed it makes me. Please you shouldn't."

But in the pleasant frenzy of sudden decision Mrs. Meyerburg was on her knees beside a carved chest, burrowing her arm beneath folded garments, the high smell of camphor exuding.

"Only yesterday in my hand I had it. There! See! Just your size!" She held the creased garment out from her by each shoulder, blowing the nap of the beaver collar.

"Please, no, Mrs. Meyerburg. Such a fine coat maybe you can wear it yourself. No, I don't mean that, when you got such grander ones; but for me, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's too fine to take. Please!"

Standing there holding it thrust enthusiastically forward, a glaze suddenly formed over Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and she laid her cheek to the brown fur collar, a tear dropping to it.

"You'm right, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I--I can't give this up. I--he--a coat he bought once for me at auction when--he _oser_ could afford it. I--you must excuse me, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"That's right, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a remembrance you should keep it."

Then brightening: "But I got in the next room, Mrs. Fischlowitz, a coat better as this for you. Lined all in squirrel-skin they call it. One day by myself I bought it, and how my Becky laughs and won't even let me wear it in automobile. I ain't stylish enough, she says."

With an inarticulate medley of sounds Mrs. Fischlowitz held up a hand of remonstrance. "But--"

"Na, na, just a minute." And on the very wings of her words Mrs. Meyerburg was across the room, through the ornate door of an ornate boudoir, and out presently with the garment flung across her arm. "Na, here put it on."

"Ach, such a beau-tiful coat!"

"So! Let me help!"

They leaned together, their faces, which the years had passed over none too lightly, close and eager. Against the beaver collar Mrs. Fischlowitz's hand lay fluttering.

"Put your hands in the pockets, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Deep, eh?"

"Finer you can believe me as I ever had in my life before. I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, a woman like you should get first place in heaven and you should know how many on the East Side there is says the same. I--I brought you your rent, Mrs. Meyerburg. You must excuse how late, but my Sollie--"

"Ja, ja."

Eleven! Twelve! Twelve-fifty! Mrs. Fischlowitz counted it out carefully from a small purse tucked in her palm, snapping it carefully shut over the remaining coins.

"Thank you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. You should never feel hurried. Mr. Oppenheimer will mail you a receipt."

"I guess now I must be going, Mrs. Meyerburg--to-night I promised my Sollie we have cheese-Kuchen for supper."

"Always I used to make it with a short crust for my Isadore. How he loved it!"

"Just again, Mrs. Meyerburg, I want you should let me say how--how this is the finest present what I ever had in my life. I can tell you from just how soft it is on me, I can tell how it must feel to ride in automobile."

A light flashed in brilliance up into Mrs. Meyerburg's face. "Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

"Ja, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"I tell you what! I--this afternoon my Becky, Mrs. Fischlowitz, she--she ain't so well and like always can't take with me a ride in the Park. Such--such a cold that girl has got. How I should like it, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you would be so kind to--to take with me my drive in--in your new coat."

"I--"

"Ja, ja, I know, Mrs. Fischlowitz, cheese Kuchen should first get cold before supper, but if you could just an hour ride by me a little? If you would be so kind, Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

Diffidence ran trembling along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, as if she dared not venture too far upon a day blessed with tasks. "I got always so--so much time to myself now'days, Mrs. Fischlowitz, sometimes I--I get maybe a--a little lonesome."

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, you don't want to be bothered with such--such a person like me when you ride so grand through the Park."

"Fit like a fiddle it will make you feel, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Button up tight that collar and right away we start. Please, right next to you, will you press that third button? That means we go right down and find outside the car waiting for us."

"But, Mrs. Meyerburg--"

"See, just like you, I put on a coat on the inside fur. This way, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Careful, your foot!"

In the great lower hall full of Tudor gloom the carved stone arches dropping in rococo stalactites from the ceiling, and a marble staircase blue-veined as a delicate woman's hand winding up to an oriole window, a man-servant swung back two sets of trellised doors; bowed them noiselessly shut again.

The quick cold of December bit them at the threshold. Opposite lay the Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns, the sunlight hard against their boles. More sunlight lay cold and glittering down the length of the most façaded avenue in the world and on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars and their nickel-plated snouts and plate-glass sides.

Women, with heads too haughty to turn them right or left, moved past in closed cars that were perfumed and upholstered like jewel-boxes; the joggly smartness of hansom cabs, their fair fares seeing and being seen behind the wooden aprons and their frozen laughter coming from their lips in vapor! On the broad sidewalks women in low shoes that defied the wind, and men in high hats that the wind defied; nursemaids trim as deaconesses, and their charges the beautiful exotic children of pure milk and pure sunshine!

One of these deaconess-like nursemaids, walking out with a child whose black curls lay in wide sprays on each shoulder, detached herself from the up-town flow and crossed to the trellised threshold.

"Good afternoon, Madam Meyerburg. Mademoiselle, _dites bonjour à madame votre grand'maman_."

"_Bonjour, grand'maman_."

In the act of descending her steps, Mrs. Meyerburg's hands flew outward. "Ach, du little Aileen. Come, Aileen, to grandma. Mrs. Fischlowitz, this is Felix's little girl. You remember Felix--such a beautiful bad little boy he was what always used to fight your Sollie underneath the sink."

"_Gott in Himmel_, so this is Felix's little girl!"

"Ja, this is already his second. Come, Aileen, to grandma and say good afternoon to the lady."

The maid guided the small figure forward by one shoulder. "_Dites bonjour à madame, Mademoiselle Aileen_."

"_Bonjour, madame_."

"Not a word of English she can speak yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I tell you already my grandchildren are so smart not even their language I can understand. _Aber_ for why such a child should only talk so in her own country she can't be understood, I don't know."

"I guess, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's style now'days that you shouldn't know your own language."

"Come by grandma to-morrow, Aileen, and upstairs I got in the little box sweet cakes like grandma always keeps for you. Eh, baby?"

"Say thank you, grandmother."

"_Merci bien, grand'maman_."

And they were off into the stream again, the small white leggings at a smart trot.

At the curb a low-bodied, high-power car, with the top flung back and the wind-shield up, lay sidled against the coping.

"Get right in, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Burk, put under Mrs. Fischlowitz's both feet a heater."

A second man, in too-accentuated livery of mauve and astrakhan, flung open the wide door. A glassed-in chauffeur, in more mauve and astrakhan, threw in his clutch. The door slammed. Mrs. Fischlowitz breathed deep and grasped the nickel-plated door handle. Mrs. Meyerburg leaned out, her small plumes wagging.

"Burk, since Miss Becky ain't along to-day, I don't want in front no second man."

"Yes, madam."

"I want instead you should take the roadster and call after Mrs. Weinstein. You know, down by Twenty-third Street, the fourth floor back."

"Yes, madam."

"I want you should say, Burk, that Mrs. Meyerburg says her and her daughter should take off from their work an hour for a drive wherever they say you should take them. And tell her, Burk, she should make for me five dozens more them paper carnations. Right away I want you should go."

"Yes, madam."

They nosed slowly into the stream of the Avenue.

"Always Becky likes there should be two men stuck up in front there. I always say to look only at the backs of my servants I don't go out riding for."

Erect and as if to the fantastic requirements of the situation sat Mrs. Fischlowitz, her face of a thousand lines screwed to maintain the transiency of a great moment.

"That I should live, Mrs. Meyerburg, to see such a sight like this! In the thirty years I been in this country not but once have I walked up Fifth Avenue--that time when my Tillie paraded in the shirtwaist strike. I--I can tell you I'm proud to live to see it this way from automobile."

"Lean back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, so you be more comfortable. That's all right; you can't hurt them bottles. My Becky likes to have fancy touches all over everything. Gold-tops bottles she has to have yet by her. I can tell you, though, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if I do say it myself, when that girl sits up in here like a picture she looks. How they stare you should see."

"Such a beau-ti-ful girl! I can tell you for her a prince ain't good enough. Ach, what a pleasure it must be, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a mother to know if her child wants heaven she can nearly get it for her. I can tell you that must be the greatest pleasure of all for you, Mrs. Meyerburg, to give to your daughter everything just like she wants it."

"Ja, ja," said with little to indicate mental ferment.

They were in the Park, with the wind scampering through the skeins of bare tree branches. The lake lay locked in ice, skaters in the ecstasy of motion lunging across it. Beneath the mink lap-robe Mrs. Fischlowitz snuggled deeper and more lax.

"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you this is better as standing over my cheese Kuchen."

"Always I used to let my cheese drip first the night before. Right through a cheese-cloth sack hung from a nail what my husband drove in for me under the window-sill."

"Right that same nail is there yet, Mrs. Meyerburg. _Oser_ we should touch one thing!"

"I can tell you it's a great comfort, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I got such a tenant as you in there."

"When you come to visit me, Mrs. Meyerburg, right to the last nail like you left it you find it. Not even from the kitchen would I let my Sollie take down the old clothes-line what you had stretched across one end."

"Ach, how many times in rainy days I used that line. It's a good little line I bet yet. Not?"

"Ja." But with no corresponding kit of emotions in Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice. She was still breathing deep the buoyant ether of the moment, and beneath the ingratiating warmth of fur utterly soothed. "_Gott_," she said, "I wish my sister-in-law, Hanna, with all her fine airs up where she lives on One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street, could see me now. _Oser_ she could stare and stare, and bow and bow, and past her I would roll like--like a rolling-pin."

From the gold-topped bottle nearest her came a long insidious whiff of frangipani. She dared to lean toward it, sniffing.

"Such a beautiful smell." And let her eyes half close.

"You market your meat yet on Fridays down by old Lavinsky's, Mrs. Fischlowitz?"

"Ja, just like always, only his liver ain't so good like it used to be. I can tell you that's a beau-ti-ful smell."

An hour they rode purringly over smooth highways and for a moment alongside the river, but there the wind was edged with ice and they were very presently back into the leisurely flow of the Avenue. From her curves Mrs. Fischlowitz unbent herself slowly.

"No, no, Mrs. Fischlowitz--you stay in."

"Ach, I get out here at your house, too, and take the street-cars. I--"

"No, no. James takes you all the way home, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I get out because my Becky likes I should get home early and get dressed up for dinner."

"But Mrs. Meyerburg--"

"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by, Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."

Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.

"Madame!"

"Ja."

"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so well. Three spells of fainting, madame."

"Therese!"

"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come--"

With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out for the balustrade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.