Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 14

"Where's the book, madam?"

"Forgot it," she replied, without shame.

Out of three hundred and eighty dollars cash, a bit of black and gold brocade flung adroitly over the imitation hearth, a cot masquerading under a Mexican afghan of many colors, a canary in a cage, a potted geranium, a shallow chair with a threadbare head-rest, a lamp, a rug, a two-burner gas-stove, Madam Moores had evolved Home.

And why not? The Pet.i.t Trianon was built that a queen might there find rest from marble halls. The Borghese women in their palaces live behind drawn shades, but Italian peasants sit in their low doorways and sing as they rock and suckle.

In Madam Moores's two-flights-up flat the windows were flung open to the moist air of spring, which flowed in cool as water between crisp muslin curtains, stirring them. In the sudden flare of electric light the canary unfolded its head from a sheaf of wing, cheeped, and fell to picking up seed from the bottom of its cage.

Mr. Alphonse Michelson collapsed into the shallow chair beside the table and relaxed his head against the threadbare dent in the upholstery.

"Whoops! home never was like this!"

"Is him tired?"

"Dead."

"Smoke?"

"Yep."

"There."

"Ah!"

"Now him all comfy and I go fix poor tired bad boy him din-din."

More native than mother-tongue is Mother's tongue. Whom women love they would first destroy with gibberish. To Mr. Michelson's linguistic credit, however, he s.h.i.+fted in his chair in unease.

"What did you say?"

"What him want for din-din?"

He slung one slim leg atop the other, slumping deeper to the luxury of his chair. "Dinner?"

"Yes, din-din."

"Say, those were swell chicken livers smothered in onions you served the other night, madam. Believe me, those were some livers!"

No, reader, Romance is not dead. On the contrary, he has survived the frock-coat and learned to chew a clove.

A radiance as soft as the glow from a pink-shaded lamp flowed over Madam Moores's face.

"Livers him going to have and biscuits made in my own ittsie bittsie oven. Eh?"

"Swell."

She divested herself of her wraps, fluffing her mahogany-colored hair where the hat had restricted it, lighted a tiny stove off in the tiny kitchenette and enveloped herself in a blue-bib-top ap.r.o.n. Her movements were short and full of caprice, and when she set the table, brus.h.i.+ng his chair as she pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed, lights came out in her eyes when she dared raise her lids to show them.

They dined by the concealed fireplace and from off a table that could fold its legs under like Aladdin's. Fumes of well-made coffee rose as ingratiating as the perfume of a love story. Mr. Michelson dropped a lump of b.u.t.ter into the fluffy heart of a biscuit and clapped the halves together.

"Some biscuits!"

"Bad boy, stop jollying."

"Say, if I'd tell you the truth about what I think of these biscuits, you'd say I was writing a streetcar advertis.e.m.e.nt for baking-powder.

Say, this is some cup custard!"

"More?"

"Full to my eyebrows."

"Just a little bittsie?"

"Nope."

He lighted a cigarette and they settled back in after-dinner completeness, their dessert-plates pushed well toward the center of the table and their senses quiet. She pleated the edge of her napkin and watched him blow leisurely spirals of smoke to the ceiling.

"What you thinking about, Phonzie?"

"Nothing."

"Honest?"

"If I was thinking at all I was just sizing it up as pretty soft for a fellow like me to get this sort of stand-in with--with my boss. Gawd! me and Roth used to love each other like snakes."

"I--I ain't your boss, Phonzie. Don't I give you the run of everything--hiring the models and all?"

"Sure you're my boss, and it's pretty soft for me."

"And I was just thinking, Phonzie, that it's pretty soft for me to have found a fellow like you to manage things for me."

"Shucks!"

"Without you, so used to the ways of the Avenue and all that kind of thing, where would I be now, trying to run in the right kind of bluff with the trade?"

"That's easy! After all, Fifth Avenue and Third Avenue is pretty much alike in the end, madam. A spade may be a spade, but if you're a good salesman, you can put it on black velvet and sell it for a dessert-spoon any day in the week."

"That's just what I'm saying, Phonzie, about you're knowing how. I needed just a fellow like you to show me how the swell trade has got to be blindfolded, and that the difference between a dressmaker and a modiste is about a hundred and fifty dollars a gown."

"You ought to see the way we handled them when I was on the floor for Roth. Say, we wouldn't touch a peignoir in that establishment for under two hundred and fifty, and--we had 'em coming in there like sheep. The Riverside Drive trade is nothing, madam, compared to what we could do down there with the Avenue business."

"You sure know how to handle the lorgnette bunch, Phonzie."

"Is it any wonder, being in the business twenty years?"

"Twenty years! Why, Phonzie, you--you don't look much more than twenty yourself."