Part 10

Mr. Gump dilly-dallied backward and forward on his heels, and gazed at an oak-framed print of two neck-and-neck horses—a sloe black and a virgin white—rearing at a large zigzag of lightning.

"A fellow like me ain't got much chance with a girl like you, anyway. It's like I said to you last night—if a fellow can't give you what you're used to he'd better keep his hands off."

"A boy that's going to manage Loeb Brothers' new factory to talk like that!"

Mr. Gump swung suddenly on his heel, came toward her, and took her pliant hands in his. In the improvised caldron of their palms an important chemical reaction suddenly effervesced and sent the blood fizzing through their veins.

"Birdie," he began, "I'm not the kind of a fellow to go stringing a girl along. I only wish I'd 'a' known what I know now sooner; but wishing ain't going to help. I came up here to-night to tell—"

At the high tide of this remark the door opened and Birdie turned reluctant eyes upon her parent. Mrs. Katzenstein, stately as a frigate in low seas, hove in.

"How do you do, Mr. Gump? No; stay where you are. This is my favorite rocker. Such weather, ain't it? I telephoned to Mr. Katzenstein twice this afternoon to be sure and wear his rubbers home. You're looking well, Mr. Gump. When you do well you feel well—ain't it?"

"That's right," he agreed, reseating himself. "I'm pretty tired from a hard day; but work can't hurt anybody."

"Just like Mr. Katzenstein—ain't it, Birdie? Honest, sometimes I wish there wasn't such a thing as a petticoat made. How that man works! Believe me, I worry enough about it. He should make a few dollars less, I tell him."

"You got a swell apartment here, Mrs. Katzenstein. Some cousins of my poor father's—the Morris Jacobs—live in this same house."

"Are those Jacobs your cousins? Such grand people—the knit-underwear Jacobs, Birdie! I never meet the old lady in the elevator that she don't ask me to come up and see her. It's terrible the way I don't pay calls. Birdie, we must go up soon."

"Yes, mamma."

"Yes, we got a nice little apartment here, Mr. Gump; but for what we pay it might be better. If I didn't dread the gedinks of moving we could do better for the money; but we got comfort here, even if it ain't so grand. Sometimes, on account of Birdie, I say we take a bigger place; but who knows how long she is at home—not that we're in a hurry with her, but you know how it is when a girl reaches a certain age."

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gump.

"I'm in no hurry," said Birdie.

"I don't say that, neither. When a girl meets the right one it's different. Look at Ray—two hours before she was engaged she didn't know it was going to happen!"

"Come right in, papa. Mr. Gump is here—so tired he is he hates to come in."

There are a few epics waiting to be dug out of remote corners. One day an American drama will be born in a Western shack or under some East Side stairway; one day a prophet will look within the dingy temple of a Mr. Katzenstein at the warm red heart beating beneath a hairy chest, and there find a classic rune to the men who moil and toil, and pay millinery bills with a three-figure check; another day an elegiac will be written to the men who slip the shoes off their aching feet in the merciful seclusion of their alternate Wednesday-night subscription boxes and sit through four hours of Wagner—facing an underdressed daughter, two notes due on the morrow, and a remote stageful of vocalizing figures especially designed for his alternate and inquisitional Wednesday nights.

Life had whacked hard at Mr. Katzenstein, writ across his face in a thousand welts and wrinkles, bent his knees and fingers, and calloused his hands.

"Good evening, Mr. Gump—good evening! I say to mamma the young folks got no time for us in here. I'm right?"

"The more the merrier!" said Mr. Gump, reseating himself.

"Mr. Katzenstein says he used to know your father, Mr. Gump."

"Rudolph Gump! I should say so—yes. Believe me, I wish I had half a dollar for every shirtwaist I bought off him in my life! Your father and me played side by each down on Cedar Street before you was born. I knew him longer as you—he was a good silk man, was Rudolph Gump. Have a cigar, young man?"

"Thanks—I don't smoke."

"Ain't it wonderful, though, that in a city like this my husband should know you before you was born?"

Mrs. Katzenstein clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and patted her hands together. Birdie regarded the company with polite interest.

"Wonders never cease!" she said.

"Birdie, go get your papa his chair out from the dining-room—since he's got lumbago these straight-backs ain't comfortable for him."

"Let me go for you, Miss Birdie."

"Oh no, Marcus—I know just where it is." She smiled at him with her eyes—bright eyes that were full of warmth and reflected firelight.

Mr. Katzenstein groped in his side-pocket for a match, ran his tongue horizontally along a cigar, and puffed it slowly into life.

"How's business?" he said, between puffs, with the lighted match still applied to the end of his cigar.

"We can't complain, Mr. Katzenstein. If this strike don't reach to the piece-workers we can't complain."

"I hear your firm opens a new factory."

"Yes; we're going to put in a line of March Hare neckwear and manufacture it in Newark."

"My wife tells me you manage the new factory—eh?"

"Oh, I can't say that, Mr. Katzenstein; in fact—"

"Ach, papa, I didn't say for sure; the ladies this afternoon—"

"Here's you chair, papa."

Mr. Grump sprang to her aid.

"Thanks, Marcus," she said.

"What do you think of my girl there, Gump? She's a fine one—not?"

"Aw, now, papa, you quit! What'll Marcus think—such goings-on!"

"How her papa spoils her, Mr. Gump, you won't believe! Not one thing that girl wants she don't get! Last week she meets her papa down-town after the matinee and comes home with a new muff. Yesterday, before he goes down-town, she gets from him a check for some business like a silver-mesh bag, like the girls are wearing. Just seems like she has to have everything she sees!"

"All I got to say, Gump, you should some day have just such a daughter!"

"Papa!"

"Papa!"

"You couldn't wish me better," said Mr. Gump.

Conversation drifted, and after a time Birdie regarded her mother with level eyes; then her lids drooped and slowly raised—as significantly as the red and green eyes that wink and signal in the black path of the midnight flier.

"Well, papa, we must excuse ourselves. When young folks get together they have no time for old ones."

"Now, mamma!" protested Birdie. "We're glad if you stay."

"I was young once myself," said Mr. Katzenstein; "and I like 'em yet, Gump! Take it from me, I like 'em yet! Mamma here thinks I not got an eye for the nice girls still; but I say what she don't know don't hurt her—eh?"

"I should worry!" said Mrs. Katzenstein, regarding her husband with gentle eyes. "Put your hand on my shoulder, papa. All day he makes the hardest work for himself, and then at night comes home with a lame back."

"Good night, Gump! Come round and we play pinochle."

"I hope you don't think we're stingy with light, Mr. Gump. If I had my way they'd all be going; but Birdie likes only the gas-grate. My Ray was the same way, never a great one for much light."

"I'm the same, too," replied Mr. Gump.

"Good night!"

"Good night!"

Birdie remained seated in the mellow flicker of the fire-dance; its glow lit her large, well-featured face intermittently and set the stars in her hair scintillating. The quiet of late evening fell over the room.

"What a grand old pair, Birdie!"

"Yes," she said, softly—very softly.

Silence.

"Say—Birdie! Say—"

"What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Oh!" The red in her face ran down into the square-shape neck of her dress.

Silence.

"Aw, look what you did, Marcus! You burnt the toe of your shoe!"

"Say, Birdie, what I started to say when your mamma and papa come in—er—"

"Yes?"

"What I started to say was, so long as a fellow's got intentions it's all right for him to call on a girl—er—regular, like this." Her soft breathing answered him. "But—well, I mustn't—I ain't got the right to come round here any more."

She looked at him like a startled nymph.

"What is it?"

"So long as I had intentions it was all right, I say; but—well, now I ain't."

"Ain't what?" Her breath came more rapidly between her lips.

"I was starting to say before they came in, Birdie—I came here straight from the office to tell you—even maw don't know it yet—I've lost out! Loeb's daughter is engaged, and he's going to put his new son-in-law from Cleveland in the Newark factory."

"Marcus!"

"Yes! You can't be so sore as I am—a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar job almost in my hand, and then this had to happen! The little raise I get now don't help. I can't ask a girl to marry me on fifteen hundred when I expected twice that much—not a girl like you!"

Birdie placed the palm of her hand flat against her cheek; the stars in her eyes had vanished in the light of understanding.

"Such a mean trick!" she gasped. "How you've built up their trade for them—and now such a mean trick!"

"I was so sure all along, after what Loeb told me last month. Only last week I says to maw I'll ask you this week right after I know for certain. That sure I—was."

His voice trailed off at the end. She sat watching the flames, her shoulders slightly stooped and her eyes quiet.

"You ain't so sorry as I am, Birdie. Believe me, I could die right now! With you it ain't so bad—you got plenty good chances yet. But if you knew what feelings I got for you! With me there ain't no more Birdies."

She turned her head slowly toward him; her throat throbbing and a delicate pink under her skin.

"I should care, Marcus!" she said, softly.

"What?"

"I should care!" she repeated. "We should live little then, if we can't live big—live little."

"What do you mean, Birdie?"

She regarded and invited him with her eyes, and he stood away from her like a tired traveler trying to shut out the song of the Lorelei!

"Birdie, I ain't got the right! I—I—you been used to so much. With you it ain't like with most girls—your mamma and your papa they—"

Even as he spoke they were somehow in their first embrace, and round their heads came crashing various castles in Spain, and they sat among the ruins and smiled into each other's radiant eyes and whispered, with their warm hands touching:

"I don't deserve such a prize as you, Birdie!"

"Such a scare as you gave me, Marcus! I thought first you meant—you—meant it was me you didn't want."

He refuted the thought with a kiss.

"I ain't good enough for you, Birdie."

"I ain't good enough for you, Marcus."

"You can believe me, Birdie, when he told me to-day it was just like I had died inside."

"It shows it don't pay to work too hard for such people, Marcus—they don't appreciate it."

"I can get the same money as now at Lowen-Felsenthal's; they were after me last year."

"You go, Marcus. You can work up with them; besides, I like the ready-to-wear business better than boys' pants and neckwear."

"I wanted to start out with giving you more than you got already, Birdie."

"Believe me, mamma and papa had no such start as we got. We can afford maybe one of those three-rooms-and-bath apartments in Harlem—Flossie Marks says they're just perfect; and mamma and papa lived right in back of the factory—I remember it myself. Which is worse?"

"That's why I hate it for them, Birdie; your mamma wants you to have the best like she didn't have—I hate it for her."

"You come to-morrow night, and we'll tell them. Just you do like I tell you, and I can fix it."

He placed his hand against her forehead, tilted her head backward and kissed her twice on the lips.

"You're my little Birdie, ain't you—a little birdie like flies in the woods!"

The evening petered out and too soon waned to its finish. They parted with thrice-told good-nights, reluctant to break the weft of their enchantment. She closed the door after him and stood with her back against it; her lips were curved in a perfect smile.

A door creaked, and footsteps padded down the hall.

"Birdie! Birdie!"

"Yes, mamma!" was all she said, going toward her parent and hiding her pink face in the flannel folds of the maternal wrapper.

"God bless you, Birdie! Such happiness I should wish every mother. Go in, baby, and tell papa. For an engagement present you get—like Ray—two hundred dollars."

Mrs. Katzenstein's face was lyric and her voice furry with emotion. She hastened, her night-room slippers slouching off her feet, into the hall and unhooked the telephone receiver.

"Columbus 5-6-2-4," she whispered, standing on her toes to reach the mouthpiece. "Bamberger's apartment. Batta! Hello, Batta! I know you ain't in bed yet, 'cause you got the poker crowd—not? Batta, I got news for you! Guess! Yes; it just happened—such a surprise, you can believe me! Grand! How happy we are you should know! I want they should start in one of those apartments like yours, Batta. Five rooms and a sleep-out porch is enough for a beginning. You can tell who you want—yes; I don't believe in secrets. Batta, who was the woman that embroidered those towels for your Miriam's trousseau? Yes; both of them gone now! Ain't that the way with raising children? But I wish every girl such a young man! Yes, just think, for a firm like Loeb Brothers—manager yet! Batta, come over the first thing in the morning. Now I got trousseau on my mind again, I think I go to the same woman for the table-linen. Good night. She's in talking to her papa—she'll call you to-morrow. Thank you! Good night! Good-by!... Birdie," she called, through the open doorway, "Mrs. Ginsburg's number is Plaza 8-5-7, ain't it? You think it too late to call her?"

"Yes, mamma, and, anyway, if Aunt Batta knows it that's enough—to-morrow everybody has it."

"Yes," said Mrs. Katzenstein, submissively; but after a moment she turned to the telephone again and unhooked the receiver. "Plaza 8-5-7," she said, in muffled tones.

The evening following, Mrs. Katzenstein greeted her prospective son-in-law with three kisses—one for each cheek and the third for the very center of his mouth. She batted at him playfully with her hand.

"You bad boy, you! What you mean by stealing away our baby? Papa, you come right in here and fight with him."

"Mrs. Katzenstein, for you to give me a girl like Birdie, I don't deserve. She's the grandest girl in the world!"

"He asks me for my Birdie," said Mr. Katzenstein, pumping the young man's arm up and down; "but he asks me after it is all settled and everybody but me knows it—even in the factory to-day I hear about it."

Laughter.

"What could we do, papa—wake you up last night?"

"He should pay your bills awhile, and then he won't feel so glad—ain't it, Birdie?" He pinched his daughter's cheek.

"Marcus took me to lunch at the Kaiserbraeu to-day, papa. He's starting in to pay my bills already."

"Have a cigar, Marcus!"

"Thanks, I don't smoke."

"Well, Marcus, you got a fine girl; and you're a good boy, making good money."

"I told your mamma to-day, Marcus; she got the best of it, and I got the best of it," chuckled Mrs. Katzenstein.

Marcus regarded Birdie in some uneasiness, the color drained out of his face.

"Go on, Marcus," she said, with a note of reassurance in her voice.

"Everything as you say is grand and fine, Mr. Katzenstein, except—except—well, to-day at lunch I told Birdie some news I just heard, which—which maybe won't make you feel so good; I told her it wasn't too late if she wanted to change her mind about me."

"Ach!" exclaimed Mrs. Katzenstein, clasping her hands quickly. "Ain't everything all right?"

"What you mean, Marcus?" inquired Mr. Katzenstein, glancing up quickly.

"What's wrong? Ain't everything all right, children?"

"Aw, mamma, it ain't nothing wrong! Don't get so excited over everything."

"Birdie's right, mamma—what you so excited about? What is it you got to say, Marcus?"

"I ain't frightened; but what's the matter, children? This is what we need yet something to happen when it's all fixed!"

"Well, I told Birdie about it at lunch to-day, and—"

There was a pause. Birdie linked her arm within the young man's and regarded her parents like a Nemesis at the bar.

"It isn't so bad as Marcus makes out, papa."

"Well, young man?" questioned Mr. Katzenstein, sharply.

"Well, you don't need to holler at him, papa."

"I got some bad news to-day, Mr. Katzenstein. The raise I was expecting I don't get—instead of twenty-eight hundred dollars I go only to fifteen. Loeb is going to put his son-in-law, Steinfeld, from Cleveland, in the new factory. I still just got the city trade."

"I says to Marcus, papa, it's enough; you and mamma had less than half that much."

"Ach, my poor baby! My poor baby!"

"I ain't your poor baby, mamma. It could be worse—believe me—"

"Oh! And I thought he was going to have that grand position and give it to her so fine—how I told everybody; how I—"

"Don't get excited, Salcha! Let's sit quiet and talk it over."

"Such plans as I had for that girl, papa! I had it all fixed that she should have one of those five rooms and a sleeping-out porch over Batta! Already I talked to Tillie that she should go to her."

Mrs. Katzenstein sniffled and wiped each eye with the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Katzenstein."

"That don't get you nowhere, Mr. Gump. If you had only known this last night! Now what will people say?"

"Mamma!"

"Nowadays in New York it ain't like it used to be, Mr. Gump; people can't start in on so little—half of what you make costs Birdie's clothes. Ach, when I think what that girl is used to! Every comfort she has—you can't give her like she's used to, Mr. Gump."

"I told all that to Birdie, Mrs. Katzenstein—I can't give her what she's got at home, and she should take her time to decide."

"That's easy enough to say now after it's in everybody's mouth."

"That Loeb Brothers should play you such a trick," said Mr. Katzenstein—"a boy that's built up a trade like you!"

"Ach, my baby!" sobbed Mrs. Katzenstein. "And now the whole town already knows it! If only he had known this last night, before it was too late!"

"Salcha, how you talk!"

"My own husband turns against me!"

"That they should start little, mamma, is just so good as they should start big. My boy, you got a good head; and with a good head and a good heart you got just so good a start as you need. Go 'way, you foolisher children! You make me sick with your crying and gedinks!"

"Such a father I got, Marcus! What did I tell you, how he would act—what did I tell you?"

She kissed her father lightly on the cheek.

"Go 'way, you children!" he repeated. "You got it too good as it is—ain't it, mamma?"

"I guess you're right, Rudolph; but how I had plans for that girl, papa can tell you, Marcus! You're a good boy, Marcus, and she's got her heart set on you; but I—I hate it how everybody can talk now—something to talk about for them all!"

"They should talk!" said Mr. Katzenstein, lighting a cigar. "And talk and talk!"

"What I ordered embroidered linens enough for five rooms now I don't know, Birdie! If you want him I say you should have him—but how I had plans for that girl!"

"I'll work for her, all right, Mrs. Katzenstein. It will be five rooms before you know it—this don't mean, Mrs. Katzenstein—maw!—that I won't ever get up."

"Kiss me, Marcus," said Mrs. Katzenstein. "That she should be happy is all I care."

"Now, Marcus, we'll go up and see Mamma Gump."

"Get ready, little Birdie," he said.

"Good night, Marcus! You're a good boy, and you'll be good to our baby. Even if she ain't got it so grand, she's got a good husband—that's more than Meena Ginsburg's got."