Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 3

"It ain't even seven yet. Have a heart, ma! Gee! can't I walk up to the corner with Bella Mosher for a soda? Do I have to stick round this fuss nest? I'll be back in a half-hour, ma. Please?"

"Don't let her go, ma."

"You shut up, Izzy!"

"Ach, Ray, I--"

"Give me the dollar, pa, for voting against Europe. Don't let her hypnotize you like she always does. Down with Europe! I say. We should cross the ocean and get our feet wet, eh, pa?"

He waggled a pinch of her flushed cheek between his thumb and forefinger and dived into his pocket.

"Baby-la, you!" he said, crossing her palm; and she was out and past him, imprinting a kiss on the crest of the bald horseshoe and tossing a glance as quick as Pierrette's over one shoulder.

On the echo of the slamming door, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with conviction and her face suddenly old with prophecy, Miriam turned upon her mother.

"You see, mamma, you see! Seventeen, and nothing in her head but Brighton Beach and soda-water fountains and joy-riding. Just you watch; some day she'll meet up with some d.i.n.ky fakir or ribbon clerk at one of those places, and the first thing you know for a son-in-law you'll have a crook."

"Miriam!"

"Yes, you will! Those are the only chances a girl gets if she's not in the swim."

"Listen to her, ma, and then you blame me for not bringing any of the fellows round here for her to meet. You don't catch me doing it, the way she thinks she's better than they are and gives them the high hand. Not muchy!"

"I should worry for the kind you bring, Izzy."

"As nice boys Izzy has brought home, Miriam, as ever in my life I would want to meet."

"Yes, but you see for yourself the way the society fellows, like Sol Blumenthal and Laz Herzog, hang round the Lillianthal girls. I always got to take a back seat, and maybe you think I don't know it."

"I never heard that on s.h.i.+ps young men was so plentiful."

"She wants to land an Italian count and she'll just about land a barber."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger peered suddenly over the rim of his paper. "A no-count yet is what we need in the family. Get right away such ideas out your head. All my life I 'ain't worked so hard to spend my money on the old country. In America I made it and in America I spend it. Now just stop it, right away, too."

"Go to it, pa!"

Suddenly Miss Binsw.a.n.ger let fall her head into her cupped hands. Tears trickled through. "I--I just wish that I--I hadn't been born! Why--did you move up-town, then, where everybody does things, if--if--"

Her father's reply came in a sudden avalanche. "For why? Because then, just like now, you nagged me. You can take it from me, just so happy as now was me and mamma down by Rivington Street. I'm a plain man and with no time for nonsense. I tell you the s.h.i.+rtwaist business 'ain't been so good that--"

"You--you can't fool me with that poor talk, papa. Everybody knows you get a bigger business each year. You can't fool me that way."

Tears burst and flowed over her words, and her head burrowed deeper.

Across her prostrate form Simon Binsw.a.n.ger nodded to his wife in rising perplexity.

"Fine come-off, eh, Carrie?"

"Miriam, ach, Miriam, come here to mamma."

"Aw, take her, pa, if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her system. Quit your crying, kid."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger waggled a crooked finger in close proximity to his son's face. "Du! Du mit a big mouth! Is it because you sell for the house such big bills I can afford to run me all over Europe! A few more accounts like Einstein from Cleveland you can sell for me, and then we can go bankrupt easier as to Europe. Du mit a big mouth!"

"Pa, ain't you ever going to get that out of your system? My first bad account and--"

"You'm a dude! That's all I know, you'm a dude! Right on my back now I got on your old s.h.i.+rts and dressed like a king I feel."

"I'm done, pa! I'm done!"

"Ach, Miriam, don't cry so. Here, look up at mamma. Maybe, Miriam, if you ask your papa once more he will--"

"I tell you, no. What Mark Lillianthal does and what my son can say so easy makes nothing with me. I'm glad as I got a home to stay in."

Above her daughter's bowed head Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger regarded her husband through watery eyes. "She ain't so wrong, Simon. I tell you I got the first time to hear you come out and say to your family, 'Well, this year we do something big.' The bigger you get in business the littler on the outside you get, Simon. Always you been the last to do things."

"And, papa, everybody--"

"Everybody makes no difference with me. I don't work for the steams.h.i.+p company. For two thousand dollars what such a trip costs I can do better as Europe."

"I--I just wish I hadn't ever been born."

A sudden tear found its way down Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger's billowy cheek. "You hear, Simon, your own daughter has to wish she had never got born."

She drew her daughter upward to her wide bosom, and through the loose basque percolated the warm tears.

"'Sh-h-h-h, Miriam, don't you cry."

"Ach, now, Carrie--"

"I tell you, Simon, I 'ain't been a wife that has made such demands on you, but I guess you think it's a comfort that a mother should hear that in society her daughter has to take a back seat."

"When she 'ain't got a front seat she should take a second seat. I don't need no seat. I know worse young men as Sollie Spitz and Eddie Greenbaum what comes here to see her."

"Just the same you--you said to me the other night, papa, that I never seem to meet young men like Adolph Gans, fellows who are in business for themselves."

"Ja, but I--"

"Well, where do you think Elsa Bergenthal met Adolph, but on the s.h.i.+p?"

"You hear, Simon: Moe Bergenthal, who sells s.h.i.+rtwaists for you right this minute, can afford to send his daughter to Europe."

"Ja, I guess that's why he sells s.h.i.+rtwaists for me instead of for himself."

"See, papa, she--"

"That's right, get him cornered, ma! Go to it, Miriam!"

"Du, du good-for-nothings dude, du!"