Part 12

"Madame?"

When Mrs. Meyerburg spoke finally it was as if those seconds had been years, sapping more than their share of life from her. "I--now I don't go up, Therese. After a while I come, but--but not now. I want, though, you should go right away up to Miss Becky with a message."

"Oui, madame."

"I want you should tell her for me, Therese, that--that to-morrow New-Year's dinner with the family all here, I--I want she should invite the Marquis Rosencrantz. That everything is all right. Right away I want you should go and tell her, Therese!"

"Oui, madame."

Up in her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap at the door. She was there and waiting.

"Kemp, I want you should away take down this roll to Goldfinger's office in the Syndicate Building. Just say Mrs. Meyerburg says everything is all right--to go ahead."

"Yes, madam." And he closed the door after him, holding the knob a moment to save the click.

* * * * *

In a Tudor dining-hall, long as the banquet-room of a thane, faced in thrice-weathered oak and designed by an architect too eminent to endure interference--except when Miss Meyerburg had later and at her own stealthy volition installed a Pompeian colored window above the high Victorian fireplace--the wide light of a brilliant New-Year's day lay against leaded window-panes, but shut out by thick hangings.

Instead, the yellow light from a ceiling sown with starlike bulbs lay over that room. At each end of the table, so that the gracious glow fell full upon the small figure of Mrs. Meyerburg at one end and upon the grizzled head of Mr. Ben Meyerburg at the other, two braces of candles burned softly, crocheting a flickering design upon the damask.

From the foot of that great table, his place by precedence of years, Mr. Ben Meyerburg rose from his Voltairian chair, holding aloft a wineglass like a torch.

"_Masseltov_, ma," he said, "and just like we drank to the happy couple who have told us the good news to-day, so now I drink to the grandest little mother in the world. _Masseltov_, ma." And he drained his glass, holding it with fine disregard back over one shoulder for refilling.

Round that table Mrs. Meyerburg's four remaining sons, towering almost twice her height, rose in a solemn chorus that was heavier than their libations of wine.

"_Masseltov_, ma."

"Ach, boys, my sons, _ich--ich--danke_." She was quivering now in the edge of tears and grasped tightly at the arms of her chair.

"_Masseltov_, ma," said Rebecca Meyerburg, raising her glass and her moist eyes shining above it. The five daughters-in-law followed immediate suit. At Miss Meyerburg's left the Marquis Rosencrantz, with pointed features and a silhouette sharp as a knife edge, raised his glass and his waxed mustache and drank, but silently and over a deep bow.

"Mamma--mother dear, the marquis drinks to you."

Mrs. Meyerburg turned upon him with a great mustering of amiability and safely withdrawn now from her brink of tears. "I got now six sons what can drink to my health--not, Marquis?"

"She says, Marquis," translated Miss Meyerburg, ardently, to the sharp profile, "that now she has six sons to drink to her health."

_"Madame me fait trop d'honneur."_

"He says, mamma, that it is too great an honor to be your son."

From her yesterday's couch of mental travail Miss Meyerburg had risen with a great radiance turping out its ravages. She was Sheban in elegance, the velvet of her gown taken from the color of the ruby on her brow, and the deep-white flesh of her the quality of that same velvet with the nap raised.

"He wants to kiss your hand, ma. Give it to him. No, the right one, dearie."

"I--I'm much obliged, Marquis. I--well, for one little old woman like me, I got now six sons and six daughters, each one big enough to carry me off under his arm. Not?"

She was met with immediate acclaim from a large blond daughter-in-law, her soft, expansive bosom swathed in old lace caught up with a great jeweled lizard.

"Little old nothing, ma. I always say to Isadore you've got more energy yet than the rest of the family put together."

"Ach, Dora, always you children like to make me think I been young yet."

But she was smilingly tremulous and pushed herself backward in her heavy throne-like chair. A butler sprang, lifting it gently from her.

Immediately the great, disheveled table, brilliantly littered with crystal, frumpled napkins, and a great centerpiece of fruits and flowers, was in the confusion of disorganization.

Daughters-in-law and husbands moved up toward a pair of doors swung heavily backward by two servants.

Mrs. Isadore Meyerburg pushed her real-lace bodice into place and adjusted the glittering lizard. "Believe me," she said, exuding a sigh and patting her bosom on the swell of that deep breath, "I ate too much, but if I can't break my diet for the last engagement in the family, and to nobility at that, when will I do it?"

"I should say so," replied Mrs. Rudolph Meyerburg, herself squirming to rights in an elaborate bodice and wielding an unostentatious toothpick behind the cup of her hand; "like I told Roody just now, if I take on a pound to-day he can blame his sister."

"Say, I wish you'd look at the marquis kissing ma's hand again, will you?"

"Look at ma get away with it too. You've got to hand it to them French, they've got the manners all right. No wonder our swell Trixie tags after them."

"Say, Becky shouldn't get manners yet with her looks and five hundred thousand thrown in. I bet, if the truth is known, and since ma is going to live over there with them, that there's a few extra thousand tacked on too."

"Not if the court knows it! Like I told Roody this morning, she's bringing a title into the family, but she's taking a big wad of the Meyerburg money out of the country too."

"It is so, ain't it?"

Around her crowded Mrs. Meyerburg's five sons.

"Come with us, ma. We got a children's party up in the ballroom for Aileen this afternoon, and then Trixie and I are going to motor down to Sheepshead for the indoor polo-match. Come, ma."

"No, no, Felix. I want for myself rest this afternoon. All you children go and have your good times. I got home more as I can do, and maybe company, too."

"Tell you what, ma, come with Dora and me and the kids. She wants to go out to Hastings this afternoon to see her mother. Come with us, ma. The drive will do you good."

"No, no, Izzy. When I ride too much in the cold right away up in my ribs comes the sciatica again."

Miss Meyerburg bent radiant over her parent. "Mother," she whispered, her throat lined with the fur of tenderness, "it's reception-day out at that club, and all the cliques will be there, and I want--"

"Sure, Becky, you and the marquis should drive out. Take the big car, but tell James he shouldn't be so careless driving by them curves out there by the golf-links."

"But, ma dear, you come, too, and--"

"No, no, Becky; to-day I got not time."

"But, ma--ma, you ain't mad at me, dear? You can see now for yourself, can't you, dear, what a big thing it is for the family and how you--"

"Yes, yes, Becky. Look, go over by your young man. See how he stands there and not one word what Ben is hollering so at him can he understand."

Across the room, alongside a buffet wrought out of the powerful Jacobean period, Mr. Ben Meyerburg threw a violent contortion.

"Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?" he shouted, the apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.

_"Pardon?"_

"Smoke? Do you smoke? Smokez-vous? Cigarez-vous? See, like this. Fume. Blow. Do you smoke? Smokez-vous?"

_"Pardon?"_ said the marquis, bowing low.

* * * * *

In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg's bedchamber, the buzz of departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it as if an echo or so still lingered.

Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among a page of figures. After a while the finger ceased to move across the page, but lay passive midway down a column. After another while she slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past. Resuming her beat up and down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and not unlike the tune of quinine singing in the head.

The ormolu clock struck, and from various parts of the house musical repetitions. A French tinkle from her daughter's suite across the hall; from somewhere more remote the deep, leisurely tones of a Nuremberg floor clock. Finally Mrs. Meyerburg dropped into the overstuffed chair beside her window, relaxing into the attitude her late years had brought her, head back, hands stretched out along the chair sides, and full of rest. An hour she sat half dozing, and half emerging every so often with a start, then lay quietly looking into space, her eyes quiet and the erstwhile brilliancy in them gone out like a light.

Presently she sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded across the carpet. From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it. From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet grayish with age and the bow not perky. Her movements were brief and full of decision. When she opened her door it was slyly and with a quick, vulpine glance up and down the grave quiet of the halls. After a cocked attitude of listening and with an incredible springiness almost of youth, Mrs. Meyerburg was down a rear staircase, through a rear hallway, and, unseen and unheard, out into the sudden splendor of a winter's day, the side street quiet before her.

"Gott!" said Mrs. Meyerburg, audibly, breathing deep and swinging into a smart lope eastward. Two blocks along, with her head lifted and no effort at concealment, she passed her pantry-boy walking out with a Swedish girl whose cheeks were bursting with red. He eyed his mistress casually and without recognition.

At Third Avenue she boarded a down-town street-car, a bit winded from the dive across cobbles, but smiling. Within, and after a preliminary method of paying fare new and confusing to her, she sat back against the rattly sides, her feet just lifted off the floor. She could hardly keep back the ejaculations as old streets and old memories swam into view.

"Look at the old lay-dee talking to her-sel-uph," sang an urchin across the aisle.

"Shut up," said the mother, slapping him sidewise.

At one of the most terrific of these down-town streets Mrs. Meyerburg descended. Beneath the clang and bang of the Elevated she stood confused for the moment and then, with her sure stride regained, swung farther eastward.

Slitlike streets flowed with holiday copiousness, whole families abroad on foot--mothers swayback with babies, and older children who ran ahead shouting and jostling. Houses lean and evil-looking marched shoulder to shoulder for blocks, no gaps except intersecting streets. Fire-escapes ran zigzag down the meanest of them. Women shouted their neighborhood jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg smiled as she hurried.

Midway in one of these blocks and without a pretense of hesitancy she turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back full span.

"_Gott in Himmel_, Mrs. Meyerburg! Mrs. Meyerburg! _Kommen Sie herein_. Mrs. Meyerburg, for why you didn't let me know? To think not one of my children home and to-day a holiday, my place not in order--"

"Now, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you go to one little bit of trouble, right away I got no more pleasure. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Ach, if you 'ain't got on your pantry shelfs just the same paper edge like my Roody used to cut out for me."

"Come, come, Mrs. Meyerburg, in parlor where--"

"Go way mit you. Ain't the kitchen where I spent seventeen years, the best years in my life, good enough yet? Parlor yet she wants to take me."

An immediate negligée of manner enveloped her like an old wrapper. A certain tulle of bewilderment had fallen. She was bold, even dictatorial.

"Don't fuss round me so much, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Just like old times I want it should seem. Like maybe I just dropped in on you a lump of butter to borrow. No, no, don't I know where to hang mine own bonnet in mine own house? Ach, the same coat nails what he drove in himself!"

"To think, Mrs. Meyerburg, all my children gone out for a good time this afternoon, my Tillie with Morris Rinabauer, who can't keep his eyes off her--"

"How polished she keeps her stove, just like I used to."

"Right when you knocked I was thinking, well, I clean up a bit. Please, Mrs. Meyerburg, let me fix you right away a cup coffee--"

"Right away, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you begin to make fuss over me, I don't enjoy it no more. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, right here in this old rocker-chair by the range let me, please, sit quiet a minute."

In the wooden rocker beside the warm stove she sat down quietly, lapping her hands over her waist-line.

_"Gott in Himmel,"_ sitting well away from the chair-back and letting her eyes travel slowly about the room, "just like it was yesterday; just like yesterday." And fell to reciting the phrase softly.

"Ja, ja," said Mrs. Fischlowitz, concealing an unwashed litter of dishes beneath a hastily flung cloth. "I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, my house ain't always this dirty; only to-day not--"

"Just like it was yesterday," said Mrs. Meyerburg, musing through a tangle of memories. She fell to rocking. A narrow band of sunshine lay across the bare floor, even glinted off a pan or two hung along the wall over the sink. Along that same wall hung a festoon of red and green peppers and a necklace of garlic. Toward the back of the range a pan of hot water let off a lazy vapor. Beside the scuttle a cat purred and fought off sleep.

"Already I got the hot water, Mrs. Meyerburg, to make you a cup coffee if--"

"Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, let me rest like this. In a minute I want you should take me all through in the children's room and--"

"If I had only known it how I could have cleaned for you."

"Ach, my noodle-board over there! How grand and white you keep it."

"Ja, I--"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

"Yes, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you want to--to give me a real treat I tell you what. I tell you what!"

"Ja, ja, Mrs. Meyerburg; anything what I can do I--"

"I want you should let me mix you on that old board a mess noodles!"

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, your hands and that grand black-silk dress!"

"For why not, Mrs. Fischlowitz? Wide ones, like he used to like. Just for fun, please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-morrow I send you two barrels flour for what I use up."

"But, Mrs. Meyerburg, I should make for you noodles, not you for me--"

"It's good I should learn, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to get back my hand in such things. Maybe you don't believe me, but I ain't so rich like I was yesterday when you seen me, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-day I'm a poor woman, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with--"

Mrs. Fischlowitz threw out two hands in a liberal gesture. "Such a good woman she is! In my house where I'm poor she wants, too, to play like she's a poor woman. That any one should want to play such a game with themselves! Noodles she wants to make for me, instead I should wait on her like she was a queen."

"It takes me back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to old times. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to-morrow I send you two barrels."

"Like you ain't welcome to everything what I got in the house. All right, noodles you should make and always I keep 'em for remembrance. Just let me run down to cellar and bring you up flour. No, no, you set there and let me fold down the board for you. Rock there, Mrs. Meyerburg, till I come up with the flour. Eggs plenty I got."

"And a little butter, Mrs. Fischlowitz, the size of an egg, and always a pinch of salt."

"The neighbors should see this! Mrs. Simon Meyerburg making for me noodles in my kitchen!" She was off and down a small rear stairway, a ribbon of ejaculations trailing back over one shoulder.

In her chair beside the warm range Mrs. Meyerburg sat quiescent, her head back against the rest, eyes half closed, and slanting toward the kitchen door. Against the creaking floor her chair swayed rhythmically. Tears ran down to meet the corners of her mouth, but her lips were looped up in a smile.

The cat regarded her through green eyes slit down their middle. Toward the rear of the stove the pan of water seethed.

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg leaned forward with a great flash across her face. "Simon," she cried, leaning to the door and stretching forward quavering arms. "Simon, my darling!" She leaned further, the rims of her eyes stretched wide. "Simon--come, my darling. Simon!"

Into the opposite doorway, smirched with flour and a white pail of it dangling, flashed Mrs. Fischlowitz, breathing hard from her climb.

"What, Mrs. Meyerburg, you want something?"

"Simon," cried Mrs. Meyerburg, her voice lifted in a paean of welcome; "come, my darling, come in. Come!" And she tried to rise, but sat back, quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat.

Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice, and she let fall her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill. "Mrs. Meyerburg, there ain't nobody there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs. Meyerburg!"

"Simon!"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Nobody's there! Ach--help--doctor--Tillie!"

Back against Mrs. Fischlowitz's frenzied arms lay Mrs. Meyerburg, very gray, her hand against her left breast and down toward the ribs.

"Gott! Gott! Please, Mrs. Meyerburg--Mrs. Meyerburg!" dragging back one of the weary eyelids and crying out at what she saw there. "Help doctor--Tillie--quick--quick--"

She could not see, poor dear, that into those locked features was crystallized the great ecstasy of reunion.

THE NTH COMMANDMENT

The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn. Such social sores--the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour--such sores may run and fester, but not to sicken public eyes.

For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men's hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose draymen's backs are bent and whose salesgirls' feet are swollen plaster each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering merchandise.

In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.

Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex, fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.

Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.

The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven, predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men's hands involuntarily close into tight fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and curse their God when the reckoning comes.

Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.

"If the rush hadn't quit right this minute I--I couldn't have lasted it out till closing, honest I couldn't."

"Poor tired little filly!"

"Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram's office they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin."

"Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll, it ain't every little girl I'd coax like this."

"I--Jimmie--I--"