Chapter V: Part 5

In Mrs. Meyerburg's bedroom a great arched ceiling, after the narrative manner of Paolo Veronese, lent such vastness to the apartment that moving across it, or sitting in her great overstuffed armchair beside a window, she hardly struck a note. Great wealth lay in canopied silence over that room. A rug out of Persia, so large that countless extra years and countless pairs of tired eyes and tired fingers had gone to make it, let noises sink noiseless into its nap. Brocade and tufting ate up sound. At every window more brocade shut out the incessant song of the Avenue.

In the overstuffed chair beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight and very black.

An hour by an inlaid ormolu clock she sat there, her feet in soft, elastic-sided shoes, just lifted from the floor. Incongruous enough, on a plain deal table beside her, a sheaf of blue-prints lay unrolled. She fingered them occasionally and with a tenderness, as if they might be sensitive to touch; even smiled and held the sheets one by one up against the shrouded window so that the light pressing through them might emphasize the labyrinth of lines. Dozed, with a smile printed on her lips, and awoke when her head lopped too heavily sidewise.

After an interval she slid out of her chair and crossed to the door; even in action her broad, squat figure infinitesimal to the room's proportions. When she opened the door the dignity of great halls lay in waiting. She crossed the wide vista to a closed door, a replica of her own, and knocked, waited, turned the crystal knob, knocked, waited. Rapped again, this time in three staccatos. Silence. Then softly and with her cheek laid against the imperturbable panel of the closed door:

"Becky! Becky! Open! Open!"

A muffled sound from within as if a sob had been let slip.

Then again, rattling the knob this time: "Becky, it's mamma. Becky, you should get up now; it's time for our drive. Let me in, Becky. Open!" shaking the handle.

When the door opened finally, Mrs. Meyerburg stepped quickly through the slit, as if to ward off its too heavy closing. A French maid, in the immemorial paraphernalia of French maids, stood by like a slim sentinel on stilts, her tall, small heels clicked together. Perfume lay on the artificial dusk of that room.

"Therese, you can go down awhile. When Miss Becky wants she can ring."

"Oui, madame."

"I wish, Therese, when you go down you would tell Anna I don't want she should put the real lace table-cloth from Miss Becky's party last night in the linen-room. Twice I've told her after its use she should always bring it right back to me."

"Oui, madame." And Therese flashed out on the slim heels.

In the crowded apartment, furnished after the most exuberant of the various exuberant French periods, Miss Rebecca Meyerburg lay on a Louis Seize bed, certified to have been lifted, down to the casters, from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette. In a great confusion of laces and linens, disarrayed as if tossed by a fever patient, she lay there, her round young arm flung up over her head and her face turned downward to the curve of one elbow.

"Ach, now, Becky, ain't it a shame you should take on so? Ain't it a shame before the servants? Come, baby, in a half-hour it's time for our drive. Come, baby!"

Beneath the fine linen Miss Meyerburg dug with her toes into the mattress, her head burrowing deeper and the black mane of her hair rippling backward in maenadic waves. "If you don't let me alone, ma, if you don't just let me lay here in peace, I'll scream. I'll faint. Faint, I tell you," and smothered her words in the curve of her elbow.

Mrs. Meyerburg breathed outward in a sigh and sat down hesitant on the bed edge, her hand reaching out to the bare white shoulder and smoothing its high luster.

"Come, Becky, and get up like a good girl. Don't you want, baby, to come over by mamma's room and see the plans for the Memorial?"

"No! No! No!"

"They got to be sent back to-day, Becky, before Goldfinger leaves for Boston with them. I got to get right away busy if I want the boys should have their surprise this time next year. To no one but my baby girl have I said yet one word. Don't you want, Becky, to see them before they go down by Goldfinger's office, so he can right away go ahead?"

"No! No!"

"Becky, ain't you ashamed, your own papa's Memorial?"

"Please, mamma, please. If you only won't Becky me."

"Betty."

"If you only will go and--and leave me alone."

"I ask you, Betty, should a girl what's got everything that should make her happy just like an angel, a girl what has got for herself heaven on earth, make herself right away sick the first time what things don't go smooth with her?"

"If I could only die! If I could die! Why don't I die to-day?"

The throb of a sob lay on her voice, and she sat up suddenly, pushing backward with both hands the thick rush of hair to her face. Grief had blotched her cheeks, but she was as warm and as curving as Flora. It was as if her deep-white flesh was deep-white plush and would sink to the touch. The line and the sheen of her radiated through her fine garment.

"Why don't I die?" repeating her vain question, and her eyes, darker because she was so white, looking out and past her parent and streaming their bitter tears.

"You'm a bad girl, Becky, and it's a sin you should talk so. _Gott sei dank_ your poor papa ain't alive to hear such bad words from his own daughter's lips."

"If pa was living things would be different--let me tell you that."

In a flare of immediate anger Mrs. Meyerburg's head shot forward. "Du--" she cried; "du--you--you bad girl--du--"

"If he had lived they would!"

Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg's face, with the lines in it held tight, relaxed to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff silk shushing as she swayed.

"Ach, that I should live to hear from my own child that I 'ain't done by her like her father would want that I should do. Every hour since I been left alone, to do by my six children like he would want has been always my only thought, and now--"

"I mean it! I mean it! If he had lived he would have settled it on me easy enough when he saw what I was doing for the family. Two million if need be! He was the one in this family that made it big, because he wasn't afraid of big things."

Further rage trembled along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, and the fingers she waggled trembled, too, of that same wrath. "You'm a bad girl, Becky! You'm a bad girl with thought only for yourself. Always your papa said by each child we should do the same. Five hundred thousand dollars to each son when he marries a fine, good girl. More as one night I can tell you I laid awake when Felix picked out for himself Trixie, just wondering what papa would want I should do it or not."

"Can't you keep from picking on that girl, mamma? It's through her, if you want to know it, that I first got in with--with the marquis and that crowd."

"Always by each child we should do the same, he said. Five hundred thousand dollars to our girl when she marries a fine, good man. Even back in days when he had not a cent to leave after him, always he said alike you should all be treated. Always, you hear? Always."

Fire had dried the tears in Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and her face had resumed its fixity of lines. Only her finger continued to tremble and two near-the-surface nerves in her left temple.

"But, mamma, you know yourself he never dreamt we could climb up to this. That for a miserable five hundred thousand more we--"

"A miserable five hundred thousand she calls it like it was five hundred thousand cents!"

"That for a miserable five hundred thousand dollars we could raise our family up to the nobility. The Marquis Rosencrantz, ma, who--"

"Becky, it ain't that I got a word to say against this young man Rosencrantz--but--"

"Marquis Rosencrantz, mamma."

"All right then, Marquis Rosencrantz; but it's like your brother Ben says--a marquis in a country where there ain't no more any of them made could just as well be called a mister. Not a word I got to say against this young Rosencrantz, but--"

"Marquis, ma, please remember! M-a-r-q-u-i-s. Whether there are any more of them or not in France, he still goes by the title over here, and that's what he is, ma. Please remember!"

"Marquis Rosencrantz. But when a young man, Becky, don't talk my own language, it ain't so easy for me to know if I like him--"

"Like him. Huh!" Sitting there upright in bed, her large, white arms wrapped about her knees, Miss Meyerburg regarded her mother with dry eyes, but through a blur of scorn. "She don't know if she likes him! Let me tell you, ma, we can worry if he likes us, not if we like him."

"I always say, Becky, about these fine people what you meet traveling in Europe with your brother Felix and his wife with her gay ways, you--"

"A marquis comes her way and she don't know whether she likes him or not. That's rich!"

"For the price what you say he hinted to you last night he's got to have before he can get married, I guess _oser_ I can say if I like him or not."

"I should think, ma, if you had any pride for the family after the way we've been spit on by a certain bunch in this town, you'd be glad to grab a marquis to wave in their stuck-up faces."

"For such things what make in life men like wild beasts fighting each other I got no time. I ain't all for style. All what I want is to see my little girl married to a fine, good--"

"Yes, yes, ma. I know all that fine, good man stuff."

"Ja, I say it again. To a fine, good man just like nearly all your brothers married fine, good women."

"The marquis, just let me tell you, ma, is a man of force--he is. Maybe those foreigners don't always show up, but I've seen him on his own ground. I've seen him in Paris and Monte Carlo and I--"

"I 'ain't got a word to say against this young man what followed you all the way home from Paris. What I don't know I can't talk about. Only I ask you, Becky, ain't it always in the papers how from Europe they run here thick after the girls what have got money?"

"What are you always running down Europe for, ma? Where did you come from, yourself, I'd like to know!"

"I don't run it down, baby. I don't. You know how your papa loved the old country and sent always money back home. But he always said, baby, it's in America we had all our good luck and to America what gave us so much we should give back too. Just because your brother Felix and his wife what was on the stage like such doings over there is no reason--"

"It's just those notions of yours, ma, that are keeping this family down, let me tell you that--you and Ben and Roody and Izzy and all the rest of them with their old-fogyness."

"Your brothers, let me tell you, you bad girl, you, are as fine, steady men as your papa before them."

"We could have one of the biggest names in this town and get in on the right kind of charities, if you and they didn't--"

"Your papa, Becky, had his own ideas how to do charity and how we should not give just where our name shows big in the papers. Your brothers are like him, fine, good men, and that's why I want the Memorial should come like a surprise, so they can have before them always that their father was the finest--"

Suddenly Miss Meyerburg flung herself back on her pillows, tears gushing hot and full of salt. "Oh, what's the use? What's the use? She won't understand."

"Becky, baby, 'ain't you got everything what money can buy? A house on Fifth Avenue what even the sight-seeing automobile hollers out about. Automobiles of your own more as you can use. Brothers nearly all with grand wives and families, and such a beautiful girl like you with a grand fortune to--"

"Mamma, mamma, can't you understand there's things that money can't buy?"

"Ja, I should say so; but them is the things, Becky, that money makes you forget all about."

"Try to understand, can't you, ma, that the Rosencrantzes are a great old French family. You know for yourself how few of--of our people got titles to their names. Jacob Rosencrantz, ma, the marquis's great-grandfather back in the days when the family had big money, got his title from the king, ma, for lending money when the--"

"If all of his sons got, like this great-grandson of his asks, one million dollars with their wives, I should say he could afford to lend to the king. To two kings!"

"Please, mamma, can't you understand? It don't hurt how things are now--it's the way they used to be with those kinds of families that count, ma. I was on their estate in France, ma, with Trixie and Felix. She used to know him in Paris when she was singing there. You ought to see, ma, an old, old place that you can ride on for a day and not come to the end, and the house so moldy and ramshackly that any American girl would be proud to marry into it. Those are the things, ma, that our family needs and money can't buy."

"You mean, Becky, that five hundred thousand dollars can't buy it! It has got to be a million dollars yet! A million dollars my child asks for just like it was five dollars!"

"I'm not asking that, ma, I'm not. Five hundred thousand of it is mine by rights. I'm only asking for half a million."

"Gott in Himmel, child, much more as a million dollars I 'ain't got left altogether. With my five sons married and their shares drawn, I tell you, Becky, a million dollars to you now would leave me so low that--"

"There you go. That's what you said that time Felix had to have the hundred thousand in a hurry, but I notice you got it overnight without even turning a finger. For him you can do, but--"

"For a black sheep I got to--"

"It's not all tease with the boys, let me tell you, ma, when they sing that song at you about a whole stocking full you've got that none of us know anything about."

"Ja, you and your brothers can talk, but I know what's what. Don't think, Becky, your brother Felix and his wife with their Monte Carlo all the time and a yacht they got to have yet, and their debts, 'ain't eat a piece out of the fortune your papa built up for you children out of his own sweat."

"Don't go back to ancient history, ma."

"Those cut-uppings is for billionaires, Becky; not for one old lady as 'ain't got much more as a million left after her six dowries is paid."

"Yes, I wish I had what you've got over and above that."

"That young Rosencrantz is playing you high, Becky, because he sees how high your brother and his wife can fly. Always when people get big like us, right away the world takes us for even bigger as we are. He 'ain't got no right to make such demands. Five hundred thousand dollars is more as he ever saw in his life. I tell you, Becky, if I could speak to that young man like you can in his own language, I would tell him what--"

"He don't make demands in so many words, ma. There--there's a way those things are done without just coming right out. I guess you think, when Selma Bernheimer married her baron, he came right out in words and said it had to be two millions. Like fun he did! But just the same, you don't think she could have said yes to him, when he asked her, unless she knew that she--she could fork over, do you?"

"I tell you in such marriages the last thing what you hear talked about is being in love."

"Oh, that had nothing to do with this, ma. The love part is there all right. You--you don't understand, ma!"

"_Gott sei dank_ that I don't understand such!"

Then Miss Meyerburg leaned forward, her large, white hand on her parent's knee, her face close and full of fervor. "Ma dear, you got it in your power sitting there to make me the happiest girl in the world. I'll do more for the family in this marriage, ma dear, than all five of the boys put together. I tell you, ma, it's the biggest minute in the life of this family if you give--if you do this for me, ma. It is, dear."

"Ja, let me just tell you that your brothers and their wives will be the first to put their foot down on that the youngest should get twice as much as they."

"What do you care? And, anyways, ma, they don't need to know. What they don't know don't hurt them. Don't tell them, ma; just don't tell them. Ain't I the only girl, and the baby too? Haven't I got the chance to, raise them all up in society? Oh, ma dear, you've got so much! So much more than you can ever use, and--and you--you're old now, ma, and I--I'm so young, dear, so young!"

"Ja, like you say, maybe I'm old, but I tell you, Becky, I 'ain't got the money to throw away like--"

"Let me let the marquis ask me when he comes to-night, ma. He's ready to pop if--if I just dare to let him, ma."

"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you how things is done now'days between young people. I should let him ask her yet, she says, like I had put on his mouth a muzzle."

"It's no use letting him ask me, ma dear, if I can't come across like I know the girl he can marry has got to. Let me let him ask me to-night, ma. And to-morrow at New-Year's dinner with all the family here, we'll break it to 'em, ma. Mamma dearie! Let me ask the marquis here to New-Year's dinner to-morrow to meet his new brothers. Ma dearie!"

She was frankly pleading, her eyes twilit, with stars shining through, her mouth so like red fruit and her beautiful brows raised.

"So help me, Becky, if I give you the million like you ask and with the Memorial yet to build, I am wiped out, Becky. Wiped out!"

"Wiped out! With five sons with their finger in every good pie in town and a daughter married into nobility?"

"I 'ain't got one word to say against my children, Becky; luckier I been as most mothers; but the day what I am dependent on one of them for my living, that day I want I should be done with living."

"You could live with us, ma dearie. Paris in season and the estate in winter. You--you could run the big estate for us, ma, order and--"

"You heard what I said, Becky."

"Well, then, ma, why--why don't you get the Memorial out of your head, dear? Pa built his own Memorial, ma. His memory lasts with everybody, anyway."

Aspen trembling laid hold of Mrs. Meyerburg, muddling her words. "You--ach--from her dead father yet she would take away the marble to his memory."

"Ma!"

"Ja, the marble to his memory! Bad girl, you! A man what lifted up with his hands those that came after so that hardly on the ground they got to put a foot. And now du--du what gives him no thanks! A Memorial to her papa, a Home for the Old and Poor what he always dreamed of building, she begrudges, she begrudges!"

"No, no, mamma, you don't understand!"

"A man what loved so the poor while he lived, shouldn't be able to do for the poor after he is dead too. You go, you bad girl you, to your grand nobleman what won't take you if you ain't worth every inch your weight in gold, you--"

"Mamma--mamma, if you don't stop your terrible talk I--I'll faint, I tell you!"

"You go and your brother Felix and his fine wife with you, for the things what money can buy. You got such madness for money, sometimes like wolfs you all feel to me breathing on my back, you go and--"

"I tell you if--if you don't stop that terrible talk I--I'll faint, I will! Oh, why don't I die--why--why--why?"

"Since the day what he died every hour I've lived for the time when, with my children provided for, I could spend the rest of my days building to a man what deserved it such a monument as he should have. A Home for the Old and Poor with a park all around, where they can sit all day in the sun. All ready I got the plans in my room to send them down by Goldfinger this afternoon he should go right ahead and--"

"Mamma, mamma, please listen--"

But the voice of Mrs. Meyerburg rose like a gale and her face was slashed with tears. "If my last cent it takes and on the streets I go to beg, up such a Memorial goes. All you children with your feet up on his shoulders can turn away from his memory now he's gone, but up it goes if on the day what I die I got to dig dirt with my finger-nails to pay yet for my coffin."

"Listen, ma; just be calm a minute--just a minute. I don't mean that. Didn't I just say he was the grandest father in the world and--"

"You said--"

"'Sh-h-h, mamma! Quiet, quiet! There isn't one of the boys wouldn't agree with me if they knew. We aren't big enough, I tell you, to sink a million in an out-of-town charity like that. In any charity, for that matter, no matter how big it shows up. You say yourself a million and a half will cripple you. Well, your first duty is to us living and not to him dead--To us living! It means my whole life, my whole life!" And she beat the pillow with hard fists.

"Ja, but--"

"With that money you can buy my happiness living, and he don't want it or need it dead."

Within the quick vise of her two hands Mrs. Meyerburg clasped her face, all quivering and racked with sobs. "I can't hear it. It's like she was sticking knifes into me."

"The marquis has the kind of blood we need to give this family a boost. We can be big, ma. Big, I tell you. I can have a crest embroidered in two colors in my linens. That inside clique that looks down on us now can do some looking up then. The boys don't need to know about that million, ma. Just let me have the marquis here to-morrow to meet his new brothers, ma, like there was nothing unusual. I'll pay it back to you in a million ways. The Memorial will come in time. Everything will come in time. Make me the happiest girl in the world, ma. He'll ask me to-night if I let him. Get the Memorial plans out of your head for a while, anyway! Just for a while!"

"Not so long as I got in me the strength to send down them plans to Goldfinger's office this afternoon with my message to go ahead. I don't invite no marquis here to-morrow for family dinner if I got to get him here with a million dollars' worth of bait. I--"

"Mamma!"

"Go and tell him your stingy old mamma would rather build a Home for the Old and Poor in memory of the grandest man what ever lived than give a snip like him, what never did a lick of work in his life, a fortune so he should have with it a good time at Monte Carlo. Just go tell him! Tell him!"

She was trembling now so that she could scarcely withdraw from the bedside, but her voice had lost none of its gale-like quality.

"Go tell him! Maybe it does him good he should hear." And in spite of her ague she crossed the vast room, slamming the door so that a great shudder ran over the room.

On the bed that had been lifted bodily from the Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette, its laces upheaved about her like billows in anger, Rebecca Meyerburg lay with her face to the ceiling, raw sobs distorting it.

Steadying herself without that door, her hand laid between her breasts and slightly to the left, as if there a sharp pain had cut her, Mrs. Meyerburg leaned to the wall a moment, and, gaining quick composure, proceeded steadily enough across the wide aisle of hall, her hand following a balustrade.

A servant intercepted her half-way. "Madam--"

"Kemp, from here when I look down in the lower hall, all them ferns look yellow on top. I want you should please cut them!"

"Yes, madam. Mrs. Fischlowitz, madam, has been waiting down in the side hall for you."

"Mrs. Fischlowitz! For why you keep her waiting in the side hall?"

"Therese said madam was occupied."

"Bring her right up, Kemp, in the elevator. Her foot ain't so good. Right away, Kemp."

"Yes, madam."

Into Mrs. Meyerburg's room of many periods, its vastness so emphasized by the ceiling after Paolo Veronese, its fluted yellow-silk bed canopy reaching up to that ceiling stately and theatric enough to shade the sleep of a shah, limped Mrs. Fischlowitz timidly and with the uncertainty with which the callous feet of the unsocialistic poor tread velvet.

"How-do, Mrs. Fischlowitz?"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, I didn't want you to be disturbed except I want to explain to you why I'm late again this month."

"Sit down! I don't want you should even explain, Mrs. Fischlowitz--that's how little I thought about it."

Mrs. Meyerburg was full of small, pleased ways, drawing off her guest's decent black cape, pulling at her five-fingered mittens, lifting the nest-like bonnet.

"So! And how's the foot?"

"Not so good and not so bad. And how is the sciatica with you, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"Like with you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. It could be better and it could be worse. Sometimes I got a little touch yet up between my ribs."

"If it ain't one thing, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's another. What you think why I'm late again with the rent, Mrs. Meyerburg? If last week my Sollie didn't fall off the delivery-wagon and sprain his back!"

"You don't say so!"

"That same job as you got him two years ago so good he's kept, and now such a thing has to happen. _Gott sei dank_, he's up and out again, but I tell you it was a scare!"

"I should say so. And how is Tillie?"

"Mrs. Meyerburg, you should just see for yourself how that girl has got new color since that certified milk you send her every day. Like a new girl so pretty all of a sudden she has grown. For to-morrow, Mrs. Meyerburg, a girl what never before had a beau in her life, if Morris Rinabauer, the young foreman where she works, 'ain't invited her out for New-Year's Day."

"You got great times down by Rivington Street this time of year. Not? I remember how my children used to like it with their horns _oser_ like it was their own holiday."

"Ja, it's a great _gedinks_ like always. Sometimes I say it gets so tough down there I hate my Tillie should come home from the factory after dark, but now with Morris Rinabauer--"

"Mrs. Fischlowitz, I guess you think it's a sin I should say so, but I tell you, when I think of that dirty little street down there and your flat what I lived in the seventeen happiest years of my life with my husband and babies--when I think back on my years in that little flat I--I can just feel myself tremble like all over. That's how happy we were down there, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, when I got a place like this, at Rivington Street I wouldn't want I should ever have to look again."

"It's a feeling, Mrs. Fischlowitz, what you--you can't understand until--until you live through so much like me. I--I just want some day you should let me come down, Mrs. Fischlowitz, and visit by you in the old place, eh?"

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, I can tell you the day what you visit on me down there I am a proud woman. How little we got to offer you know, but if I could fix for you Kaffeeklatsch some day and Kuchen and--"

"In the kitchen you still got the noodle-board yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, where you can mix Kuchen too?"

"I should say so. Always on it I mix my doughs."

"He built it in for me himself, Mrs. Fischlowitz. On hinges so when I was done, up against the wall out of the way I could fold it."

"'Just think,' I say to my children, 'we eat noodles off a board what Simon Meyerburg built with his own hands.' On the whole East Side it's a curiosity."

"Sometimes when I come down by your flat, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I show you how I used to make them for him. Wide ones he liked."

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, like you could put your hands in dough now!"

"'Mamma,' he used to say--standing in the kitchen door when he came home nights and looking at me maybe rocking Becky there by the stove and waiting supper for him--'Mamma,' he'd say, clapping his hands at me, 'open your eyes wide so I can see what's in 'em.'"

"That such a big man should play like that!"

"'Come in, darling,' I'd say; 'you can't guess from there what we got.'"

"Just think, like just married you were together."

"'Noodles!' he'd holler, and all the time right in back of me, spread out on the board, he could see 'em. I can see him yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz, standing there in the kitchen doorway, under the horseshoe what he found when we first landed."

"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, in that flat we 'ain't had nothing but luck, neither, with you so good to us."

"Ach, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, for an old friend like you, what I lived next door to so many years and more as once gave my babies to keep for me when I must go out awhile, I shouldn't do a little yet."

"'Little,' she calls it. With such low rent you give us I'm ashamed to bring the money. Five weeks in the country and milk for my Tillie, until it's back from the grave you snatched her. Even on my back now every stitch what I got on I got to thank you for. Such comfort I got from that black cape!"

"I was just thinking, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with your rheumatism and on such a cold day a cape ain't so good for you, neither. Right up under it the wind can get."

"Warm like toast it is, Mrs. Meyerburg."

"I got a idea, Mrs. Fischlowitz! In that chest over there by the wall I got yet a jacket from Rivington Street. Right away it got too tight for me. Like new it is, with a warm beaver collar. At auction one day he got it for me. Like a top it will fit you, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"No, no, please, Mrs. Meyerburg. It just looks like every time what I come you got to give me something. Ashamed it makes me. Please you shouldn't."

But in the pleasant frenzy of sudden decision Mrs. Meyerburg was on her knees beside a carved chest, burrowing her arm beneath folded garments, the high smell of camphor exuding.

"Only yesterday in my hand I had it. There! See! Just your size!" She held the creased garment out from her by each shoulder, blowing the nap of the beaver collar.

"Please, no, Mrs. Meyerburg. Such a fine coat maybe you can wear it yourself. No, I don't mean that, when you got such grander ones; but for me, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's too fine to take. Please!"

Standing there holding it thrust enthusiastically forward, a glaze suddenly formed over Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and she laid her cheek to the brown fur collar, a tear dropping to it.

"You'm right, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I--I can't give this up. I--he--a coat he bought once for me at auction when--he _oser_ could afford it. I--you must excuse me, Mrs. Fischlowitz."

"That's right, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a remembrance you should keep it."

Then brightening: "But I got in the next room, Mrs. Fischlowitz, a coat better as this for you. Lined all in squirrel-skin they call it. One day by myself I bought it, and how my Becky laughs and won't even let me wear it in automobile. I ain't stylish enough, she says."

With an inarticulate medley of sounds Mrs. Fischlowitz held up a hand of remonstrance. "But--"

"Na, na, just a minute." And on the very wings of her words Mrs. Meyerburg was across the room, through the ornate door of an ornate boudoir, and out presently with the garment flung across her arm. "Na, here put it on."

"Ach, such a beau-tiful coat!"

"So! Let me help!"

They leaned together, their faces, which the years had passed over none too lightly, close and eager. Against the beaver collar Mrs. Fischlowitz's hand lay fluttering.

"Put your hands in the pockets, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Deep, eh?"

"Finer you can believe me as I ever had in my life before. I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, a woman like you should get first place in heaven and you should know how many on the East Side there is says the same. I--I brought you your rent, Mrs. Meyerburg. You must excuse how late, but my Sollie--"

"Ja, ja."

Eleven! Twelve! Twelve-fifty! Mrs. Fischlowitz counted it out carefully from a small purse tucked in her palm, snapping it carefully shut over the remaining coins.

"Thank you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. You should never feel hurried. Mr. Oppenheimer will mail you a receipt."

"I guess now I must be going, Mrs. Meyerburg--to-night I promised my Sollie we have cheese-Kuchen for supper."

"Always I used to make it with a short crust for my Isadore. How he loved it!"

"Just again, Mrs. Meyerburg, I want you should let me say how--how this is the finest present what I ever had in my life. I can tell you from just how soft it is on me, I can tell how it must feel to ride in automobile."

A light flashed in brilliance up into Mrs. Meyerburg's face. "Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

"Ja, Mrs. Meyerburg?"

"I tell you what! I--this afternoon my Becky, Mrs. Fischlowitz, she--she ain't so well and like always can't take with me a ride in the Park. Such--such a cold that girl has got. How I should like it, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you would be so kind to--to take with me my drive in--in your new coat."

"I--"

"Ja, ja, I know, Mrs. Fischlowitz, cheese Kuchen should first get cold before supper, but if you could just an hour ride by me a little? If you would be so kind, Mrs. Fischlowitz!"

Diffidence ran trembling along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, as if she dared not venture too far upon a day blessed with tasks. "I got always so--so much time to myself now'days, Mrs. Fischlowitz, sometimes I--I get maybe a--a little lonesome."

"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, you don't want to be bothered with such--such a person like me when you ride so grand through the Park."

"Fit like a fiddle it will make you feel, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Button up tight that collar and right away we start. Please, right next to you, will you press that third button? That means we go right down and find outside the car waiting for us."

"But, Mrs. Meyerburg--"

"See, just like you, I put on a coat on the inside fur. This way, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Careful, your foot!"

In the great lower hall full of Tudor gloom the carved stone arches dropping in rococo stalactites from the ceiling, and a marble staircase blue-veined as a delicate woman's hand winding up to an oriole window, a man-servant swung back two sets of trellised doors; bowed them noiselessly shut again.

The quick cold of December bit them at the threshold. Opposite lay the Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns, the sunlight hard against their boles. More sunlight lay cold and glittering down the length of the most façaded avenue in the world and on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars and their nickel-plated snouts and plate-glass sides.

Women, with heads too haughty to turn them right or left, moved past in closed cars that were perfumed and upholstered like jewel-boxes; the joggly smartness of hansom cabs, their fair fares seeing and being seen behind the wooden aprons and their frozen laughter coming from their lips in vapor! On the broad sidewalks women in low shoes that defied the wind, and men in high hats that the wind defied; nursemaids trim as deaconesses, and their charges the beautiful exotic children of pure milk and pure sunshine!

One of these deaconess-like nursemaids, walking out with a child whose black curls lay in wide sprays on each shoulder, detached herself from the up-town flow and crossed to the trellised threshold.

"Good afternoon, Madam Meyerburg. Mademoiselle, _dites bonjour à madame votre grand'maman_."

"_Bonjour, grand'maman_."

In the act of descending her steps, Mrs. Meyerburg's hands flew outward. "Ach, du little Aileen. Come, Aileen, to grandma. Mrs. Fischlowitz, this is Felix's little girl. You remember Felix--such a beautiful bad little boy he was what always used to fight your Sollie underneath the sink."

"_Gott in Himmel_, so this is Felix's little girl!"

"Ja, this is already his second. Come, Aileen, to grandma and say good afternoon to the lady."

The maid guided the small figure forward by one shoulder. "_Dites bonjour à madame, Mademoiselle Aileen_."

"_Bonjour, madame_."

"Not a word of English she can speak yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I tell you already my grandchildren are so smart not even their language I can understand. _Aber_ for why such a child should only talk so in her own country she can't be understood, I don't know."

"I guess, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's style now'days that you shouldn't know your own language."

"Come by grandma to-morrow, Aileen, and upstairs I got in the little box sweet cakes like grandma always keeps for you. Eh, baby?"

"Say thank you, grandmother."

"_Merci bien, grand'maman_."

And they were off into the stream again, the small white leggings at a smart trot.

At the curb a low-bodied, high-power car, with the top flung back and the wind-shield up, lay sidled against the coping.

"Get right in, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Burk, put under Mrs. Fischlowitz's both feet a heater."

A second man, in too-accentuated livery of mauve and astrakhan, flung open the wide door. A glassed-in chauffeur, in more mauve and astrakhan, threw in his clutch. The door slammed. Mrs. Fischlowitz breathed deep and grasped the nickel-plated door handle. Mrs. Meyerburg leaned out, her small plumes wagging.

"Burk, since Miss Becky ain't along to-day, I don't want in front no second man."

"Yes, madam."

"I want instead you should take the roadster and call after Mrs. Weinstein. You know, down by Twenty-third Street, the fourth floor back."

"Yes, madam."

"I want you should say, Burk, that Mrs. Meyerburg says her and her daughter should take off from their work an hour for a drive wherever they say you should take them. And tell her, Burk, she should make for me five dozens more them paper carnations. Right away I want you should go."

"Yes, madam."

They nosed slowly into the stream of the Avenue.

"Always Becky likes there should be two men stuck up in front there. I always say to look only at the backs of my servants I don't go out riding for."

Erect and as if to the fantastic requirements of the situation sat Mrs. Fischlowitz, her face of a thousand lines screwed to maintain the transiency of a great moment.

"That I should live, Mrs. Meyerburg, to see such a sight like this! In the thirty years I been in this country not but once have I walked up Fifth Avenue--that time when my Tillie paraded in the shirtwaist strike. I--I can tell you I'm proud to live to see it this way from automobile."

"Lean back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, so you be more comfortable. That's all right; you can't hurt them bottles. My Becky likes to have fancy touches all over everything. Gold-tops bottles she has to have yet by her. I can tell you, though, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if I do say it myself, when that girl sits up in here like a picture she looks. How they stare you should see."

"Such a beau-ti-ful girl! I can tell you for her a prince ain't good enough. Ach, what a pleasure it must be, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a mother to know if her child wants heaven she can nearly get it for her. I can tell you that must be the greatest pleasure of all for you, Mrs. Meyerburg, to give to your daughter everything just like she wants it."

"Ja, ja," said with little to indicate mental ferment.

They were in the Park, with the wind scampering through the skeins of bare tree branches. The lake lay locked in ice, skaters in the ecstasy of motion lunging across it. Beneath the mink lap-robe Mrs. Fischlowitz snuggled deeper and more lax.

"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you this is better as standing over my cheese Kuchen."

"Always I used to let my cheese drip first the night before. Right through a cheese-cloth sack hung from a nail what my husband drove in for me under the window-sill."

"Right that same nail is there yet, Mrs. Meyerburg. _Oser_ we should touch one thing!"

"I can tell you it's a great comfort, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I got such a tenant as you in there."

"When you come to visit me, Mrs. Meyerburg, right to the last nail like you left it you find it. Not even from the kitchen would I let my Sollie take down the old clothes-line what you had stretched across one end."

"Ach, how many times in rainy days I used that line. It's a good little line I bet yet. Not?"

"Ja." But with no corresponding kit of emotions in Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice. She was still breathing deep the buoyant ether of the moment, and beneath the ingratiating warmth of fur utterly soothed. "_Gott_," she said, "I wish my sister-in-law, Hanna, with all her fine airs up where she lives on One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street, could see me now. _Oser_ she could stare and stare, and bow and bow, and past her I would roll like--like a rolling-pin."

From the gold-topped bottle nearest her came a long insidious whiff of frangipani. She dared to lean toward it, sniffing.

"Such a beautiful smell." And let her eyes half close.

"You market your meat yet on Fridays down by old Lavinsky's, Mrs. Fischlowitz?"

"Ja, just like always, only his liver ain't so good like it used to be. I can tell you that's a beau-ti-ful smell."

An hour they rode purringly over smooth highways and for a moment alongside the river, but there the wind was edged with ice and they were very presently back into the leisurely flow of the Avenue. From her curves Mrs. Fischlowitz unbent herself slowly.

"No, no, Mrs. Fischlowitz--you stay in."

"Ach, I get out here at your house, too, and take the street-cars. I--"

"No, no. James takes you all the way home, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I get out because my Becky likes I should get home early and get dressed up for dinner."

"But Mrs. Meyerburg--"

"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by, Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."

Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.

"Madame!"

"Ja."

"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so well. Three spells of fainting, madame."

"Therese!"

"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come--"

With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out for the balustrade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.

"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."