Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 40

"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 b.u.t.ter, 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns 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 n.o.body there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs.

Meyerburg!"

"Simon!"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. n.o.body'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 amids.h.i.+ps 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 s.p.a.ce 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, pus.h.i.+ng, haggling, sweating.

Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and s.h.i.+fted from one swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 t.i.tillated 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 sc.r.a.pe their luscious rare birds to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged gla.s.ses, and curse their G.o.d 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--"

"I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas tree--a poor little baby doll like you!"

"The kid, too, Jimmie, I--oughtn't!"

"Didn't you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a whippersnapper? Don't be a quitter Doll, didn't you?"

"Yes, but--"

"A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain't nothing too good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night--eh, Doll?"

"Yes--Jimmie!"

"Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!"

"I--can't--go, Jimmie, him layin' there, and the kid and all!"

"Didn't I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn't you glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that you lemme blow you--wasn't you?"